The old icelandic way of building houses, turf-houses, green houses. image from skagafjordur.is

The Robin Hood memorial in Nottingham

Today at the Háskólatorg, the new coffee/lecture/library-house of the University of Iceland, there is a conference on the heavy industry policy of Iceland. One of our greatest economists, Sigurdur Johannesson, which has written on the costs of the heavy-industry for Icelandic future economy, and John Perkins and others will be lecturing. All welcome, free of admission.
John Perkins is in Iceland because of the premiere of the documentary Dreamland, which is based on the book with the same title by Andri Snær Magnason.  John Perkins is interviewed in this documentary. John Perkins worked for a number of years as an Economic Hitman with a large consulting company in the US.  Using his own words economic hitmen are highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars.  They funnel money from the World Bank, the US Agency for International Development (USAID), and other foreign “aid” organizations into the coffers of huge corporations and the pockets of a few wealthy families who control the planet´s natural resources. Their tools include fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs, exortion, sex and murder.  They play a game as old as empire, but one that has taken on new and terrifying dimensions during this time of globalization. During the past 40 years Iceland, a small nation in the North Atlantic, has sought large solutions for both employment and economics.  In this series of talks we investigate whether this plan has been as fruitful as expected.

Sigurður Jóhannesson is an economist. He has researched energy contracts between Icelandic authorities and international industrial organizations.    (meira …)

The Iceland Design Centre presents the first DesignMarch this year; to become an annual event. The first DesignMarch program is splendid and diverse, with over 150 events reflecting a wide range of design.

DesignMarch aims to imbue the city with life, with design at every step: vacant shop premises will be filled with Icelandic design; cafés will serve their refreshments in Icelandic crockery; impressive exhibitions and installations will be seen all over town. Not to mention shops outside the city center, exhibitions and open studios.

DesignMarch also includes a series of lectures, a seminar, film screenings, and a new approach to city sightseeing, guided by architects.

Further details are available here on the Iceland Design Centre website and the 150 events presented in the program are available here, in Icelandic.

The Design Centre hopes that as many people as possible will seize the opportunity to see, hear and enjoy Icelandic design.

PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS

DesignMarch Lecture Series

27.03 at 13:00 | The National Museum of Iceland, Suðurgata, 101 Reykjavík
Paul Bennett, IDEO |  Design Thinking
Paul Bennett, managing partner, Europe and chief creative officer of IDEO, gives the opening lecture of the DesignMarch Lecture Series. (meira …)

CoolPlanet2009: the new website of the UN’s European public information campaign on climate change (UNRIC) is live!

Here is a letter from our man at Unric:

CoolPlanet, was formally launched at a meeting of five Nordic prime ministers on 26 February 2009 at the Nordic Globalization Forum at the Blue Lagoon in Iceland.

Help the UN-lead negotiations on the new Climate Treaty to be finalized in December 2009 in Copenhagen by getting involved on our inter-active website.

Tell us about your projects, innovations, events and projects and see what others in Europe are doing.

And please, could you link to our website (we will publish your link too!)  www.CoolPlanet2009.org and ask everyone to get involved?

Best regards from UNRIC, Árni Snævarr.

Today at lunch-time, from 12-13, in the Open artUniversity, at Skipholt 1, room 113, Anne Thorpe will talk about how her work in sustainable design led to her current investigation of activist forms of design practice. She will present a few of the results from her ongoing study of hundreds of cases of design activism over the past few years. She will show examples of design activism from across design disciplines and across activist causes, such as accessibility, humanitarian aid, ecology and community empowerment. She will offer some insights on how we can better understand and thus enable design as an activist practice. Thorpe, the author of The Designer’s Atlas of Sustainability (Island Press, 2007), teaches and researches sustainable design in the fields of product design and architecture at Bartlett School of Architecture at University College London and at the Open University. She has lectured widely on sustainable design. The Designer’s Atlas of Sustainability : http://www.designers-atlas.net blog: http://designactivism.net

The house of the National Museum, recently renovated

Today at 12.00 there is a lecture in english on green opportunities and local possibilities, at the National Museum of Iceland (beside the University), in the lecture-room on first flour. The lecturer is the danish Leo Christensen that has for the last ten years lead an evolution towards sustainable local communities in Danmark: On how they transformed the crisis situation into a growing process. He’s got an international attention for his work, for ex. in the New York times recently. It’s theLocal Agenda 21 in Iceland (from the Rio convention) and the Association of Environmentalists in Iceland that organise this lunch-lecture.

Charlotte is organizing Green-drinks in Iceland

As part of the Green-days-program in the University of Iceland, there will be a meeting of green grass-roots in the Nordic house on friday, 6th of march at six. Charlotte Ólöf Jónsdóttir Ferrier is the organiser of those first green drinks in Iceland and she explains this important net-work phenomenon for nattura.info :

Green Drinks is an international, informal networking event where environmentally minded people can connect over drinks. Started in London in 1989, it is now active in 448 cities worldwide; from Johannesburg to Manila, Hyderabad to Istanbul. At Green Drinks you will find an interesting mixture of people from academia, NGOs, government and businesses. Other cities have found the event a catalyst for connectivity, community, collaboration and change in the environmental sector. Although Green Drinks is an organic, self-organising network, many people have found employment, made connections and friends, and developed new ideas. March 6th 2009 will be Reykjavík’s first Green Drinks. Norænna Húsið will host the event at 18.00 and will have a selection of organic wine and beer for sale. Please check Reykjavík’s page on www.greendrinks.org for details on future events.

The small hut at Grimsvotn, the waters of Grimur

Around 12.20 last night, the biggest glacier in Iceland and in Europe was awake for over twenty minutes: There was an earthquake of 4,3 on the scale of Richter near Grimsvotn in Vatnajökull, but that’s the biggest one in this glacier for 25 years. Specialists say that volcanic eruption could be ahead so be aware! This Grimsvotn-part of the glacier is the most active part, and eruptions there have over and over caused damages on bridges and roads, due to floods. Vatnajokull is the largest icefield in Europe, over 3200 square miles (8300 sq km) in area, and the travers on skis is a classic adventure, there are several possible traverse routes that all converge at a hut located on Grimsfjall, and there are several other huts around this area, all built by the association of glacier researchers of Iceland (web-page not in english)

Vatnajökull, the glacier in the south-east part of Iceland, soon to be a National Park.

Micro-Green Solutions to Sustainable Living, a Researcher’s Journey.

Robert Dell professor, from Cooper Union New York, will be giving an extraordinary exciting lecture on his work in Iceland and in New York, today at the VR-II building at the University area in Reykjavik, at. 14.00-15.00, Room 158

Professor Robert Dell, ASME, is the Director of the Laboratory for Energy
Reclamation and Innovation at The Cooper Union. His work as author and
Principal Investigator of 5 research grants from Consolidated Edison’s Steam
Heat Division helped enable the development of his working thermoelectric
generator to power control and monitoring systems in from New York City. The
heat energy comes directly from the surface of steam and hot water pipes and it
functions without any moving parts. (meira …)

An icelandic moss on a geyser-field; there are hundreds of different types of it, and how wonderful it would be if it could heal the economical wound as it covers and softens the most hostile lava!

In this brand new article by Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general and Al Gore, the former US vice-president, published in the Financial Times yesterday, they show step by step how investing in the green economy is not an optional expense, but a smart
investment for a more equitable, prosperous future. (meira …)