Sunsetting the past

What our view into a sunset has looked like, and what it could look like

Over the holidays we got to spend some magical time with family and dear old friends up and down the coast in Southern California (luckily we escaped before the Atmospheric Rivers wreaked their damage.

One image of the many that we took has not left my mind:

The stunning sunset off a beach in Santa Barbara with my close family and one of my closest friends in tow… it should indeed make for a lasting memory.

But what has stuck in my mind for the past days was not the sunset but that obnoxious structure in the middle of the image… the oil rig:

One of the most iconic (and affluent) coastal towns on the West Coast is literally sorrounded by oil and gas rigs.

Apparently residents have been fighting their own NIMBY challenge since the late 1960s and ten of them are to be decomissions… in the next ten years for a cost of at least $1.6bn. Once such expensive infrastructure is in, it turns out it’s really hard to remove.

Our world will not switch away from oil and gas anytime soon. That is a fact. But the brazen mental image of us taking in the majestic glory of the sunset and the waves interrupted by the eyesore was just too jarring.

Especially when compared to the view I have out of the window every time I visit our offices in Copenhagen:

Here’s a closer look at the Middlegrunden wind farm as you land into CPH

One will never directly replace the other… but given the option I know which view inspires and which view depresses me… neither have to be visible from land, they just both happen to be.

Sorry Santa Barbara, you had me with the beaches, the people, the sun (apparently the Suxesses too)…you lost me at the Hondo, Holly, A, B and C…