Leaves caution behind

Yesterday, the Guardian published a story describing how Jim Hansen, the renowned NASA climate scientist, has called on President-almost-post-elect Obama to take decisive action on climate change in the next four years, arguing that we have almost run out of time.

“We cannot afford to put off change any longer,” said Hansen. “We have to get on a new path within this new administration. We have only four years left for Obama to set an example to the rest of the world. America must take the lead.”

Hansen said current carbon levels in the atmosphere were already too high to prevent runaway greenhouse warming.* Yet the levels are still rising despite all the efforts of politicians and scientists.

A friend has noted that an overwhelming number of the commented responses to the Guardian article deny the existence of climate change, and wonders if the apparently high number of sceptics is reason for those of us who believe urgent action is necessary, to despair. But are there really that many climate sceptics out there?

What do you think? Are climate change denialists just a very noisy minority, or are opinion-leaders seriously out of touch with the feelings of ordinary people on this issue?

UPDATE Tuesday 20 Jan: My goodness, this post has been an interesting experiment. Looking at my stats, 90% of the clickthroughs arriving here have come from what we might call a, um, distinctly climate change sceptical website. Apologies, everyone, btw, I’m going to be offline till Sunday, so won’t be able approve comments till then.

* Runaway global warming refers to secondary warming processes set in play by the primary process of carbon dioxide accumulation in the atmosphere. For example, higher temperatures can increase the number of forest fires, which in turn pour more CO2 into the atmosphere. Another example: the permafrost in the Arctic Circle is beginning to thaw, releasing locked-away CO2 and methane, which is a greenhouse (warming) gas many times more potent than CO2 itself.

Last week, I was standing on my outside deck, enjoying the valley. A small bug alighted on me, and I was pretty sure it was a firefly as I’d recently managed to capture one on video. I thought it might interest a friend who was coming to dinner that evening, and I went inside to find an empty plastic yoghurt tub in which to keep it till she arrived that night.

But when it came to actually sealing the tub, I couldn’t quite bring myself to do it. I imagined this small creature with a short life going around and around in circles on the smooth plastic, forced to breathe the subtle fumes that most plastics emit (you can smell them; you’d smell nothing if they were not there). I feared I might that evening open the tub and find a dead firefly.

I released it again. Read the rest of this entry »

A solar thermal plant being developed in Seville, Spain, will produce 300MW of power at a projected cost of E1,200bn, or R11,6 billion. That’s an installed cost of R4-billion per 100MW. A prototype 11MW plant is already up and running; it’s almost a thing of beauty – take a look here or here. (The rays you see in the atmosphere have not been added to the photograph – they’re not illustrated but real, created by the intense illumination of the solar array hitting atmospheric dust and moisture.)

Eskom’s (our parastatal national electricity provider) prototype Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR) is likely to cost R25 billion. The projected output is 120MW. By my admittedly rough calculations, that makes the cost of building the PMBR approximately FIVE times more expensive than solar thermal. Even using the figures Eskom prefers to use, which are of course far lower than R25-billion, the PBMR remains much expensive than solar thermal. (The PBMR has also been judged an economic non-starter for South Africa, by PriceWaterhouseCoopers, according to documents Eskom accidentally sent to Earthlife Africa.) Read the rest of this entry »

On a slightly lighter note than recent circumstances have permitted:–

Oh simple cylinder:
You have not changed; you are constant,

you are the brown paper bulwark I have always known;
unstamped, unnamed, unmottled;
you do not come in a fresh multitude of seasonal colours;
you have not been plasticised, imbued with essence of potpourri, lavender
or 16 other fresh new fragrances that will have my friends
wondering how they slipped behind in the racing cargo cult;
you do not offer coy shelter to special offers or once-in-a-lifetime opportunities
to scorch the planet in flight to ever more indistinguishable destinations.
Without fanfare or hesitation or hope of recognition,
you simply give invisible and unfailing support,
as do all the world’s real heroes.
Unwrapped and shredded on soil, you do not fight death
but yield perfectly to oblivion — or kindergarten craft.
You are neither new nor improved, your humility has not yet been torn
from you by the greed of others;
you are, without pretence, just perfect.

[this doesn't really work as a poem as the humour is trampled by earnestness, so it's posted as socioeconomic commentary!]

I’ve just visited Namibia, and really enjoyed the experience, despite mild official harassment for being a journalist. I had a very strong sense of it being a smoothly functioning nation, which is particularly notable for its being lodged in Africa, and having recently been prone to serious attempts at plunder and depredation by Germany and South Africa.

