Yoko Ono urges Japan to look at Iceland and utilize geothermal energy
The Imagine Peace Tower, memorial to John Lennon from his widow Yoko Ono, Videy Island, Iceland (source: flickr/ alf07 °,°, creative commons)
Alexander Richter
8 Aug 2011
Yoko Ono -artist and widow of John Lennon urges its native country of Japan to abandon nuclear energy for renewables and tap the geothermal energy, as Iceland does.
Reported by AFP the other day, Yoko Ono – artist and widow of John Lennon – reportedly urges its native country of Japan to “abandon nuclear energy for renewables and tap the geothermal energy beneath the unstable ground of the volcanic island nation.
The artist and widow of John Lennon is in Japan for the first time since the March 11 quake and tsunami sparked a nuclear crisis, and as the country remembers the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
With her new exhibition, “The Road of Hope”, she says she wants to stress that Japan, having rebuilt itself after World War II and the atomic bombings, can also emerge stronger from the quake and Fukushima radiation disaster.
Like a growing number of Japanese, Ono favours a shift toward renewable energy such as wind, solar and geothermal power, which she said she became familiar with in another tectonically unstable country, Iceland.
One of Ono’s projects is the Imagine Peace Tower near Iceland’s capital Reykjavik, a memorial to Lennon, who was gunned down outside their New York apartment in 1980.
The stone monument — which has the words “Imagine Peace” carved into it in 24 languages — sends a column of light far into the sky using electricity from Iceland’s geothermal energy grid.
Iceland produces over 80 percent of its energy from geothermal and hydro-power, and it uses the hot steam from the earth for 90 percent of indoor and water heating. The country aims to be fossil-fuel free by 2050. “I’ve been all for geothermal for a long time,” said Ono, 78.
Japan, Ono pointed out, is dotted with “onsen”, or hot spring baths, where steam billows out of the ground. She said that although geothermal energy would be only part of the solution, it would be a clean, safe and obvious option.
“Geothermal — you can just do it, it’s there,” she said. “I think it’s the safest. Japan has so many spas, it’s just made for it.”
“In Iceland in the 1930s they were using coal and the whole place was dirty… They started to not have the money to buy coal because of the depression, so then they discovered geothermal. In the 1930s!
“When I went there I realised the place is not only beautiful, but it’s also very much independent from the oil people, which is very good. I think all of us can do that really.”
Source: AFP via Google
