In the new language created by our increased environmental consciousness there are two phrases which are particularly warm and cosy. One is “Beyond Petroleum”. How reassuring that little green sun (or is it a sunflower) emblem is. Sadly, the only significant way in which BP have moved beyond petroleum since rebranding is that they have expanded their interests in Natural Gas, which is a slightly cleaner energy source than crude oil products, but still a fossil fuel, so still involves taking carbon atoms out of the ground after they’ve comfortably rested there for millennia and adding them to our atmosphere and oceans, where they can’t fail to have an impact on our climate. In fairness BP are no worse than the other big oil companies, but they are the only ones with a green logo and windmill on their filling stations which it turns out in some cases are not even hooked up and purely cosmetic!
The other insidious oxymoron designed to generate that warm everything-will-be-ok feeling is “Clean Coal”. A technology which turns coal into a collection of hydrocarbon gasses before burning it. It’s a cleaner, more efficient use of coal, but no measure of efficiency can escape the fact that this is the worst of the fossil fuels, the use of which is one of the best mechanism for taking carbon safely locked away underground and sticking it in the air to warm up in the sun.
Clean coal is often cited along with the phrase Carbon Capture and Storage (CC&S). CC&S involves putting carbon filters on the chimney stacks of coal fired power station, or using bacteria to absorb the carbon. The language makes it sound like the perfect solution; you catch the carbon and then store it. Why didn’t we think of this before? Problem solved. Except capturing CO2 gas into a solid filter is very difficult and makes the powerplants less efficient, so they have to burn more coal. And even then, the capture part is a doddle compared with the storage part. The filters are volumetrically hugely inefficient so the CO2 they do catch takes up lots of space. The bacteria that absorb the carbon quickly die and then decompose releasing their carbon atoms into the atmosphere in the form of methane and CO2, so the storage needs to lock their dead bacteria bodies and filters away forever. The gigatonnes of carbon atoms extracted from the ground in coal, petroleum and natural gas each year would need to be returned to the ground in a way that couldn’t find a route back to the surface. That would take a lot of unfeasibly large holes and a load of energy to dig them. Putting it back in the holes it came from is a lovely idea but not feasible for a host of reasons; you can’t put a solid back down a gas pipe for instance, it takes up more space afterwards than it did before, and you’d have to cover quarries with a concrete cap that would last 1000’s of years without cracking. Can you imagine the builders guarantee on that patio?
“Carbon Credits” is another cuddly positive sounding term. Companies emitting CO2 get taxed on the amount they produce in a bid to discourage them. It creates a “Carbon Market” the theory goes, where pollution can be traded like debt. The market forces (also know in Marxist circles as ‘the law of the jungle’) are left to sort out the problem. But as always the raw natural forces of the market are only as good as the rules which manipulate them. The “Cap and Trade” scheme of carbon credits introduced in the US was so unpopular with industry that it’s been watered down, some say, to the point where it has become a toothless disincentive.
Cap and Trade systems allow you to pay off some poor third world farmers to work harder in a way that emits less CO2 while you continue to churn out your existing levels of pollution. In the meantime the poor farmers will take your money and if they have any sense at all continue to do what they were doing before, because no one is policing these offset schemes, especially in countries rife with corruption.
So how about this term I’ve made up; “Extraction Tax”. Sadly it’s not very lovely and soft, it’s harsh with two x’s and lots of hard t’s that jar as they come out of your mouth. The problem of greenhouse gasses starts when carbon atoms are lifted out of the ground. That’s when they become a liability that someone is going to have to deal with (or ignore and vent along an exhaust pipe). It’s like pointing the blame at the person in the room that farts. In the end we all breathe it in, but it’s the farter who should apologise. I appreciate this is a crap analogy (excuse the equally crap pun) but I can’t seem to write a blog post without some toilet talk and this was the only way I could think to insert it here.
The Oil & Gas and mining companies would carry the burden of paying it based on the number of carbon atoms they pulled out of the ground. No one likes the Oil & Gas or mining companies so it would be hugely popular with the public, and compared with the unaccountability of the capped and traded 3rd world farmer it would be easier to manage because there are only a few oil majors and OPEC countries in the cartel. In practice they’d pass the tax on to energy consumers, you and me, who would pay a more realistic price for the energy we use, reflecting its environmental impact.
But how could you get the world to agree implement such a tax universally? Well of course you can’t. But perhaps you wouldn’t need to. It might be enough if you had just one country that turned to all the oil companies and OPEC and said if you want to sell any of your fossil fuel energy here we are going to tax you for all the carbon you’re pulling out of the ground around the world, even if it’s not mined or used in this country. Like a license to trade with a fee that’s based on the size of the business. Of course it would have to be a country with a massive consumption or the oil majors and OPEC would just boycott it. A global superpower, a world leader, a country headed by someone who cares about the environment, the planet’s policeman. Yes, that’s right, China.
In practice the Chinese (and the US) are desperately looking for energy from wherever they can find it, and the last thing they are about to do is start taxing their own imports of the stuff. But globally, no one could afford for China to shut down its industry if OPEC called their bluff, and ironically so dependent is the rest of the world on China that we would probably have more to lose by China shutting down than the Chinese would, so this threat could be used to leverage other countries to come onboard with the Extraction Tax. Then, Western politicians could finally implement a harsh, costly effective green tax they always dreamed of, and blame it’s unpopular consequences on those bloody Chinese.
I can’t for a minute honestly imagine this would happen, but it’s been a peculiar week on the geopolitical stage; A communist country accurately pointed out to the capitalist ‘Free (Market) World’ that its currency is worth nothing and it doesn’t know how to manage it, which is surely a moment as significant in world events as the fall of the Berlin wall. Up-Perestroika, and raise your Glasnost! Twenty one years later and it turns out Communism won after all. China now owns America, it’s got all their money, and it’s going to be using it to buy all the energy that none of us will be able to afford in the future. It’s also suffering from largely unreported flooding on a massive scale caused by freak weather patterns that have hit all over Asia from Pakistan to Thailand. So I’m going to enjoy that the fantasy for a while that its leaders will put two and two together and play a poker hand that will make us all pay for the true cost of our energy.
Showing posts with label Global Climate. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Global Climate. Show all posts
Sunday, 21 November 2010
Sunday, 17 October 2010
And Another Thing II
If you think of the “environment” or let’s take a more specific example, the atmosphere, as a space in which we can store our pollution, the by-products of our consumption, then it’s easy to imagine it as a resource. Like a resource it's finite, keep putting things into the space and one day it will be full.
During this journey from the wealthiest countries in the world (UK, France, Switzerland), to the poorest (Nepal, India), I’ve become more convinced that the way we exploit our environment is just another facet of the global social injustice that has dogged the way this planet is governed since colonial times.
For over a century, richer countries have exploited the earth’s resources, providing a comfortable quality of life for their citizens at a disproportionate cost to the citizens of poorer countries. The exploitation of energy, oil, coal, mineral resources, timber, food crops, cotton, and more, has on the whole benefited the wealthy foreigners exploiting the commodity more than the country whose soil yields it.
So it is with the pollution-storing-environment resource. The beneficiaries who are fully exploiting this resource are the highly consumptive rich nations, who need a lot of rivers, sea, landfills and atmosphere to store the waste their high quality of life produces, and they are getting this globally shared resource for a knock down price. Free.
In the case of space to put the CO2 produced by energy consumption, the US and Europe has had more than 200 years of free rein, burning first their own forests to fuel the industrial revolution, then global coal and now oil reserves. And the situation continues to be exploited unevenly. The quality of each life in the US is using up that storage space over 3 times faster than the quality of each life in India.
And the impact of overusing this CO2 storage will be paid by developing countries. Climate change associated to manmade activities will impact the tropical countries most, where weather patterns are more susceptible to changes, and it will impact agricultural economies that rely on predictable climate to grow crops to feed themselves and earn foreign exchange with which they can give themselves a decent quality of life. Poor developing countries, not by accident, are almost always tropical and agricultural.
“Saving the Environment” is a confusing way of phrasing the problem. Firstly it distances people from the problem. A head teacher in India while congratulating me on this expedition told me “It’s great what you are doing. I love the environment, trees and all that, it would be a shame if we lost it all.” as though the environment is a nice-to-have bonus, something pretty to look at on the drive to work. Secondly it obfuscates the fact that it is humanity that will suffer not the trees. The jet stream will still blow (though no one knows for sure where), clouds will still form at the top of thermal columns of air, wildlife, animals and plants will quietly uncomplainingly adapt, migrate, evolve or die out.
And humans will have to adapt, migrate, evolve or die out too. The ones best suited to adapting and migrating will be the rich ones. The ones without the money or the liberty to move freely around the planet will face the choice between evolving, and where that’s not possible, dying out.
So once again a valuable resource is being disproportionately exploited by people in wealthy nations, leaving a disproportionately high cost for people in poor nations.
I’m becoming more convinced that the mechanism for “Saving the environment” is universally linked to creating global social justice in the world. The two things are mutually dependent. In order to responsibly manage the pollution-storage-space environment there has to be social justice, and managing the environment will prevent social injustice.
Equal education, equal access to healthcare and equal access to global resources. But seeing as we can’t even eradicate poverty in the world I really don’t think we have any chance. Thank god I’m not a poor Indian.