The capital, Windhoek, is neat and clean, far cleaner than many European cities.

Then I stumbled on this article in the New York Times, which tells us San Marino (pop. 30 000) has only one prisoner, giving it the world’s lowest incarceration rate.

The Guardian publishes a wonderful article on Iceland, which in turn sounds like a remarkable place: happy people, well-developed health system, successful movement away from oil-based energy to renewable energy over the last 50 years, no standing army for the last seven hundred years.

What about Costa Rica, which has, like Iceland, abandoned a standing army, and resolutely resists exploitation of its oil resources, avoiding the dismal fate of other petrocracies?

Clearly, small states work very well. When society is so closely knit that citizens and politicians work practically alongside each other, it’s difficult for the former to feel too awed, or the latter to feel too self-important. Namibian politicians were, in my brief experience, remarkably self-deprecating, commenting on the tedium of their own speeches, and addressing (with merciful brevity), a conference dinner gathering with words along the lines of, “Ladies and gentlemen, ambassadors, and everyone who’s been elected.”

The same proximity makes for administrative efficiency. Walking into Namibian Home Affairs, one discovers that the minister’s office is in the same drab corridor as the clerks who issue visas. No South African minister would deign to share such modest accommodation. (Though, it must be admitted, the Namibian government has recently constructed a large new official residence for the president, State House, a vulgar monstrosity on a Windhoek hilltop – which the president is rumoured to be reluctant to actually occupy.)

That’s what we need, a world of small, happy states, flying under the radar. Let’s tear down the borders and throw up thin fences, and celebrate the micro-state. After all, small states are what democracy was “designed” for.

So just who do you or I, typical South African drivers, give several hundred rands to each month? Well, Engen and Total are linked to human rights abuses in Burma, likewise Caltex/Chevron with additional interests in dodging climate change issues. In 1990, while it was placing ads in the then Weekly Mail & Guardian extolling the virtues of human rights and democracy, Shell had its very own, apparently forgotten Sharpeville, in Nigeria; there it continues to do huge environmental damage. BP (which may be the least of all evils) has been linked to military repression in Colombia. Overall, it’s really not a very pretty picture. I wonder how many of us give as much money to worthy causes as we do these companies? (I know I haven’t.)

Caltex is owned by the US oil company Chevron. “Our lives demand oil,” Chevron says in a recently launched ad campaign. Like most oil companies, Chevron is putting out lots of lovely-sounding statements about climate change. But Chevron opposes the Kyoto Protocols and is resisting attempts by some of its shareholders to get it to “Adopt Goals and Report on Greenhouse Gas Emissions”. Read the rest of this entry »

This was a ride from the dry, dusty, polluted brittle interior of South Africa in early spring to the blue and liquid Cape – a train ride from Johannesburg to Cape Town. It’s been 16 years, I think, since I did this trip. That last time, I was in uniform. This time round, I scored lots of space – Schalk, the train driver with whom I was first lined up for sharing a compartment wangled us both coupes for ourselves. I slept very well in the railways bedding (R35), my head in the Karoo moonlight.

Though it’s now callled the Shosholoza Meyl, this is pretty much the same old Trans-Karoo train of yore, dressed up in a new but now somewhat tatty colour scheme. It’s marketed using the very under-stated slogan, “A pleasant experience” – which is just as well, really, because one’s experience probably could vary somewhat depending on how many people one has to share with. Though they do seem to not book up every last berth, there’s no telling before you get on the train whether you’ll be sharing with one, three or potentially even five other people. Nor is there any way to choose. Which is rather unfair really. But choice is obviously not included in the R320 (£20, $40) ticket.

Booking is a schlep – a ticket reserved by phone has to be physically collected from the station several days before the departure date.

The food is pretty much unchanged from the 1970s. Burgers, fried fish, bacon and eggs. And extremely inexpensive. You’ll dine quite comfortably for R50. I suspect they don’t take credit cards.

The train departs Cape Town or Johannesburg three times a week, and takes between 26 and 30 hours, depending on delays, to get you across the country.

The toilets – oh dear. Not dirty. But rudimentary. Straight out onto the tracks, and no seats. Pity the poor bastards who have to work on the lines.

