The Island in the Wind Precis

by Elizabeth Kolbert
July 7, 2008
The New Yorker
URL: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/07/080707fa_fact_kolbert


The island in the Wind, written by Elizabeth Kolbert, gives a real solution to our climatic problems. A small island in Denmark has found ways to deal with climate change and their growing demand for electricity. Different solutions, such as biomass, solar and wind energies are used to power the whole island, which includes about 15 villages. The inhabitants of the island were first entered in a Danish contest to be the first island to function solely on recycled energy and clean energy. Since 1997, the island of Samsø has been producing its own electricity and even exporting it to the mainland. The emphasis is put on the fact that the island is a conservative community of farmers and that they are regular people concerned about the environment. One of the main points of the campaign was to act locally and to succeed locally. The inhabitants of the island believe that the project would be more difficult, if not impossible, in a bigger, more urban setting.
For years, the inhabitants of the Samsø island did not make any efforts to change their ways and improve their consumption of electricity, which came mainly from oil brought by tankers from the mainland. However, Samsø has managed to change its electricity production radically in less than a decade.
For instance, some farmers have installed miniature turbines in their backyards, producing usually more clean energy than needed for the household, but re-used to heat water in the winter. Some others heat their houses with solar heated water and straw burning furnaces. Many wind turbines have been installed on the coasts, which benefit from the ocean winds. Some turbines are also offshore, meaning that they are 'planted' in the sea and constantly work due to the wind which blows all the time.
As many farmers seemed to say to Mrs. Kolbert, the key to their success was that the island was small and the experiment was something the community was proud of. As whole, their main message is to "think locally, act locally".