People criticise the environmental credentials of this journey, sometimes rightly, sometimes wrongly. I’m bored of having the same discussions and clarifying confusions about “Biofuels: good or bad?” or “The Environmental Impact of Container Ships”. There’s a bigger point. Living in the UK and especially London, it’s impossible to escape wasteful consumption and being a “valuable member of society” (which actually means working somewhere in the industrialised cycle of turning resources into commodities and delivering them to consumers – and is presumably opposed to being a worthless member of society). By taking to the road and escaping that cycle by living in a truck, I believe, means I am contributing more towards creating a socially just world and therefore helping reduce the CO2 I’m responsible to an even greater degree than the act of running my bus on waste oils. A consumptive lifestyle, complicity with unfair resource exploitation is the root cause of a carbon intensive lifestyle and the fuel I put in my truck is only part of the picture.
In an interview this week I was asked what people can do to help the environment and I said, “I don’t know, they have to figure it out for themselves.” I’m not a role model with easy pithy consumable answers, and if I said they have to quit their jobs, let all their hire-purchase electronics be repossessed, move out of the city and plant tomatoes, most people would understandably think I’m even more of a naive idealist idiot than they already do.
During this journey from the wealthiest countries in the world (UK, France, Switzerland), to the poorest (Nepal, India), I’ve become more convinced that the way we exploit our environment is just another facet of the global social injustice that has dogged the way this planet is governed since colonial times.
For over a century, richer countries have exploited the earth’s resources, providing a comfortable quality of life for their citizens at a disproportionate cost to the citizens of poorer countries. The exploitation of energy, oil, coal, mineral resources, timber, food crops, cotton, and more, has on the whole benefited the wealthy foreigners exploiting the commodity more than the country whose soil yields it.
So it is with the pollution-storing-environment resource. The beneficiaries who are fully exploiting this resource are the highly consumptive rich nations, who need a lot of rivers, sea, landfills and atmosphere to store the waste their high quality of life produces, and they are getting this globally shared resource for a knock down price. Free.
In the case of space to put the CO2 produced by energy consumption, the US and Europe has had more than 200 years of free rein, burning first their own forests to fuel the industrial revolution, then global coal and now oil reserves. And the situation continues to be exploited unevenly. The quality of each life in the US is using up that storage space over 3 times faster than the quality of each life in India.
And the impact of overusing this CO2 storage will be paid by developing countries. Climate change associated to manmade activities will impact the tropical countries most, where weather patterns are more susceptible to changes, and it will impact agricultural economies that rely on predictable climate to grow crops to feed themselves and earn foreign exchange with which they can give themselves a decent quality of life. Poor developing countries, not by accident, are almost always tropical and agricultural.
“Saving the Environment” is a confusing way of phrasing the problem. Firstly it distances people from the problem. A head teacher in India while congratulating me on this expedition told me “It’s great what you are doing. I love the environment, trees and all that, it would be a shame if we lost it all.” as though the environment is a nice-to-have bonus, something pretty to look at on the drive to work. Secondly it obfuscates the fact that it is humanity that will suffer not the trees. The jet stream will still blow (though no one knows for sure where), clouds will still form at the top of thermal columns of air, wildlife, animals and plants will quietly uncomplainingly adapt, migrate, evolve or die out.
And humans will have to adapt, migrate, evolve or die out too. The ones best suited to adapting and migrating will be the rich ones. The ones without the money or the liberty to move freely around the planet will face the choice between evolving, and where that’s not possible, dying out.
So once again a valuable resource is being disproportionately exploited by people in wealthy nations, leaving a disproportionately high cost for people in poor nations.
I’m becoming more convinced that the mechanism for “Saving the environment” is universally linked to creating global social justice in the world. The two things are mutually dependent. In order to responsibly manage the pollution-storage-space environment there has to be social justice, and managing the environment will prevent social injustice.
Equal education, equal access to healthcare and equal access to global resources. But seeing as we can’t even eradicate poverty in the world I really don’t think we have any chance. Thank god I’m not a poor Indian.
People criticise the environmental credentials of this journey, sometimes rightly, sometimes wrongly. I’m bored of having the same discussions and clarifying confusions about “Biofuels: good or bad?” or “The Environmental Impact of Container Ships”. There’s a bigger point. Living in the UK and especially London, it’s impossible to escape wasteful consumption and being a “valuable member of society” (which actually means working somewhere in the industrialised cycle of turning resources into commodities and delivering them to consumers – and is presumably opposed to being a worthless member of society). By taking to the road and escaping that cycle by living in a truck, I believe, means I am contributing more towards creating a socially just world and therefore helping reduce the CO2 I’m responsible to an even greater degree than the act of running my bus on waste oils. A consumptive lifestyle, complicity with unfair resource exploitation is the root cause of a carbon intensive lifestyle and the fuel I put in my truck is only part of the picture.
In an interview this week I was asked what people can do to help the environment and I said, “I don’t know, they have to figure it out for themselves.” I’m not a role model with easy pithy consumable answers, and if I said they have to quit their jobs, let all their hire-purchase electronics be repossessed, move out of the city and plant tomatoes, most people would understandably think I’m even more of a naive idealist idiot than they already do.
Wednesday, 21 July 2010
On the Road Rage Again
After a few people sensing my despondency, and several attempts to motivate and revitalise me, it’s an unlikely contender that gets my thanks for giving me and this journey a sense of purpose again.
The pleasure I got from staying put is hard to overstate. Despite an engine rebuild the bus continued to leak water, and I was nervous about 100 problems that might manifest themselves at any time, so my subconscious brain didn’t want to drive anywhere and did a pretty good job of getting my conscious frontal cortex to come up with excuses why I shouldn’t.
But eventually after a week I was able to tear myself away from the comfort of good friends, the good flying and a familiar routine. The bus started second time, not an ominous sign, but not a good one either. Nothing about being on the road again seemed enjoyable. Even less so when I crossed back into the chaos of India. Traffic, incessant fucking horns, chronic potholed tarmac, kamikaze oncoming 17 tonne trucks, and an instant scrape to the low hanging exhaust on a speed bump which means it needs welding, again.
A rickshaw slips back into the side of me as I’m driving past and instantly shatters the toughened door glass. It’s a sound that makes you want to duck for cover and I need a few milliseconds to understand what’s happened and make sense of the spiders web of shards that remains in the door. The rickshaw driver has the nerve to start out expecting me to pay for his bent rain cover, until he sees the extent of the damage to the bus, and while I’m sweeping up the glass he makes a discrete exit.
Getting the glass repaired is the even more tortured than I imagine. The absence of any English speakers means I don’t realise the glazier only has offcuts of toughened glass to offer. Toughened glass can’t be cut, so the job requires 3 hours of sifting through piles of glass looking for a piece that will fit, give or take a few millimetres. I don’t know this as I’m waiting in the now unlockable bus and expecting him to return with a cut piece ready for fitting in no more than 20 minutes so after impatiently waiting 2 hours I flip out and my stroppy fit results in the search pace intensifying, and eventually a tinted piece which acceptably wide and only 10cm too short is found and fitted, with another smaller bit wedged into the gap.
“If you want to charge me a westerner’s price I expect a western quality job” I tell him in English knowing my words mean nothing. I hand over 60% of the price we’d agreed pointing to the smear of silicon filling the gap between the panes and he accepts.
The next day I give the bus a proper check. My usual daily routine is to check the oil and water, then spend 10 minutes staring at the engine to see what there is to see. It’s hard to do that while you have people hanging around waiting to see you off, so it didn’t get one in Pokhara.
The coolant is down by 4 litres. The whole system only takes about 7. This means the leak should be big enough to spot easily, so I crawl around and sure enough its part of my heat exchange system and quick but dirty to fix.
So as I set off I’m feeling pleased that that mystery of the water leak is finally solved and in my head I’m calculating how long before I reach Calcutta and thinking positively about how the windscreen and exhaust could be repaired when I get there.
But the funny thing with the brakes that started yesterday evening is un-ignorabley worse today, and because I’m low on fuel I might as well fix it sooner rather than later, so binding brakes don’t increase my fuel consumption.
I pull over and my good humour is evaporating fast. This part of India is one of the dirtiest I’ve seen, and I’m going to have to crawl around under the bus. I’ve not got much Indian cash, and it’s Sunday so I can’t change any money, but happily I know the brakes well and can save on mechanics a mechanics fee, so I find a good spot and peel off the wheels myself and try to free up the blocked drum, but it’s just not releasing. After almost fainting in the heat, I give up and call a mechanic from across the road. I shouldn’t need to spend any money on parts, just a well placed smack with a hammer. I can budget for a mechanic with what I have in my pocket. Again the language barrier means he doesn’t understand the problem even though by now I’ve developed a creditable skill for understanding foreign conversations, based on context, hand gestures, facial expressions and the occasional English word that pervades every language. It’s like a vague but reliable sixth sense. Frustratingly my hand actions, which to me are clear and obvious, just leaves him staring blankly back.
I’m sick of it and I’m thinking fuck this, fuck this fucking truck, fuck this fucking country, fuck vegetable oil, fuck driving around the fucking world, fuck every Indian truck driver that ran me off the fucking tarmac today, and fuck this mechanic that can’t even understand me.