Yet despite the shortcomings, there was something deeply refreshing about taking this train. In a country now obsessed with immaculate presentation of expensive goods and services, the Shosholoza Meyl just is the way it is. And everytime I felt myself tempted to gripe, the sheer joy of unrushed and spectacular travel shut me up. It was a pleasure being amongst my fellow travellers, happily companionable ordinary South Africans of all hues, with a sprinkling of foreign tourists.

I travelled this way because it was (I hope) lower in carbon costs than flying, allowed more baggage, was most inexpensive, and just good going slowly – and I’ll do it again.

Another advantage was sheer convenience – getting to Johannesburg’s Park Station is much less painful than the haul out to OR Tambo International – and on arrival in Cape Town, I simply got onto another Metro train out to Fish Hoek, from where I might even have walked the last kilometre to my Clovelly mountainside, had not a kind friend collected me and my 40kgs of baggage.

Buying fish in Europe can contribute to other people starving, drowning or ending up in prison.

The connections and lines of cause and effect established by globalisation can be either fortunate or unfortunate. We do not often enough ask ourselves: what are the connections between western consumer lifestyles and environmental exploitation, economic failure and hunger (in countries which we like to assume are just screwing up because they happen to be African), economic migration; intolerance; and imprisonment and human rights abuse?

Stumbling into a press photo exhibition in London ten days ago, while writing about the plundering of the seas, has helped me join some dots in one area; fishing and African-European migration.

According to the WWF, fish supplies a huge portion of food for West African countries, up to 75% in the case of Senegal:

By depleting marine resources, EU and other foreign fleets are already threatening food security in the region. Guinea, for example, already has a problem feeding its people. The country has a specific objective to improve food security by increasing the fish consumption of the population. But the main obstacle preventing this is IUU fishing, primarily shrimp trawling for European markets.

In Guinea-Bissau, the government requested that instead of throwing away locally consumed species caught as bycatch, EU fleets instead land the fish for local consumption. The EU rejected the request as to do so would take too much time.

In Senegal, depleted fish stocks caused by foreign fleets and foreign demand have had a serious impact on local food supplies. According to one Senegalese NGO, it now takes local fishermen a month to catch the same amount of fish that could once be caught in just four days.

So what happens to the people whose livelihoods are – directly or indirectly –affected this way? Well, it appears that at least some of them become economic migrants. They want to go somewhere where they can be sure to eat themselves, and from where they can, hopefully, send money back to those they have left behind. They get into small boats, and head out to sea. Many are lost there, dying in unknown numbers. Some find land, though, hitting the Canary Islands, a Spanish possession in the Atlantic, a few hundred kilometres west of the coast of Morocco and Western Sahara.

For a snapshot on this vast human tragedy, have a look at this gallery of pictures, by Arturo Rodrigues, part of the World Press Photo exhibition, which I saw last Friday at the South Bank Centre in London. Showing migrants on the brink of death landing on a beach amidst tourists, they are extraordinary photographs: shocking for the state of the refugees, striking for the contrasts between the refugees and the tourists (many of whom have probably eaten the fish that might once have been eaten by the refugees); heartening for the clear display of compassion by those on the beach caring for the desperate people who have just washed up; fascinating for embodying the injustice and complexity of the collision between global haves and have-nots.

So how many people are landing up in the Canaries? Tens of thousands. I can’t find up-to-date figures, but for 2006, by September, 23,000 migrants from Africa had landed there, according to a Deutsche Presse-Agentur report.

The DPA report, however, makes no mention of the forces driving the migrants to undertake such desperate and dangerous journeys. Spain has accommodated many of them, but is now beginning forced repatriations. The Europeans have stepped up patrols, stopping many of the refugees en route, and bringing down the flow of refugees by 60%. One shudders to imagine what scenes may be unfolding at sea, far from the eyes of the world.

Not content with turning back the refugees, Spain has put pressure on Senegal to stop the flow of refugees at source. Senegal has now adopted a policy of charging and imprisoning refugees.

How might one summarise this situation? “We’re taking your food because we can and raping the oceans into a state of plundered devastation in the process, but don’t expect us to provide jobs or accommodation when you turn up starving on our doorsteps. Go away, or expect to be thrown into jail for being poor and desperate.”

The Europeans, of course, like to distinguish between “bona fide, political” migrants “fleeing persecution”, and “economic migrants”.

“When you’re being politically persecuted by your own countrymen, we’ll let you in, because it makes us feel virtuous, but when we’re persecuting you economically, just stay away: we owe you nothing. We really, really don’t like being reminded that we’re stealing your fish.”

