Content
Dreamland is Andri Snaer Magnason's critique against the current decision taken by the Icelandic government to build out Iceland's rivers in order to produce energy that can be delivered to aluminium factories. Magnason describes how Iceland's government actively have pursued the idea to attract foreign aluminium companies to Iceland with the promise of the "cheapest energy in the world". The government advertisement described Iceland's energy potential as 30 TWh/year. Magnason argues in the book that in order to accomplish this, the majority of Iceland's rivers would need to be exploited, with the consequence that some of Iceland's most known waterfalls such as Dettifoss which is Europe's most powerful waterfall, and Gullfoss which together with Thingvellir and Geyser makes up the golden circle.
It is set up as a series of thoughts on issues in modern Iceland and the past Iceland and deals heavily with the Kárahnjúkar Hydropower Project and other similar works being done. It was the best sold book in Iceland in 2006 and raised Icelanders' interest in environmentalism by a large amount. In the book the Icelandic nation is encouraged to look to more "futuristic" types of business than aluminium processing and to stop believing that they can't do anything for themselves.
Read more about this topic: Dreamland: A Self-Help Manual For A Frightened Nation
Famous quotes containing the word content:
“I were content to wearie out my paine,
To bee Narsissus so she were a spring
To drowne in hir those woes my heart do wring:
And more I wish transformed to remaine:
That whilest I thus in pleasures lappe did lye,
I might refresh desire, which else would die.”
—Thomas Lodge (1558?–1625)
“In most modern instances, interpretation amounts to the philistine refusal to leave the work of art alone. Real art has the capacity to make us nervous. By reducing the work of art to its content and then interpreting that, one tames the work of art. Interpretation makes art manageable, conformable.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“Women are angels, wooing;
Things won are done, joy’s soul lies in the doing.
That she beloved knows naught that knows not this:
Men prize the thing ungained more than it is.
That she was never yet that ever knew
Love got so sweet as when desire did sue.
Therefore this maxim out of love I teach:
Achievement is command; ungained, beseech.
Then though my heart’s content firm love doth bear,
Nothing of that shall from mine eyes appear.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)