One of the great joys of life—right up there with crushing my enemies, seeing them driven before me, and hearing the lamentations of their women—is watching various fanatical factions of the left attacking one another. Or watching a single faction tear itself to bits over its own internal contradictions.
So for once it was with great pleasure that I saw St. Greta of Stockholm make the news this week (EN).
In an interesting twist, the snarling darling with the dear little sneer was in Norway to campaign against a couple of the wind farms so important to our survival as a species.
That’s right: she wants them taken down.
The two wind farms in question occupy land traditionally used by Indigenous Sami reindeer herders in central Norway. Their 151 turbines can power some 100,000 Norwegian homes.
(Apparently we’re capitalizing the adjective “Indigenous” now: update your Newspeak stylebooks appropriately.)
Those turbines are powering 3-4% of all Norwegian homes with green energy. You might think that would count as a win for St. Greta and her apocalyptic cult, but you’d be very wrong.
Reindeer herders in the Nordic country say the sight and sound of the giant wind power machinery frighten their animals and disrupt age-old traditions.
“We are here to demand that the turbines must be torn down and that legal rights must be respected,” says Sami singer-songwriter, actress and activist Ella Marie Haetta Isaksen.
…
Standing in solidarity with them, Greta says, “I'm here to support the struggle for human rights and Indigenous rights. The Norwegian state is violating human rights and that is completely unacceptable.”
First off: how about that Ella Isaksen? A singer, a songwriter, an actress, and a leftwing activist!
This respect for tradition is admirable but also very narrowly defined: the Sami have a tradition of herding reindeer. Bully for them. But since when has the green moment concerned itself with tradition?
We’re constantly told we need to stop doing everything we’ve been doing to make way for the “green transition”—stop driving, stop flying, stop using incandescent lightbulbs, stop eating meat, stop buying new clothes, stop using gas stoves, stop using plastic.
So, by god, tell the Sami to stop herding reindeer.
Who says the reindeer need to be herded, anyway? Has the species evolved to the point where they would wither and die without human herding? If not, the Sami can find some other way to occupy their time. If so, who the hell are we to get in nature’s way?
I’m only following the same line of reasoning insisted upon by the Green Clerisy. If our planet is truly on the brink of destruction, then there won’t be any reindeer to herd anyway: just the charred ash of their remains mixed in with the charred ash of our own, blowing around on our lifeless black rock as it orbits the sun. So if a big green windfarm requires that reindeer and their herders be inconvenienced, well then, by jingo, let the inconveniencing begin!
The previous link was from earlier in the week, but it’s still in the headlines today (DK):
The activists are demonstrating against a wind farm on the Fosen peninsula in Trøndelag, a large part of which has been built illegally, because it violates the Sami's right to cultural practices, among other things by destroying grazing areas for the Sami's reindeer.
The Norwegian Supreme Court ruled as much in 2021, but the park is still standing, and the activists are angry that the wind turbines have not yet been demolished.
The Supreme Court judgment did not say anything about what should happen to the wind turbines, and the Norwegian Oil and Energy Minister, Terje Aasland, has not yet given a clear answer as to whether the park should be demolished.
According to Kristian Borch, associate professor in energy planning at Aalborg University and senior researcher at the Norwegian Institute for Rural and Regional Research, Ruralis, in Trondheim, the case is an example of how things can go wrong if citizens are not sufficiently involved in new green energy projects.
Citizens and reindeer.
It’s sort of a legal quagmire, see. Tricky stuff. But the Left Militant has no time for the rule of law.
Since Thursday, (the activists) have blocked several ministries and have been removed by the police on several occasions, but there is no indication that they intend to stop for the time being.
“Today we are escalating another couple of notches. We have said that we will shut down the state of Norway, ministry by ministry,” says activist Ella Marie Hætta Isaksen to NRK.
The Swedish climate activist (Saint) Greta Thunberg is also participating in the demonstrations.
“It has been 506 days since the Supreme Court ruled that the Norwegian state violates human rights,” she says to NRK.
That’s some damn fine counting for a high school dropout.
Problem is, the Sami authorized the project:
Before the construction of the wind farm at Fosen, the company Statkraft, which is owned by the Norwegian state, and the developer Fosen Vind entered into an agreement with four Sami families who live in the area and use it for grazing their reindeer.
The families received handsome financial compensation , and specific agreements were made on how the wind turbines were to be erected, so that the reindeer could still graze in the area.
