October 25, 2008 |
The village that disappeared (Two visions of Arcadia)
Thomas Cole's 1834 painting of Arcadia © Thomas Cole
January last year I travelled to a remote part of Greece called Arcadia. To the ancient Greeks Arcadia was a rural utopian idyll where rustics lazed happily in the countryside, in a land of plenty. Returning 5000 years later to the same region of Greece was quite a different experience. Instead of a bucolic green landscape, I found one devastated by the relentless hunt for fossil fuels. 60% of Greece's electricity is derived from lignite (brown coal). This involves stripping away whole landscapes – fields, villages, whatever, to get at the stuff to feed the nearby power station. What I found in Megalopolis was Greece's second largest lignite mine, where the village of Anthohori was simply wiped off the map by bulldozers digging ever further into the earth to feed coal to the fire.
Greece. Megalopolis. The Santa Maria church. The last building left in the village of Anthohori. Picture taken in 2007. © Stuart Franklin/Magnum Photos
All that remained when I got to village was the church of Santa Maria fifteen feet up on a pedestal of earth after the rest of the village was demolished. Why was it there? Because the mining teams were too superstitious to knock it down in case God's wrath enflamed them. God's wrath is an interesting concept when considering climate change and such matters. Before the 19th century (even today in some places) any severe storm or earthquake was blamed on God's anger at the people. Luckily science stepped in and recognized there may be other reasons for hurricanes – such as climate cycles maybe exacerbated by our own irresponsible use of fossil fuels. But not in time to save Arcadia...
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