Regardless of which side of the political spectrum you spend your time on, climate change is a pressing matter. With COP15 coming up, everyone needs to be thinking about this issue. While the EU presses the U.S. for more leadership around the issues and the UN continue to hold summits and make teethless recommendations to everyone who isn’t really listening, a few countries are making bold moves and commitments that make the big countries look like the bloated, slow and problematic social forces they can be.

Cyprus, a small island country south of Europe and part of the EU, is unveiling what Reuters calls a “mammoth” wind park.

"It is a very big project. Normally in Europe - especially in Greece and Spain - they consider 20 to 30 MW a huge project, so 82 MW is a massive project. It is the biggest in the region," Akis Ellinas, chairman of D.K. Wind Supply Ltd.

It’s the first wind park on the island and it comes just weeks after the Dutch unveiled their own second wind park- both of which are gigantic: the two biggest in the world. To me, this is the kind of leadership that COP15 and the UN need. Not people talking about how important climate change measures are, not diplomats arguing about percentages, not time and energy spent figuring out how to profit out of carbon cap & trade measures- build the technology and get it running. Cyprus is doing just that- I haven’t heard a word from them in the press, they just showed up in the news opening this part. It is expected to be operational by 2010 and cost just under $300 million. That’s a huge number, but compared to the amounts we are spending on wars and fossil fuels, it’s a drop in the proverbial bucket.
The Maldives are going carbon neutral, Kiribati created the largest marine protected zone in the world, and now Cyprus is leading the way with renewable energy- island nations are doing the innovative, forward-thinking things we all need to see to make progress around the climate change issues.
The farm will create 10% of the island’s total energy generation capacity.

"It was very difficult because we faced governmental people who had no idea what energy or wind farms meant. Some people thought it was a monster, others, something from space," said Ellinas, the businessman who came up with and spearheaded the wind park project.

Cyprus doesn’t get a lot of wind compared to the rest of the world, but with new technologies they can make it happen- good news for them and an example to be followed by the rest of us.