Handsome financial compensation. Specific agreements. Reindeer still grazing. What went wrong?
…several of the key agreements have not been complied with, says Kristian Borch.
Among other things, some roads have been blasted into the mountain, which are difficult for the animals to pass because it has created passages with very steep cliff sides.
In addition, blasting has left sharp rocks that injure the animals when they step on them. Overall, this means that the area can no longer be used for reindeer grazing.
Difficult passages. Ouchy rocks.
That is why the four Sami families brought the case to the Supreme Court and were successful because the wind turbines threaten the Sami’s ability to cultivate their culture.
“First of all, the Sami are angry that the wind turbines threaten their culture and the opportunity to keep reindeer. Next, they are angry that an agreement has been made and then run away from,” says Kristian Borch.
They waived the right to complain about the wind turbines themselves when they got those “handsome compensation” packages from the Norwegian government, but of course if the agreement’s been violated—and if the Norwegian Supreme Court says it has been, then for all practical purposes it has been—then far be it for me to object to their anger.
And really I don’t. They were sold a bill of goods, they went along with it, they found out they’d been misled, and they got angry.
I think we can all relate.
However things turn for the Sami in this case, though, their woes have only just begun.
See, they’re not just herding reindeer: they’re also occupying land beneath which lies Europe’s biggest untapped reserve of rare earth minerals. Those are the minerals needed for building windmills and batteries for electric cars, among other Green things. Europe gets most of those minerals from Russia and China today, but the Sami lands could be a game-changer, making Europe rare-earth mineral independent.
And that could “make life impossible” (EN) for the Sámi. (Sami, Sámi: it depends what news source you’re reading.)
In January, Swedish state-owned mining company LKAB discovered more than 1 million tons of rare earth minerals in Kiruna, Sweden’s northernmost city.
These rare earth minerals are key components in everything from electric vehicle batteries to mobile phones to wind turbines. And the discovery of this deposit—just 30 kilometers from the Arctic circle—prompted a slew of celebratory headlines.
Many see the newly found resources as a way of ending Europe’s reliance on Russia and China for the rare earth minerals needed to fuel the green transition.
But it's a different story for the Indigenous Sámi population that lives near the site.
Local Sámi communities are already affected by an existing Kiruna iron ore mine—and fear the new deposit discovery will threaten their traditional migration routes.
In the words of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, sucks to be you, Sámi!
Seriously. I’m told by reliable sources that a continent of nearly half a billion people needs those minerals to wrench itself free of dependence on Russia and China and unshackle itself from dependence on fossil fuels. Are we supposed to put that on hold because (at most) 100,000 reindeer herders could have their “traditional migration routes” disrupted?
The Sámi represent less than one quarter of one tenth of one percent of the European Union’s population—0.0224%.
So cry me a river, reindeer herders. If I can’t get a goddam straw at McDonalds, you can bloody well figure out a new route for your reindeer.
And why aren’t the harpies of the left telling these people to Learn to code? Isn’t that the standard answer to the complaints of people losing their livelihoods as part of the Great and Wonderful Transition?
Why, yes. Yes it is. But only to boring people like you and me. Indigenous people are special because mumble mumble reasons. We must change; they have to stay the same.
All of this just goes to show that everything is about economics: the allocation of scarce resources that have alternative uses. The Sami land is a scarce resource that can be used to herd reindeer, to be covered in wind farms, or to be disemboweled for minerals. It cannot be used for all three. The allocation of that resource therefore requires an economic decision.
I doubt that’s going to turn out well, however, because as we’ve seen repeatedly, our governing class is economically illiterate. Not because they don’t understand money, but because they don’t understand trade-offs.
Or maybe they understand them but prefer to ignore them.
You can’t pump more money into a system without creating inflation.
You can’t confine people to their homes for months at a stretch without causing social and personal harm.
You can’t force an experimental medicine on people without unforeseeable consequences.
You can argue that the trade-offs in those three examples were justifiable; some people do. But you can’t argue that they aren’t trade-offs and yet that’s precisely what most people did. Not only that, but they mocked the people that warned of the trade-offs.
I’ve got no grudge against the Sami or reindeer, and I think the Green Transition is just cover for a good old Marxist power grab, but I think we’ll learn a lot about the sincerity of the Green Extremists from whatever fate ultimately befalls the Sami.
Because whether or not we let them play their reindeer games, they’ll go down in history.