Why These reindeer herders are getting red-faced at plans for a green-power line

Calling Rudolph! The red-nosed reindeer, that is.

Yes, Rudy, it turns out that some of your cousins (well, actually their herders) are trying to block a power line that is critical to help a nation reach its green goals.

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The country in question is Norway and dispute is over a 34-mile transmission line — carried by conventional metal towers — that would supply clean electricity to Western Europe’s largest liquified natural gas plant in Hammerfest, near the northernmost tip of the nation’s mainland. With this clean power supply, the installation would not have to run five emissions-spewing turbines to provide its power. Overall, according to Reuters , the facility, which is run by Norway’s state-owned oil giant, Equinor, generates 850,000 metric tons of CO2 per year, or 2% of the nation’s annual greenhouse gases.

And the line is due to run through part of the Finnmark plateau, which has been used by the indigenous Sami people since time immemorial to graze their herds of reindeer and has already, they say, already been much encroached upon by towns, cabins, roads, existing power lines and other infrastructure.

“We cannot afford to lose more summer pastures,” Nils Mathis Sara , whose herds graze between May and October in the area where the line is due to be built this summer, told the outlet. And, said another herder, Johan Isak Eira , “It is idiotic we are going to destroy nature for the climate.”

At first glance, it may seem that the elevated power lines would be no impediment to the animals. But the herders disagree, with Eira saying that “Reindeer avoid the area where power lines are built. You can make them pass under, but they won’t stay there,” herder Eira said. “The structures make them afraid and they don’t like the sound they make.”

Well, at least they don’t have to listen to “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” every holiday season.