Paella, anyone?

You can do something! Buy fish differently. Only buy fish which is marked with the symbol of the globally recognised Marine Stewardship Council, used across Europe and in South Africa. When you buy in restaurants or outlets, ask whether what you’re being served is sustainably fished. If you’re South African, text/sms 0794998795 with a query in the format “tuna?” or “red roman?” to find out the status of particular fish.

(Creative Commons pic of Senegalese fishermen by Tagon)

I’ve just spent a couple of days in Aldeburgh, Suffolk, where family friends live. One of them, James FitzGerald, runs Light Electric Vehicles, which sells, among other things, several models of electric bicycles.

I tried out one of these, the Dutch-made Sparta Ion M-Gear Low-Step, last night; and was very impressed. One of their brochures refers to these bikes giving one “bionic powers”; which is a rather good description of how it feels. Another way of capturing the experience is imagining that gravity has somehow been diminished, and cycling just takes a whole lot less effort than you might expect. For these bikes do not have accelerators, or anything like that: if you do not pedal, they do not move. But when you do pedal, the bike does much of the work.

I followed James to his home, cycling cross-country from Aldeburgh to Thorpeness, where we had dinner. Then I cycled back by myself in the dark, following the same route: the line of a former railway track, long dismantled in this weird country that has spurned and trashed a working public transport system in favour of a belated love affair with vast numbers of private cars for which they really do not have the room; and which have considerably reduced the quality of their environment.

The Sparta has a range of 25 miles with a standard battery pack, a pannier battery can extend it to 50 miles. It re-charges in just an hour and a half – about as long as it would take to have a good leisurely lunch, which is of course the only kind one should have. It solves one of the great problems with standard bicycle commuting, which is that one frequently ends up being so hot and sweaty on arrival that one craves a shower – a facility which is rarely easily available. Light Electric Vehicles are working to sell these bikes to companies as fleets, and are developing solar-powered bike sheds for re-charging. The solar panel area required to effectively re-charge a bicycle in this clime and latitude is approximately 0.8 square metres, conveniently, about the same area required to cover effectively cover the bike.

James’ father-in-law, who is nearly 80, has another model of electric bike, the Chinese-made Swift, which I tried out two days later. The Swift, selling at £689, is considerably less-expensive than the Ion (£1429). It certainly feels far more like a conventional bike with a motor than the Ion, and less solidly engineered. The range is only 15 miles, to the Ion’s 25. But the Swift definitely has a few points going for it, besides price. Some feel the Swift’s power-assist is less subtle than in the Ion; I didn’t notice much of a difference myself, and can imagine that some people might well enjoy the sense of “surge’”.

A key difference is that the battery on the Swift is removable. Where I live in Cape Town, 100m along a mountain path up from the nearest road, being able to just take up a battery for charging, rather than having to get the whole bike to a power point, would be a considerable advantage.

The Swift has a double-kickstand, rather than the Ion’s side kick-stand.

Though the Swift did feel a bit more flimsy than the Ion, I enjoyed riding it as much as the Dutch machine.

The bicycle is, unpowered, the most efficient form of transportation human beings have ever developed. Electrically (and solar) powered, it becomes practical over greater ranges, for more people (including the elderly), and over a wider range of terrain, making bicycle transport potentially less daunting for those living in hilly areas. It retains all the humanity of cycling – not being hermetically sealed by speed and capsule from one’s human and physical environment. It’s a form of transportation that deserves very heavy promotion by those who are serious about reducing climate change.

The only – somewhat massive – problem: the Sparta at present costs £1429 – or R20 000 – making it, for South Africans at any rate, only slightly less expensive than a new car, and a lot more expensive than many faster, more powerful petrol scooters and motorbikes. It’s probably not for those who wish to rush about, though in many cities it would be far quicker than other modes of transport. So, let’s rather go slowly, looking forward to a time when electric bikes are within reach of all our pockets.

So what’s available in South Africa? Ezee SA advertise the British-designed Ezee Torq, which they describe as the “best electric bike” on the basis of it twice winning an event called the Tour de Presteigne, the UK’s first electric bike rally held in the Welsh town of Presteigne.

The Torq has a range of 50-60km, and is advertised at R12 974. I suspect I will be looking very seriously at a Torq, before getting a new car to replace my faithful but elderly Opel Kadett Cub.