Deep breath. “I’m here because I want to be” I resentfully mutter my mantra which has become wholly unconvincing since I’ve been in India, but the irony helps me keep sane. An hour later the drum is off and the brakes have been stripped and checked unnecessarily, because the problem is the wheel bearing. Almost certainly as a result of sitting in a damp field for 2 months, near the drain pipe for my acid wee, it is pitted and therefore is ceasing, behaving like a blocked brake, and worse, the side with the etched part number has been scratched off by the rubbing so there’s no easy way of tracking down another one.
A guy comes to my rescue in more ways than one. He speaks terrible English but can understand some of what I say. I’m so relieved to be understood. It feels great. On the way into town to look for a replacement bearing we have to ride by his house to pick up his license and helmet. As I arrive in the little tenement farm, I’m first stared at with a fear that might great an alien landing but then the sister urgently wipes down the newest of the 4 plastic chairs and places it in the middle of the room for me. My hero sits in the second best chair against the un-plastered mud brick wall, and starts to tell the family the story of this treasured find sitting before them. I follow the gist with my sixth sense.
"He’s driven from England to our village ... his bus is like a house inside ... the number on the bearing is worn off." No detail is spared and his excited pace makes time for pauses that build suspense as he eyes each of his siblings and parents gathered in the room and huddled out through the doorway. They listen intently, consuming and savouring every word. The mother pulls her veil over her mouth and gasps incredulously each time the intonation merits. His eldest sister’s wide dark eyes flit between the words coming from her brother’s mouth and me sitting on my plastic throne picking out the details in my clothes and dirty fingernails that illustrate the story. The youngest five siblings vie for position in a silent wrestle outside, eager not to let their fight drown out any of their brothers words. Then the father asks why my driver isn’t fixing the car. “He’s the driver, and he built the truck,” there’s a pause for more gasps “and he’s an engineer.” says my hero, and the father turns his gaze slowly up at me with the respect a beloved king or emperor might inspire, shaking his head slowly at the wonder of the world and what man can do in it.
I’m glowing at the thought of how the story is being retold and embellished by the family to the neighbours and on. I’m not suckered into believing I’m a legend, but it’s motivating and humbling to be adulated, even for just a few minutes. While I’m lost in the frustrating challenges of this journey it’s easy to lose sight of the bigger picture. Later, on the way into town, we crossed the River Ganges, the first time I’ve seen the river. The bus has made it (almost) to the Ganges. Not bad for a junk bus that started from Thornton Heath.
We didn’t find the bearing and it looks like it’s a rare size which might need special ordering while I’m forced to camp in a disused petrol station. None the less I’m honestly back to believing that “I’m here because I want to be.”
The pleasure I got from staying put is hard to overstate. Despite an engine rebuild the bus continued to leak water, and I was nervous about 100 problems that might manifest themselves at any time, so my subconscious brain didn’t want to drive anywhere and did a pretty good job of getting my conscious frontal cortex to come up with excuses why I shouldn’t.
But eventually after a week I was able to tear myself away from the comfort of good friends, the good flying and a familiar routine. The bus started second time, not an ominous sign, but not a good one either. Nothing about being on the road again seemed enjoyable. Even less so when I crossed back into the chaos of India. Traffic, incessant fucking horns, chronic potholed tarmac, kamikaze oncoming 17 tonne trucks, and an instant scrape to the low hanging exhaust on a speed bump which means it needs welding, again.
A rickshaw slips back into the side of me as I’m driving past and instantly shatters the toughened door glass. It’s a sound that makes you want to duck for cover and I need a few milliseconds to understand what’s happened and make sense of the spiders web of shards that remains in the door. The rickshaw driver has the nerve to start out expecting me to pay for his bent rain cover, until he sees the extent of the damage to the bus, and while I’m sweeping up the glass he makes a discrete exit.
Getting the glass repaired is the even more tortured than I imagine. The absence of any English speakers means I don’t realise the glazier only has offcuts of toughened glass to offer. Toughened glass can’t be cut, so the job requires 3 hours of sifting through piles of glass looking for a piece that will fit, give or take a few millimetres. I don’t know this as I’m waiting in the now unlockable bus and expecting him to return with a cut piece ready for fitting in no more than 20 minutes so after impatiently waiting 2 hours I flip out and my stroppy fit results in the search pace intensifying, and eventually a tinted piece which acceptably wide and only 10cm too short is found and fitted, with another smaller bit wedged into the gap.
“If you want to charge me a westerner’s price I expect a western quality job” I tell him in English knowing my words mean nothing. I hand over 60% of the price we’d agreed pointing to the smear of silicon filling the gap between the panes and he accepts.
The next day I give the bus a proper check. My usual daily routine is to check the oil and water, then spend 10 minutes staring at the engine to see what there is to see. It’s hard to do that while you have people hanging around waiting to see you off, so it didn’t get one in Pokhara.
The coolant is down by 4 litres. The whole system only takes about 7. This means the leak should be big enough to spot easily, so I crawl around and sure enough its part of my heat exchange system and quick but dirty to fix.
So as I set off I’m feeling pleased that that mystery of the water leak is finally solved and in my head I’m calculating how long before I reach Calcutta and thinking positively about how the windscreen and exhaust could be repaired when I get there.
But the funny thing with the brakes that started yesterday evening is un-ignorabley worse today, and because I’m low on fuel I might as well fix it sooner rather than later, so binding brakes don’t increase my fuel consumption.
I pull over and my good humour is evaporating fast. This part of India is one of the dirtiest I’ve seen, and I’m going to have to crawl around under the bus. I’ve not got much Indian cash, and it’s Sunday so I can’t change any money, but happily I know the brakes well and can save on mechanics a mechanics fee, so I find a good spot and peel off the wheels myself and try to free up the blocked drum, but it’s just not releasing. After almost fainting in the heat, I give up and call a mechanic from across the road. I shouldn’t need to spend any money on parts, just a well placed smack with a hammer. I can budget for a mechanic with what I have in my pocket. Again the language barrier means he doesn’t understand the problem even though by now I’ve developed a creditable skill for understanding foreign conversations, based on context, hand gestures, facial expressions and the occasional English word that pervades every language. It’s like a vague but reliable sixth sense. Frustratingly my hand actions, which to me are clear and obvious, just leaves him staring blankly back.
I’m sick of it and I’m thinking fuck this, fuck this fucking truck, fuck this fucking country, fuck vegetable oil, fuck driving around the fucking world, fuck every Indian truck driver that ran me off the fucking tarmac today, and fuck this mechanic that can’t even understand me.
Deep breath. “I’m here because I want to be” I resentfully mutter my mantra which has become wholly unconvincing since I’ve been in India, but the irony helps me keep sane. An hour later the drum is off and the brakes have been stripped and checked unnecessarily, because the problem is the wheel bearing. Almost certainly as a result of sitting in a damp field for 2 months, near the drain pipe for my acid wee, it is pitted and therefore is ceasing, behaving like a blocked brake, and worse, the side with the etched part number has been scratched off by the rubbing so there’s no easy way of tracking down another one.
A guy comes to my rescue in more ways than one. He speaks terrible English but can understand some of what I say. I’m so relieved to be understood. It feels great. On the way into town to look for a replacement bearing we have to ride by his house to pick up his license and helmet. As I arrive in the little tenement farm, I’m first stared at with a fear that might great an alien landing but then the sister urgently wipes down the newest of the 4 plastic chairs and places it in the middle of the room for me. My hero sits in the second best chair against the un-plastered mud brick wall, and starts to tell the family the story of this treasured find sitting before them. I follow the gist with my sixth sense.
"He’s driven from England to our village ... his bus is like a house inside ... the number on the bearing is worn off." No detail is spared and his excited pace makes time for pauses that build suspense as he eyes each of his siblings and parents gathered in the room and huddled out through the doorway. They listen intently, consuming and savouring every word. The mother pulls her veil over her mouth and gasps incredulously each time the intonation merits. His eldest sister’s wide dark eyes flit between the words coming from her brother’s mouth and me sitting on my plastic throne picking out the details in my clothes and dirty fingernails that illustrate the story. The youngest five siblings vie for position in a silent wrestle outside, eager not to let their fight drown out any of their brothers words. Then the father asks why my driver isn’t fixing the car. “He’s the driver, and he built the truck,” there’s a pause for more gasps “and he’s an engineer.” says my hero, and the father turns his gaze slowly up at me with the respect a beloved king or emperor might inspire, shaking his head slowly at the wonder of the world and what man can do in it.
I’m glowing at the thought of how the story is being retold and embellished by the family to the neighbours and on. I’m not suckered into believing I’m a legend, but it’s motivating and humbling to be adulated, even for just a few minutes. While I’m lost in the frustrating challenges of this journey it’s easy to lose sight of the bigger picture. Later, on the way into town, we crossed the River Ganges, the first time I’ve seen the river. The bus has made it (almost) to the Ganges. Not bad for a junk bus that started from Thornton Heath.
We didn’t find the bearing and it looks like it’s a rare size which might need special ordering while I’m forced to camp in a disused petrol station. None the less I’m honestly back to believing that “I’m here because I want to be.”
