Your Sunday Evening Awesome Vegetarian Post for today (the first two have been Ted Leo and Ian MacKaye) comes to us all the way from Iceland in the form of Jonsi Birgisson, better known as the lead singer of Sigur Rós.

Sigur Rós has become more and more a household name, which is pretty impressive for a band from Iceland that sings mostly in a made-up language (they call it “Hopelandic”). Also, they do things like name an album ( ) and don’t title their tracks all the time. Here is Untitled Track #8 from the album ( ). There’s no video, but listen to the full thing and be blown away.

If you got through all of that, you know how gorgeous the music is.

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Geothermal power is experiencing a boom in Germany thanks to forward-thinking legislation there.   The new law has made it financially feasible to drill wells deep enough to hit the high temperature water in the earth’s crust necessary for this clean energy source.  

In 2004 less than 0.4% of Germany’s electricity supply came from geothermal energy.   But after a renewable energy law that went into effect that year set prices at .15 Euro/kilowatt hour a construction boom was set off from which several new power plants are beginning to come online.

Geothermal electricity production has the advantage of being available all day, every day in the locations where drilling for it is feasible.   In volcanic locations like Iceland the technology is already used extensively due to the closeness of heated pools of water to the earth’s surface and subsequent ease of accessibility.  

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Some Iceland News for you - a magnitude 6.1 earthquake shook the town of Selfoss Iceland, about 30 miles east of the capital Reykjavik Iceland. As of writing this no one had been reported killed, but there were plenty of injuries and material loss. The most harrowing story came from a hospital in Selfoss near the epicenter where a hospital was damaged and in danger of collapsing. Patients were being evacuated.

It’s been an extremely difficult month for rescue workers and foreign aid organizations due to the plethora of natural disasters. The disasters are even coming in opposition now - an earthquake in Iceland near the poles and Tropical Storm Alma forming on the same day. Click here to learn more about Icelandic Red Cross (which does good work around the world, not just domestically), or check out our previous posts below to find out how you can help in this global time of need:

• Cyclone in Myanmar: Top 10 Ways to Help
• Nicole Richie & Joel Madden Support UNICEF Myanmar Relief Efforts
• 60 Pandas Survive China Quake
  
• Earthquake Devastates China

The Rolling Exhibition is not your typical photography exhibit. Then again, Kevin Connolly is not your typical photographer. Connolly was born in Montana 1985, a healthy baby, but without legs. As a teenager he got into scateboarding and taking pictures. Last year while traveling abroad, tired of the way people stared at him because he has no legs, Connolly started staring back, through his camera: “I wanted to stare back at that guy, to let him know that, ‘Yeah, I catch you looking,’” he says. “And the way I did that was with my camera.” Combining his love of photography and his scateboard, which he prefers over his wheelchair which he rarely uses, Kevin embarked on an adventure, travelling to 15 countries in three months, from New Zealand to Japan, through Europe, Iceland, and then through America back to Montana. Always shooting from the hip, he would start his days heading away from the sun, shooting people as he rolled through cities and villages. By going to so many different countries, Connolly discovered how, on some level, we are really the same:

The thing I just loved was you had an executive-looking type guy in say New York City, someone who’s clearly wealthy enough to afford a very nice suit and a good cell phone, staring at you in the exact same way that a beggar in Ukraine would.

32,000 photos, 15 Countries, 31 Cities, and 32,000 photos later, Connolly discovered “One stare” captured on his online exhibit TheRollingExhibition.com. Connolly explains in his artist statement

1 year ago I was asked by a little boy in Christchurch, New Zealand if I had been eaten by a shark.

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By Kerry Trueman

You’d think a chilly-sounding place like Iceland would burn through its share of the world’s oil, but in fact, this North Atlantic island is so rich in renewable energy that it hardly uses fossil fuels at all.

Instead, Iceland harnesses the energy generated by its many active volcanoes, by drilling and capturing “the blistering hot steam as it shoots up from underground,” as NPR’s Richard Harris reported Monday on All Things Considered.

Harris noted that a new series of steam wells currently being drilled will eventually produce 100 to 200 megawatts of energy” enough for 200,000 households. The only catch? The entire island of Iceland doesn’t have that many households.

Whether Iceland will entice industries from other countries to set up shop there to take advantage of the island’s surplus steam remains to be seen, but one thing’s clear; Iceland’s abundance of geothermal energy has blasted it to the top when it comes to relying on renewable energy.