People or Planet?
Words and photos by Zara Gudnason
This story was originally published in Issue 4
Is compromise necessary as we fight for a renewable future? Zara Gudnason considers a harsh paradox from onboard an Icelandic tugboat.
It’s midnight on the east coast of Iceland and the skipper sends us out into the pitch-black bay of Reyðarfjörður. We’re about to bring in the Lowlands Angel: a 199-metre-long bulk carrier loaded with 60,000 tonnes of raw alumina.
We’re standing on the deck of a tugboat and Dad explains what we’re about to do. “The job of the tugboat,” he says, “is to guide the ship safely into the fjord, avoiding the shallows and rocks, and then to push it up against the wharf at the smelter.” Dad loves boats so much that his eyes light up when he explains boat things, even to me – the only child in the family who failed to pursue a maritime career.
My family has been involved in seafaring in Australia and Iceland for generations. While I entertained the idea of studying something that would take me to sea, I opted for writing. The running joke with my siblings was to wonder when I’d get a real job.
Dad is Icelandic but he lived in Australia for 25 years, building a family and a successful marine engineering business. His name is Kolbeinn (‘nn’ is pronounced ‘tn’) and he is a good-humoured man who laughs at all my jokes.
The tug steams along with its stern low in the water. Dad explains that tugs are designed with their weight and power at the back, to give maximum towing capacity. White-crested waves stream out behind us. In the distance I can see Fjardaál, the infamous Alcoa Corporation aluminium smelter, lit up like it’s December in the suburbs.
A week earlier I’d been hiking in the gigantic mountains surrounding Fjardaál. I’d felt anxious looking down on the long smelter, mirrored in the blue of the fjord. Now I am barrelling straight for it.
• Fjardaál aluminium smelter
Fjardaál and aluminium smelters are a point of contention for Icelanders. For some they are a positive use of otherwise wasted natural resources; for others they are an example of redneck politicians trying to erase the island’s untouched wilderness to benefit industrial giants. For me, they are a paradox that catches me unawares.
On the one hand, they create an economy for clusters of communities that would otherwise struggle to exist. They also use renewable energy to produce a necessary resource that would otherwise be produced using fossil fuels. Alcoa recently announced it would be moving from carbon anodes to ceramic anodes in the production of aluminium to reduce their carbon footprint. But these plants are huge – Fjardaál is approximately two kilometres long – and they have devastating effects on the environment. They come at the cost of remote areas of wilderness and cause the loss of fragile ecosystems that have existed for thousands of years.
This wicked problem is seemingly caught between two worlds: one world for ever-growing industry, and the other for a pristine environment. But no matter how black and white the argument looks on the surface, these two worlds are intrinsically connected. Each depends on the other for survival. In the shadow of Fjardaál, I wonder: is compromise necessary as we fight for a renewable future?
"In the shadow of Fjardaál, I wonder: is compromise necessary as we fight for a renewable future?"
• Kárahnjúkar Dam was constructed to power the Fjardaál smelter
"I am so recklessly torn between wanting to protect our environment and wanting our communities to thrive, but why can’t we have both?"
I moved to Iceland briefly for a reprieve from life back home. For me, there is a sense of belonging here, with centuries of history traced through my family. I grew up in Tasmania, the heartland of the polarising ‘jobs versus environment’ debate. Tasmania is a state of contradictions. Pristine ancient wilderness and cool-climate rainforests come up against mining, hydro and forestry industries as they jostle for untapped natural resources. Unprotected, these areas are quickly being lost in favour of industry, and fights continue to protect takayna/Tarkine Rainforest and kunanyi/Mount Wellington. Tasmania has some of the highest unemployment rates and levels of disadvantage in the country, and its economy is largely driven by tourism: MONA, the arts, food, wine and nature. Ironically, the natural beauty that props up the state’s economy is being systematically destroyed.
I stare out the foggy windows of the tug, warm inside the overly heated wheelhouse, and feel the tension thrash around inside me. As we prepare to deliver a colossal amount of raw alumina from Western Australia, I feel like a traitor to my environmental conscience. I am so recklessly torn between wanting to protect our environment and wanting our communities to thrive, but why can’t we have both? Over dinner the night before, I brought up my misgivings about the smelter, and the tension between jobs and the environment. Dad said if it weren’t for the smelter, our family would have gone broke.
In 2008 he received a redundancy from the Tasmanian Government to compensate for loss of work after a fishing quota buy-back scheme. Tasmanian fishermen had trawled the seas for orange roughy, a neon-orange fish, until they had all but fished it out. Dad’s livelihood was working on those boats, and that was over once the boats stopped going to sea. Not long after that, Dad returned to Iceland for good.
I look at the smelter and wonder if the same thing might happen again. Is aluminium production ever really sustainable? Even if the electricity used to turn alumina into aluminium is renewable, transporting 60,000 tonnes of natural resource 16,000 kilometres across the world certainly isn’t. That reality probably isn’t a worry for Dad anymore, because he’ll retire before it’s no longer viable. But there is a risk that the industry will one day die, and the town will be out of work again.