Tuesday, 29 June 2010
Vulture Restaurant
It’s only 20km away but it’s taken us 2 hours to get here, the early start, the amoeba in my stomach, and skipping breakfast has made the motorbike journey tough, but it’s the overnight rains that really slowed progress on Ramji Gautam’s motorbike. The only road that leads to the site of the Vulture Feeding Sanctuary is completely washed out.
For much the tough uphill parts of the journey I’ve had to walk up following the Yamaha scrambling over shale, pebbles and small streams that continue to erode what’s left of the track. In the dry season the road is fine Ramji assures me, small consolation to my sweat ridden body. His effervescent enthusiasm pervades every inconvenience in a way which is characteristically Nepali, and it’s hard not to be drawn into giggling at how close to collapse I am.
It’s at that moment we spot a couple of Egyptian Vultures above us. When perched, their hunched neck gives them a sinister demeanour in keeping with their reputation of untrustworthy carrion eaters. But after an ungraceful launch, once in flight, these birds are the most majestic in the sky. Their wings, stretching up to two metres across, lock into the perfect aerodynamic form, able to take advantage rising air currents with the smallest adjustment of the splayed feathers at the tips and a twist of their fanned tail. Their sizeable weight effortlessly circles up through the mountain terrain, able to cover distance faster and quicker than any other animal as they search quietly for food. Not killing for meat makes vultures one of nature’s few ethical carnivores, and their role in picking clean carcasses prevents the spread of disease in other species, including humans. None the less the unfair Machiavellian reputation persists.
It’s a good job this route is usually easier, because the “Vulture Restaurant”, as Ramji calls it, conjuring images napkined diners tucking silver forks into a vulture soufflé, plans to become self funding by bringing in tourists to watch the birds feeding. Numbers of the enormous and regal White Rumped Vulture have been decreasing over recent years, and the drop is largely attributed to the use of Diclofenac, a miracle anti-inflammatory used by local farmers to cure sick cattle.
On the occasions when the Oxen fails to recover, and dies with Diclofenac in its system, the meat is a toxic cocktail to the vultures that feed on the carcasses left out to be picked clean. The feeding sanctuary has been set up next to a small village near Pokhara, with donations from conservation groups and individuals to provide a safe source of food, to allow the population to recover. Local farmers have been encouraged to use alternatives to Diclofenac, and old cattle is bought for100 rupees (US$1.30) and brought to die in the specially selected area where vultures can feel unthreatened as they tuck in.
Oxen used to pull ploughs, and cows that provide milk, become an expensive burden once they are too old to work, so the farmers are pleased to sell them to the project in a country where the Hindu religion prevents slaughtering the sacred animals.
The Pokhara valley, where the sanctuary is based, is one of the last habitats where the birds can be found in any number according to Brad Sander, a record setting paraglider pilot, who last year flew the width of Nepal and says he didn’t see a single White Rumped vulture until he arrived in Pokhara, half way through his journey.
This anecdotal evidence is largely backed up by the research performed in Bird Conservation Nepal, which shows that White Rumped numbers have declined by 90% in Nepal over the last 11 years. The Royal Society for Protection of Birds has tracked vultures migrating 1000km in a week, happily moving along the Himalaya between Nepal, India and Pakistan, and the drop in numbers is even higher in the studies performed in India.
One reason that the Pokhara valley might be a relatively safe haven for the White Rump, and therefore an ideal site for the sanctuary, is that the local farmers prefer traditional organic cures for their cattle, largely unaware of Diclofenac unless it’s prescribed by a vet. The drug has now been banned for use in cattle thanks to lobbying work by conservation bodies in all the countries where the White Rumpe flies, however its cheapness and efficacy means its use persists illegally in places.
I ask Hari Datta Pokharel, chairman of the village committee set up to administer the sanctuary, what he thinks about foreigners giving money to protect vultures, which in Nepal have the same evil reputation as elsewhere. He tells me that having seen the birds feeding during the pilot stages of the sanctuary he has grown to admire and respect the birds. It’s true that a flock of birds using their wings to wrestling over the meat of a carcass, digging their necks into the heart of it, their heads bathed in drying blood as their sharpened beaks claw away lumps of red flesh, accompanied by the smell of rotting meat and guts filling the air, is a sight to inspire respect. But I would be more convinced if Hari had told me that as long as the project brings in the tourist dollars it promises, he’s happy to feed them old cows.
Ramji believes that other reasons may also be contributing the declining numbers. For several years he’s been studying vultures, performing counts, decoding their behaviour and surveying farmers’ attitudes towards them. His unique expertise is recognised by the university where he lectures as well as the conservation groups that ask him to advise on their projects. The increasing rural population according to Ramji has meant there is less space to dispose of carcasses safely without risking the spread of disease through rats and mice that also feed on the decaying flesh. Health education programmes are advising farmers to bury dead cattle rather than leave them to be cleaned by the birds. Less food means fewer birds, and the larger White Rumped, which need the most food, is perhaps the first to feel this effect. The smaller Red Headed Vulture have also declined in number but not as dramatically as the White Rumped.
Beyond the village is the sanctuary site. I’m faced with a walk down and then back up a 100m cliff. At the bottom I’m shown the cattle shed and the observation hide the villagers have built with the donated money. There are also the bony remains of 3 carcasses, and the dead body of a cow which died just 2 days earlier. The villagers have given over these five hectares of hard to farm land for the sanctuary, bordered on one side by a fast flowing river bend, and on the other by the cliff. On the far side are some old cows grazing, while villagers collect grass and wood around them. I’m panting for breath with every step, looking for a rock to sit on every time we stop. I apologise to Ramji that my stomach bug is slowing me down and he asks if I’ve taken any drugs for it. Not yet. I laugh nervously, realising me that I’ve just passed the sanctuary’s criteria for vulture lunch.
In six weeks the project will officially open its doors, with national and international guests, including key scientists invited to see the facilities, Robi Pokharel, the hands on co-ordinator tells me. His enthusiasm for the project seems more heartfelt than the chairman’s, and he makes no secret of the fact that he wants this to work to bring money into his village.
There are still a few jobs to do over the next week, he tells me in flawless English. The plastering around the observation hide needs to be finished off, along with storm drainage. They need to plumb in a water supply for the visitors, and they have to clear a path to transport the carcasses from the grazing area where they die, to the feeding area. Moving a dead cow over the rocky grassland by hand is no small task and if the carcasses aren’t in the feeding area, not only will the birds feel less comfortable coming to feed, but the tourists in the observation hide won’t be able to see them. Robi tells me he needs a camera so they can photograph the vultures show absent supporters how well the scheme is working.
To the casual observer, there is another problem. The old cattle are feeding on great pasture land, irrigated by the mineral rich glacial river, and far from keeling over after a hard life, they seem to be thriving in retirement. None the less in the four months during construction and pilot stage four cows have already died and been fed to the birds and the heard of fresh meat waiting it’s turn has grown to seven.
Ramji estimates that the meat from one cow would be enough to feed the vulture population for a month, but the birds can’t go a month between feeds and there is no obvious way to butcher or store the meat. The carcasses can remain unnoticed for a few days before the vultures come to feed, and then the feeding is all over in a day. The tight schedule of tourists wanting to see vultures feeding will be tough to co-ordinate with the natural death of a cow and the eagle eye of a hungry vulture. But the project supporters include Scott Mason a falconer, who runs Parahawking, a successful tourist business using trained vultures in Pokhara. His expertise and contacts in the local tourism industry will be crucial in developing the marketing and logistics of the tourist visits.
During our visit Ramji picks over the bones of a carcass pointing out a couple of broken ones. Vultures scrape the bones clean, everything goes, the sinew, the tendons, the fat. All that’s left is the stomach contents, the pristine white bones and the skin which can be sold to leatherworkers, while the bones can be used to make cutlery handles. But vultures don’t break bones when they eat. Dogs and Jackals do that, and unlike vultures, they spread diseases to humans. There’s a risk that if the project is not carefully managed, it could end up feeding the wrong predator.
The sight of a couple of dog-gnawed bones isn’t enough to worry Ramji, and these are precisely the sort of teething troubles which the pilot stage is designed to flush out. The model of using tourism to sustain a conservation project is keeping everyone, the villagers, the donors, and the conservationists motivated, and that gives the project a great chance of rewarding their efforts, and setting an example which could be replicated elsewhere.
When Sita, the wife of the Hindu god Rama was kidnapped, a vulture tried to stop the villains who cut off its wings. When Rama couldn’t find Sita the vulture told him what had happened. As a thank you Rama blessed vultures with the ability to regenerate and 1000 years of life. Ramji tells me that villagers often ask him if vultures, Giddha in Nepali, can really live that long. If this project can be made sustainable it could help regenerate the dwindling vulture population and give the species a chance to live as long as their mythical lifespan.
For much the tough uphill parts of the journey I’ve had to walk up following the Yamaha scrambling over shale, pebbles and small streams that continue to erode what’s left of the track. In the dry season the road is fine Ramji assures me, small consolation to my sweat ridden body. His effervescent enthusiasm pervades every inconvenience in a way which is characteristically Nepali, and it’s hard not to be drawn into giggling at how close to collapse I am.
