To make it clear, I never bashed Iceland. They're meeting their needs with great ingenuity, but their needs aren't our needs, and their answers can't be expanded to become our answers.

Iceland is facing tough decisions trying to provide employment and wealth to their nation without wrecking it. The aluminum industry figures prominently. I read about this a short time ago in my National Geographic (the article is copied here) and describes the environmentalist take on it.

Alcoa's take on it is here.

It would be easy for Iceland to remain some fishing backwater, but they're trying to walk that tightrope for the benefit of their citizens.

Making aluminum requires immense amounts of electrical power. In the American Northwest, the damming of a major river system years ago created a huge aluminum industry in Washington state which, like the one in Iceland, was largely emission-free and renewable. We can't do anything like that any more. Major industrial projects are pretty much historical subjects in the United States.

The problem with the modern environmental movement is that it used to be about "clean industry," and has devolved into "no industry."