It’s at that moment we spot a couple of Egyptian Vultures above us. When perched, their hunched neck gives them a sinister demeanour in keeping with their reputation of untrustworthy carrion eaters. But after an ungraceful launch, once in flight, these birds are the most majestic in the sky. Their wings, stretching up to two metres across, lock into the perfect aerodynamic form, able to take advantage rising air currents with the smallest adjustment of the splayed feathers at the tips and a twist of their fanned tail. Their sizeable weight effortlessly circles up through the mountain terrain, able to cover distance faster and quicker than any other animal as they search quietly for food. Not killing for meat makes vultures one of nature’s few ethical carnivores, and their role in picking clean carcasses prevents the spread of disease in other species, including humans. None the less the unfair Machiavellian reputation persists.
It’s a good job this route is usually easier, because the “Vulture Restaurant”, as Ramji calls it, conjuring images napkined diners tucking silver forks into a vulture soufflé, plans to become self funding by bringing in tourists to watch the birds feeding. Numbers of the enormous and regal White Rumped Vulture have been decreasing over recent years, and the drop is largely attributed to the use of Diclofenac, a miracle anti-inflammatory used by local farmers to cure sick cattle.
On the occasions when the Oxen fails to recover, and dies with Diclofenac in its system, the meat is a toxic cocktail to the vultures that feed on the carcasses left out to be picked clean. The feeding sanctuary has been set up next to a small village near Pokhara, with donations from conservation groups and individuals to provide a safe source of food, to allow the population to recover. Local farmers have been encouraged to use alternatives to Diclofenac, and old cattle is bought for100 rupees (US$1.30) and brought to die in the specially selected area where vultures can feel unthreatened as they tuck in.
Oxen used to pull ploughs, and cows that provide milk, become an expensive burden once they are too old to work, so the farmers are pleased to sell them to the project in a country where the Hindu religion prevents slaughtering the sacred animals.
The Pokhara valley, where the sanctuary is based, is one of the last habitats where the birds can be found in any number according to Brad Sander, a record setting paraglider pilot, who last year flew the width of Nepal and says he didn’t see a single White Rumped vulture until he arrived in Pokhara, half way through his journey.
This anecdotal evidence is largely backed up by the research performed in Bird Conservation Nepal, which shows that White Rumped numbers have declined by 90% in Nepal over the last 11 years. The Royal Society for Protection of Birds has tracked vultures migrating 1000km in a week, happily moving along the Himalaya between Nepal, India and Pakistan, and the drop in numbers is even higher in the studies performed in India.
One reason that the Pokhara valley might be a relatively safe haven for the White Rump, and therefore an ideal site for the sanctuary, is that the local farmers prefer traditional organic cures for their cattle, largely unaware of Diclofenac unless it’s prescribed by a vet. The drug has now been banned for use in cattle thanks to lobbying work by conservation bodies in all the countries where the White Rumpe flies, however its cheapness and efficacy means its use persists illegally in places.
I ask Hari Datta Pokharel, chairman of the village committee set up to administer the sanctuary, what he thinks about foreigners giving money to protect vultures, which in Nepal have the same evil reputation as elsewhere. He tells me that having seen the birds feeding during the pilot stages of the sanctuary he has grown to admire and respect the birds. It’s true that a flock of birds using their wings to wrestling over the meat of a carcass, digging their necks into the heart of it, their heads bathed in drying blood as their sharpened beaks claw away lumps of red flesh, accompanied by the smell of rotting meat and guts filling the air, is a sight to inspire respect. But I would be more convinced if Hari had told me that as long as the project brings in the tourist dollars it promises, he’s happy to feed them old cows.
Ramji believes that other reasons may also be contributing the declining numbers. For several years he’s been studying vultures, performing counts, decoding their behaviour and surveying farmers’ attitudes towards them. His unique expertise is recognised by the university where he lectures as well as the conservation groups that ask him to advise on their projects. The increasing rural population according to Ramji has meant there is less space to dispose of carcasses safely without risking the spread of disease through rats and mice that also feed on the decaying flesh. Health education programmes are advising farmers to bury dead cattle rather than leave them to be cleaned by the birds. Less food means fewer birds, and the larger White Rumped, which need the most food, is perhaps the first to feel this effect. The smaller Red Headed Vulture have also declined in number but not as dramatically as the White Rumped.
Beyond the village is the sanctuary site. I’m faced with a walk down and then back up a 100m cliff. At the bottom I’m shown the cattle shed and the observation hide the villagers have built with the donated money. There are also the bony remains of 3 carcasses, and the dead body of a cow which died just 2 days earlier. The villagers have given over these five hectares of hard to farm land for the sanctuary, bordered on one side by a fast flowing river bend, and on the other by the cliff. On the far side are some old cows grazing, while villagers collect grass and wood around them. I’m panting for breath with every step, looking for a rock to sit on every time we stop. I apologise to Ramji that my stomach bug is slowing me down and he asks if I’ve taken any drugs for it. Not yet. I laugh nervously, realising me that I’ve just passed the sanctuary’s criteria for vulture lunch.
In six weeks the project will officially open its doors, with national and international guests, including key scientists invited to see the facilities, Robi Pokharel, the hands on co-ordinator tells me. His enthusiasm for the project seems more heartfelt than the chairman’s, and he makes no secret of the fact that he wants this to work to bring money into his village.
There are still a few jobs to do over the next week, he tells me in flawless English. The plastering around the observation hide needs to be finished off, along with storm drainage. They need to plumb in a water supply for the visitors, and they have to clear a path to transport the carcasses from the grazing area where they die, to the feeding area. Moving a dead cow over the rocky grassland by hand is no small task and if the carcasses aren’t in the feeding area, not only will the birds feel less comfortable coming to feed, but the tourists in the observation hide won’t be able to see them. Robi tells me he needs a camera so they can photograph the vultures show absent supporters how well the scheme is working.
To the casual observer, there is another problem. The old cattle are feeding on great pasture land, irrigated by the mineral rich glacial river, and far from keeling over after a hard life, they seem to be thriving in retirement. None the less in the four months during construction and pilot stage four cows have already died and been fed to the birds and the heard of fresh meat waiting it’s turn has grown to seven.
Ramji estimates that the meat from one cow would be enough to feed the vulture population for a month, but the birds can’t go a month between feeds and there is no obvious way to butcher or store the meat. The carcasses can remain unnoticed for a few days before the vultures come to feed, and then the feeding is all over in a day. The tight schedule of tourists wanting to see vultures feeding will be tough to co-ordinate with the natural death of a cow and the eagle eye of a hungry vulture. But the project supporters include Scott Mason a falconer, who runs Parahawking, a successful tourist business using trained vultures in Pokhara. His expertise and contacts in the local tourism industry will be crucial in developing the marketing and logistics of the tourist visits.
During our visit Ramji picks over the bones of a carcass pointing out a couple of broken ones. Vultures scrape the bones clean, everything goes, the sinew, the tendons, the fat. All that’s left is the stomach contents, the pristine white bones and the skin which can be sold to leatherworkers, while the bones can be used to make cutlery handles. But vultures don’t break bones when they eat. Dogs and Jackals do that, and unlike vultures, they spread diseases to humans. There’s a risk that if the project is not carefully managed, it could end up feeding the wrong predator.
The sight of a couple of dog-gnawed bones isn’t enough to worry Ramji, and these are precisely the sort of teething troubles which the pilot stage is designed to flush out. The model of using tourism to sustain a conservation project is keeping everyone, the villagers, the donors, and the conservationists motivated, and that gives the project a great chance of rewarding their efforts, and setting an example which could be replicated elsewhere.
When Sita, the wife of the Hindu god Rama was kidnapped, a vulture tried to stop the villains who cut off its wings. When Rama couldn’t find Sita the vulture told him what had happened. As a thank you Rama blessed vultures with the ability to regenerate and 1000 years of life. Ramji tells me that villagers often ask him if vultures, Giddha in Nepali, can really live that long. If this project can be made sustainable it could help regenerate the dwindling vulture population and give the species a chance to live as long as their mythical lifespan.
Wednesday, 19 May 2010
Gulliver's Travels
A moment of self congratulations if you’ll allow me; I’ve taken a scrapyard bus and driven it from Croydon to the Himalayas on waste. Reason to be proud, for me and for the many people that have helped me along the way.
If you’ve never met me you wouldn’t know that I am almost two metres tall. Here in Nepal I feel like Gulliver arrived back in Lilliput.
Nepal is fantastic. Calm and clean. Compared with India, there’s no litter along the streets, and grassy meadows butt up to the road. It took me a while to realise the sound of incessant truck horns are missing from the air, and the two day drive from the border I’ve only been run off the road once by oncoming trucks. Believe me that’s very good stats.
I was told before I got there that Indian women were beautiful. I think they can be, but only on the rare occasion they smile. Here in Nepal the women are stunning and it’s the second happiest country after Bhutan, so they, and consequently I, have a lot to smile about here in the land of the little people.
It’s strange to think that from here to the North Pole, it’s all communist. The country is potentially only a few days away from civil war. A deadline for integrating Maoist militia into the army is about to pass, but seeing as only a few months back they were killing each other, it’s hard to see how they will reconcile their differences. If the deadline passes without an agreement there’s a chance the country will descend back into fighting.
Pokhara is a little removed from the troubles, at least I’m counting on the fact it will be. If it does go bad here in paradise, the Indians will take 10 days to issue a visa so I can exit. So once again I’ll be screwed by the pace of Indians doing their work so diligently.
I was in Niger in 1999, while the government was violently oppressing a student uprising. A couple of the friends I’d made there worked for the UN and together we’d gone for a drink at the local five star Hyatt hotel. Sitting by the pool we had a view down over the river, and on the opposite bank was the university campus. Leafy, green and lit up by the occasional thunder flash and the sound of Kalashnikovs.
We’d unwittingly got front row sun loungers to the end of the revolution, with the waiter bringing us gin a tonics to wash down the show. If the fighting does come to Pokhara I half think it will be comparable. I’m parked in the tourist suburb, and the fighting isn’t likely to spread to this end. Being 21st century Moaists, they don’t want to jeopardise the country’s biggest foreign exchange earner. And even though the season is at an end, it’s still busy.
From here you can take the Annapurna trail, and this is where the climb to Everest starts. The reason I’m here, is that it’s also a mecca for paragliders, renowned for being one of the best sites in the world. Today I had my first flight. Amazing. At one point, as I was in the air tightly circling up on a punchy thermal with 2 other pilots and an eagle, the clouds parted to reveal Annapurna, the towering snow peak camouflaged against the fluffy cumulus clouds below it.
The tandem pilots here are world champions and world record holders. They lead a romantic life moving around the world, following the seasons like migrant workers harvesting the winds. They fly tandems to earn money and then spend it on adventures to fly outrageous peaks or on competition entry fees. In my eyes they are the real giants of Pokhara alongside the mountains.
In the sky they are very professional, but the pre-flight preoccupation amongst them is who’s going to fly which girl. Patrik, a handsome French acro pilot who speaks like the shellfish in the dentist’s tank of Finding Nemo, charms some Spanish girls into his tandem harness to whirl them round the sky. I land after him and we cross paths as I am walking back to the bus in town. I’m short of breath and drenched in sweat. He’s all smiles and relaxed on his moped, with the cutest Spanish girl on the back riding out to show her a “leetle playce” only he knows. Surf-bums of the sky.
I hear myself muttering, “if I was 10 years younger” which is quite a scary thing to catch yourself thinking. But even quicker I’m wondering what happens to these guys when they turn 40? Are they still eeking out a living flying tandems, or do they end up in a job selling photocopier supplies?
Unlike 5-year-plans would have you believe, life’s options aren’t that polar. Pero, a Macedonian pilot is thinking of going back to finish his degree, but he’s worried about joining the rat race and giving up this life. Tom the oldest pilot on the hill, who retired from his career several years ago and can still pull the splits in his late 50s, has given Pero the sense that this life is something he can always come back to.
Like Pero, I’ve always been petrified of what the future holds, planning and working towards a goal and anxiously worrying that I won’t achieve them. But then in a revelatory moment a while back I realised that I’d been worrying about, and then successfully achieving, or failing in those goals since I was at school, and the only constants was the anxiety, and the unshakeable fact that things always work out OK in the end, even if the plan doesn’t.
It’s a philosophy at odds with my pessimism over the environment and this sustainably fuelled experiment I’m carrying out, but ironically if I was worried about my personal future I wouldn’t be here, and I’m sure that destiny will provide after this journey and something will work out.
If you’ve never met me you wouldn’t know that I am almost two metres tall. Here in Nepal I feel like Gulliver arrived back in Lilliput.
Nepal is fantastic. Calm and clean. Compared with India, there’s no litter along the streets, and grassy meadows butt up to the road. It took me a while to realise the sound of incessant truck horns are missing from the air, and the two day drive from the border I’ve only been run off the road once by oncoming trucks. Believe me that’s very good stats.
I was told before I got there that Indian women were beautiful. I think they can be, but only on the rare occasion they smile. Here in Nepal the women are stunning and it’s the second happiest country after Bhutan, so they, and consequently I, have a lot to smile about here in the land of the little people.
It’s strange to think that from here to the North Pole, it’s all communist. The country is potentially only a few days away from civil war. A deadline for integrating Maoist militia into the army is about to pass, but seeing as only a few months back they were killing each other, it’s hard to see how they will reconcile their differences. If the deadline passes without an agreement there’s a chance the country will descend back into fighting.
Pokhara is a little removed from the troubles, at least I’m counting on the fact it will be. If it does go bad here in paradise, the Indians will take 10 days to issue a visa so I can exit. So once again I’ll be screwed by the pace of Indians doing their work so diligently.
I was in Niger in 1999, while the government was violently oppressing a student uprising. A couple of the friends I’d made there worked for the UN and together we’d gone for a drink at the local five star Hyatt hotel. Sitting by the pool we had a view down over the river, and on the opposite bank was the university campus. Leafy, green and lit up by the occasional thunder flash and the sound of Kalashnikovs.
We’d unwittingly got front row sun loungers to the end of the revolution, with the waiter bringing us gin a tonics to wash down the show. If the fighting does come to Pokhara I half think it will be comparable. I’m parked in the tourist suburb, and the fighting isn’t likely to spread to this end. Being 21st century Moaists, they don’t want to jeopardise the country’s biggest foreign exchange earner. And even though the season is at an end, it’s still busy.
From here you can take the Annapurna trail, and this is where the climb to Everest starts. The reason I’m here, is that it’s also a mecca for paragliders, renowned for being one of the best sites in the world. Today I had my first flight. Amazing. At one point, as I was in the air tightly circling up on a punchy thermal with 2 other pilots and an eagle, the clouds parted to reveal Annapurna, the towering snow peak camouflaged against the fluffy cumulus clouds below it.
The tandem pilots here are world champions and world record holders. They lead a romantic life moving around the world, following the seasons like migrant workers harvesting the winds. They fly tandems to earn money and then spend it on adventures to fly outrageous peaks or on competition entry fees. In my eyes they are the real giants of Pokhara alongside the mountains.
In the sky they are very professional, but the pre-flight preoccupation amongst them is who’s going to fly which girl. Patrik, a handsome French acro pilot who speaks like the shellfish in the dentist’s tank of Finding Nemo, charms some Spanish girls into his tandem harness to whirl them round the sky. I land after him and we cross paths as I am walking back to the bus in town. I’m short of breath and drenched in sweat. He’s all smiles and relaxed on his moped, with the cutest Spanish girl on the back riding out to show her a “leetle playce” only he knows. Surf-bums of the sky.
I hear myself muttering, “if I was 10 years younger” which is quite a scary thing to catch yourself thinking. But even quicker I’m wondering what happens to these guys when they turn 40? Are they still eeking out a living flying tandems, or do they end up in a job selling photocopier supplies?
Unlike 5-year-plans would have you believe, life’s options aren’t that polar. Pero, a Macedonian pilot is thinking of going back to finish his degree, but he’s worried about joining the rat race and giving up this life. Tom the oldest pilot on the hill, who retired from his career several years ago and can still pull the splits in his late 50s, has given Pero the sense that this life is something he can always come back to.
Like Pero, I’ve always been petrified of what the future holds, planning and working towards a goal and anxiously worrying that I won’t achieve them. But then in a revelatory moment a while back I realised that I’d been worrying about, and then successfully achieving, or failing in those goals since I was at school, and the only constants was the anxiety, and the unshakeable fact that things always work out OK in the end, even if the plan doesn’t.
It’s a philosophy at odds with my pessimism over the environment and this sustainably fuelled experiment I’m carrying out, but ironically if I was worried about my personal future I wouldn’t be here, and I’m sure that destiny will provide after this journey and something will work out.
Friday, 7 May 2010
The Cost of Failure
If you make 1000 one inch widgets in your widget-making factory, they won’t all be one inch long. Some will come out longer, and some will be shorter. There’s a natural statistical variation which if your widget making machines are in good condition, and run by well trained widget-makers will be quite a small variation, or if you are a British manufacturer from the 70’s and 80’s the variation will be massive and that’s why no one bought the lazy crap you made.
The British idea of quality was to make your widgets within a certain tolerance, no bigger than so much, and no smaller than so much. The Japanese realised that only striving for perfection was good enough.
A Japanese Engineer/Philosopher (I can’t remember his name and have a mental block with it being Tamagochi, that’s not it but it’s the best I can do) came up with the idea of measuring the cost of failure caused by a widget not being the perfect size. Once the widget is installed in the machine, and it fails, there is the cost of lost working time, the cost of the repair labour, and finally the cost of the replacement widget. He multiplied that by the probability of his widgets failing before their designed lifespan, and he realised the cost of failure is always disproportionately more than the cost of investing in the process to make the widgets better. I vaguely remember an amazing formula to calculate C.o.F for any widget you might want to make. On that basis he came to the conclusion that it was no less than immoral (his words, albeit in Japanese) to make any widget a size other than the exact size they are supposed to be.
That was in the 1970’s, by the 80’s the Japanese were producing the best products in the world, and by the 90’s everyone in the world knew the Japanese were producing the best products in the world and were desperately trying to understand and copy what and how the Japanese were doing; including getting hairy-arsed Geordie fitters to do Tai Chi at the start of the day on the assembly line. WTF?
I’d been thinking about the Cost of Failure after my engine rebuild. The pistons and the liners are pretty simple parts, and comparatively cheap, but the work required to replace them is disproportionate. Its not a fair comparison because the truck is 21 years old, so they have already outlived their designed lifespan.
But this was in the back of my mind when Ravitej, the CEO of Mago Construction who contacted me out of the blue to help keep the expedition on the road with sponsorship cash, was talking about how sustainable energy infrastructure may be expensive, but the eventual financial cost of not going down that path was much higher.
Lord Stern from the London School of Economics has produced a world renown paper which looks at the financial cost of climate change, compared with the cost of implementing solutions now to avoid the worst effects of climate change. Needless to say it’s much cheaper to deal with it now before it becomes massive.
But the reality is that the pre-emptive cost would have to be paid primarily by the developed, industrialised nations, whereas the picking-up-the-pieces payments would come from the pockets of developing nations.
This is the same issue Tamagochi faced, in that the cost of producing better widgets is borne by the widget maker whereas the cost of repairing a machine with a broken widget is paid by the widget buyer.
However what made Tamagochi a 1970s visionary was that he saw that the widget buyer the widget maker lived in a metaphorical symbiotic Buddhist temple together and swam in the same sea hunting for prawns as the sun set (my words – I doubt he ever said anything like that, not even in Japanese). Basically the relationship between producer and buyer is tied, so it’s in everybody’s interest to minimise the failure. There are no winners when the widget breaks.
The cost of developing nations struggling with climate change will be evetually be borne out by all nations, directly through increased aid, but indirectly in so many more and expensive ways.
The British idea of quality was to make your widgets within a certain tolerance, no bigger than so much, and no smaller than so much. The Japanese realised that only striving for perfection was good enough.
A Japanese Engineer/Philosopher (I can’t remember his name and have a mental block with it being Tamagochi, that’s not it but it’s the best I can do) came up with the idea of measuring the cost of failure caused by a widget not being the perfect size. Once the widget is installed in the machine, and it fails, there is the cost of lost working time, the cost of the repair labour, and finally the cost of the replacement widget. He multiplied that by the probability of his widgets failing before their designed lifespan, and he realised the cost of failure is always disproportionately more than the cost of investing in the process to make the widgets better. I vaguely remember an amazing formula to calculate C.o.F for any widget you might want to make. On that basis he came to the conclusion that it was no less than immoral (his words, albeit in Japanese) to make any widget a size other than the exact size they are supposed to be.
That was in the 1970’s, by the 80’s the Japanese were producing the best products in the world, and by the 90’s everyone in the world knew the Japanese were producing the best products in the world and were desperately trying to understand and copy what and how the Japanese were doing; including getting hairy-arsed Geordie fitters to do Tai Chi at the start of the day on the assembly line. WTF?
I’d been thinking about the Cost of Failure after my engine rebuild. The pistons and the liners are pretty simple parts, and comparatively cheap, but the work required to replace them is disproportionate. Its not a fair comparison because the truck is 21 years old, so they have already outlived their designed lifespan.
But this was in the back of my mind when Ravitej, the CEO of Mago Construction who contacted me out of the blue to help keep the expedition on the road with sponsorship cash, was talking about how sustainable energy infrastructure may be expensive, but the eventual financial cost of not going down that path was much higher.
Lord Stern from the London School of Economics has produced a world renown paper which looks at the financial cost of climate change, compared with the cost of implementing solutions now to avoid the worst effects of climate change. Needless to say it’s much cheaper to deal with it now before it becomes massive.
But the reality is that the pre-emptive cost would have to be paid primarily by the developed, industrialised nations, whereas the picking-up-the-pieces payments would come from the pockets of developing nations.
This is the same issue Tamagochi faced, in that the cost of producing better widgets is borne by the widget maker whereas the cost of repairing a machine with a broken widget is paid by the widget buyer.
However what made Tamagochi a 1970s visionary was that he saw that the widget buyer the widget maker lived in a metaphorical symbiotic Buddhist temple together and swam in the same sea hunting for prawns as the sun set (my words – I doubt he ever said anything like that, not even in Japanese). Basically the relationship between producer and buyer is tied, so it’s in everybody’s interest to minimise the failure. There are no winners when the widget breaks.
The cost of developing nations struggling with climate change will be evetually be borne out by all nations, directly through increased aid, but indirectly in so many more and expensive ways.
Monday, 5 April 2010
Panchgani Above My Weight
I’m waiting for the Indian Treasury to decide if they can give me back my bail money in cash. They won’t accept my bank card as proof of my UK account details, and they won’t pay the money to someone I nominate, in case that person rips me off. How thoughtful, far better that they keep my bail money safe for me, forever.
So in the meantime I am slowly heading to Delhi hoping to get there in time for this to be sorted, but I certainly don’t want to get there sooner and have to wait it out in the capital. I am using the time to call and email sponsors and fund-raisers in the hope of meeting my €5000 target I need to continue the journey. I’ve already got cash and pledges of €1000 so quietly confident there is a good chance.
I’m also taking full advantage of not having to be anywhere to go paragliding, and at the moment I’m in Panchgani, which is another amazing world class site. It’s great for cross country flying. You set off from one place and hop from one thermal to the next covering huge distances. I’m not that good, and the season has finished so the weather isn’t ideal anymore, but with a lot of patient waiting (nic-named “para-waiting” by pilots) keeping an eagle eye on conditions I and a couple of friends here, Arabind and Chetan, have managed to get some good flights in and improve my skills.
I’m parked at the top of the take off site, so in the morning I can check the windsock streamer from bed. Strawberries and mulberries are in season, and haven’t tired of fruit salad and yogurt for breakfast. There is a 14 year old boy who sells freshly squeezed lemon juice who brings his cart next to the truck around 9am, and we chat in sign language about the wind. He can’t fly but knows well enough when the conditions are good from having watched countless pilots in the past.
The police have clamped down on the un-insured tandem wallahs who offer a 20 minute flight for 2000Rs to the wealthy Pune weekenders, after an accident last week, so we have the launch site to ourselves and instead of having to wrestle for a takeoff slot we’re surrounded by tandem wallahs with nothing better to do but help us lay out our wings and lend their experience to assess the wind.
The rival tandem pilots have to collectively pay some cash to the police, but as the wind is too strong and the tourist season is still a few days away from starting they are holding out before paying up and starting work. On a good day they can earn €400-500, but it’s a short season and most pilots are in endless hock to their backers who paid for their wings and harnesses.
Andre, an expat from Montreal who’s run a campsite here for solo-pilots for 11 years, usually turns up to offer meteorological advice in his drawly French Canadian accent littered with Indian idioms, “Yeah-er, Wat-to-do?”. He’s even run us 3 km down the road in his pick up to another launch site when the wind was backing. There’s a thermal over his campsite which means his windsock regularly points upwards.
The conditions have been unusually strong here, making take off risky and flying even riskier. Landing back on the launch site is a near impossibility in strong winds so the only option is to “land down” in the valley which stretches out 1000ft bellow around the manmade lake and dam.
The black areas of burnt grass provide good sources of thermal air, warmed by the hot ground and sent upwards like the goo in a lava lamp. I’m learning to “core” thermals, finding the centre and circling upwards in it.
For landings, I’ve mostly used the fields zig-zagging around trees and shortening my approach with plenty of brake as the as the terracing cheats me by dropping the ground away from me the further I travel. I’ve landed by the lake a couple of times, and today I took my togs for a swim. After stripping naked in front of non-plussed washer women I then balked at the mirky waters. The ladies shrugged grunts eventually persuaded me in. I didn’t want them to think I was another of these exhibitionist from Mumbai come to flash at the village girls. Usually I catch a local bus which winds up the mountain switchbacks to the cooler air of Panchgani or hitch a ride in a truck that’s going that way.
When I get back I’m greeted by the concerned lemonade boy who asks me where I landed and how the flight was. Nods, grins, hands and pointing, our conversation is completely silent apart from the word “Wind” which can mean strong or weak, depending on the wind.
In the evenings I cycle into town for dinner with Chetan and Arabind, my co-pilots, after washing off the red dust in the bus shower. My water pump has burnt out and I have to take the motor apart to check it, so in the meantime I’m using a bucket filled at the nearby spring. Before bed I sit on one of the benches near the hotel and use their free wifi with the black valley below lit only by a smattering of village lights and the red lines of grass fires spreading up the opposite side.
So as you can imagine , until the bail money is ready, I’m not in any great rush to leave for Delhi to be shunted from one heartless government office to the next.
India is one of the few countries that emits less than 2 tonnes of CO2Te per person, thanks in large part to people like this. At first I’m struck with the thought that if everyone lived like this the global carbon footprint would disappear overnight. Ironically, the famines and mass-migrations which will result from climate change, will result in more people living under tarpaulin tents.
The battle to find sustainable solutions of energy creation and consumption is in many ways more a battle to maintain our standard of living rather than to save the environment. We have to turn unsustainable consumption into a responsible and globally fair use of resources, or expect a reduction in the standards of living we take for granted. Probably we’ll have to do both, and probably we won’t do either enough.
So we, as a planet, could ration energy now and see a drop in our standards of living, or we can take small possibly ineffectual steps which will result in more people living under tarpaulin tents. Those people will probably be from poor countries, because poor countries are typically dependent on agriculture and poor countries are in the tropics where weather patterns are most likely to be affected. In Croydon we will struggle to find Zimbabwean Bok-Choi in Tescos
No one knows with much certainty how much climate change will really impact on agriculture and sea levels, so it’s hard to know how strictly to ration energy now, but not doing it allows richer countries to take advantage of their wealth to exploit global resources, to the detriment of people living in poorer countries (again – see oil, , fishing rights, minerals, diamonds, agricultural land, holiday resorts...).
Wherever I fly I’ve found out about the local agriculture, to know which fields I can land in, and even more importantly I find out about the local weather. Really understand it in detail, how it should be, how it is this minute, and how it changes during the day. Everywhere I’ve been, from Annecy to Panchgani, pilots tell me the weather is unusual for time of year. Maybe it’s me! Or maybe it’s the human nature of pilots to be diffident of the winds, but I believe it’s a sign that weather patterns that are changing, and it makes me feel that the changes will become quite radical.
As long as these gypsies can scavenge pressed sugar cane for their donkeys and don’t have to move in to a city, they’ll be ok. It would be hard for their standards of living to drop further. But in the valley below the fields are all empty at the moment. It’s great for me as it provides endless choices of landing areas. They are waiting for the first signs of the monsoon season to start planting. I wonder if they can afford the irony to call it agri-waiting?
So in the meantime I am slowly heading to Delhi hoping to get there in time for this to be sorted, but I certainly don’t want to get there sooner and have to wait it out in the capital. I am using the time to call and email sponsors and fund-raisers in the hope of meeting my €5000 target I need to continue the journey. I’ve already got cash and pledges of €1000 so quietly confident there is a good chance.
I’m also taking full advantage of not having to be anywhere to go paragliding, and at the moment I’m in Panchgani, which is another amazing world class site. It’s great for cross country flying. You set off from one place and hop from one thermal to the next covering huge distances. I’m not that good, and the season has finished so the weather isn’t ideal anymore, but with a lot of patient waiting (nic-named “para-waiting” by pilots) keeping an eagle eye on conditions I and a couple of friends here, Arabind and Chetan, have managed to get some good flights in and improve my skills.
I’m parked at the top of the take off site, so in the morning I can check the windsock streamer from bed. Strawberries and mulberries are in season, and haven’t tired of fruit salad and yogurt for breakfast. There is a 14 year old boy who sells freshly squeezed lemon juice who brings his cart next to the truck around 9am, and we chat in sign language about the wind. He can’t fly but knows well enough when the conditions are good from having watched countless pilots in the past.
The police have clamped down on the un-insured tandem wallahs who offer a 20 minute flight for 2000Rs to the wealthy Pune weekenders, after an accident last week, so we have the launch site to ourselves and instead of having to wrestle for a takeoff slot we’re surrounded by tandem wallahs with nothing better to do but help us lay out our wings and lend their experience to assess the wind.
The rival tandem pilots have to collectively pay some cash to the police, but as the wind is too strong and the tourist season is still a few days away from starting they are holding out before paying up and starting work. On a good day they can earn €400-500, but it’s a short season and most pilots are in endless hock to their backers who paid for their wings and harnesses.
Andre, an expat from Montreal who’s run a campsite here for solo-pilots for 11 years, usually turns up to offer meteorological advice in his drawly French Canadian accent littered with Indian idioms, “Yeah-er, Wat-to-do?”. He’s even run us 3 km down the road in his pick up to another launch site when the wind was backing. There’s a thermal over his campsite which means his windsock regularly points upwards.
The conditions have been unusually strong here, making take off risky and flying even riskier. Landing back on the launch site is a near impossibility in strong winds so the only option is to “land down” in the valley which stretches out 1000ft bellow around the manmade lake and dam.
The black areas of burnt grass provide good sources of thermal air, warmed by the hot ground and sent upwards like the goo in a lava lamp. I’m learning to “core” thermals, finding the centre and circling upwards in it.
For landings, I’ve mostly used the fields zig-zagging around trees and shortening my approach with plenty of brake as the as the terracing cheats me by dropping the ground away from me the further I travel. I’ve landed by the lake a couple of times, and today I took my togs for a swim. After stripping naked in front of non-plussed washer women I then balked at the mirky waters. The ladies shrugged grunts eventually persuaded me in. I didn’t want them to think I was another of these exhibitionist from Mumbai come to flash at the village girls. Usually I catch a local bus which winds up the mountain switchbacks to the cooler air of Panchgani or hitch a ride in a truck that’s going that way.
When I get back I’m greeted by the concerned lemonade boy who asks me where I landed and how the flight was. Nods, grins, hands and pointing, our conversation is completely silent apart from the word “Wind” which can mean strong or weak, depending on the wind.
In the evenings I cycle into town for dinner with Chetan and Arabind, my co-pilots, after washing off the red dust in the bus shower. My water pump has burnt out and I have to take the motor apart to check it, so in the meantime I’m using a bucket filled at the nearby spring. Before bed I sit on one of the benches near the hotel and use their free wifi with the black valley below lit only by a smattering of village lights and the red lines of grass fires spreading up the opposite side.
So as you can imagine , until the bail money is ready, I’m not in any great rush to leave for Delhi to be shunted from one heartless government office to the next.
------------
Next to the launch site is a gypsy camp of tarpaulin tents. Their donkeys compete with the mosquitoes in the truck to keep me awake at night. I’ve been watching how they live, and really impressed how little they consume. Their energy is from firewood, and they draw water straight from a spring at the edge of the launch site.India is one of the few countries that emits less than 2 tonnes of CO2Te per person, thanks in large part to people like this. At first I’m struck with the thought that if everyone lived like this the global carbon footprint would disappear overnight. Ironically, the famines and mass-migrations which will result from climate change, will result in more people living under tarpaulin tents.
The battle to find sustainable solutions of energy creation and consumption is in many ways more a battle to maintain our standard of living rather than to save the environment. We have to turn unsustainable consumption into a responsible and globally fair use of resources, or expect a reduction in the standards of living we take for granted. Probably we’ll have to do both, and probably we won’t do either enough.
So we, as a planet, could ration energy now and see a drop in our standards of living, or we can take small possibly ineffectual steps which will result in more people living under tarpaulin tents. Those people will probably be from poor countries, because poor countries are typically dependent on agriculture and poor countries are in the tropics where weather patterns are most likely to be affected. In Croydon we will struggle to find Zimbabwean Bok-Choi in Tescos
No one knows with much certainty how much climate change will really impact on agriculture and sea levels, so it’s hard to know how strictly to ration energy now, but not doing it allows richer countries to take advantage of their wealth to exploit global resources, to the detriment of people living in poorer countries (again – see oil, , fishing rights, minerals, diamonds, agricultural land, holiday resorts...).
Wherever I fly I’ve found out about the local agriculture, to know which fields I can land in, and even more importantly I find out about the local weather. Really understand it in detail, how it should be, how it is this minute, and how it changes during the day. Everywhere I’ve been, from Annecy to Panchgani, pilots tell me the weather is unusual for time of year. Maybe it’s me! Or maybe it’s the human nature of pilots to be diffident of the winds, but I believe it’s a sign that weather patterns that are changing, and it makes me feel that the changes will become quite radical.
As long as these gypsies can scavenge pressed sugar cane for their donkeys and don’t have to move in to a city, they’ll be ok. It would be hard for their standards of living to drop further. But in the valley below the fields are all empty at the moment. It’s great for me as it provides endless choices of landing areas. They are waiting for the first signs of the monsoon season to start planting. I wonder if they can afford the irony to call it agri-waiting?
Saturday, 13 February 2010
What to do, what to do?
“Andy Pag, Eco Hero”, “Eco Warrior”, “Environmental campaigner”. Even “Activist” no less! No wonder my friends can’t stop taking the piss. They know none of this is true. I’ve been a petrol head since I was 21. I love cars, bikes, trucks, anything that propels itself. Planes, oh my god, planes. Don’t get me started on planes. I’m in total awe at a machine that can lift off the ground and go anywhere it wants. Microligths, paragliders, jet fighters, helicopters. The sight of a 747 roaring off the tarmac into the air, oh wow, look at it, so big and free.
The sad thing is that most things that propel themselves run on fossil fuel, so it’s hard to love the machine without loving the juice they run on. We’ve been digging the stuff out of the ground, burning it and letting whatever’s left float into the atmosphere for the best part of 70 years now. That’s a fact. Rising levels of CO2 in the air are a fact, Greenhouse gas inducing climate change is a fact. People argue about how fast it’s happening and how significant it will be, but regardless, it’s a fact,
I’m not particularly happy about it, but what I’ve read, and what I’ve learnt, makes me think it’s a pretty serious threat. Not everyone agrees, fine. I’ve been wrong about other things and I might well be wrong about this. But I don’t want to be the one that’s to blame if it does go pear shape. I want to do something to help, not so I can say that I’m the one that saved the world, but so no one can point at me as say you’re the one that destroyed it.
So what can I do about it? It’s pretty hard to be carbon neutral, unless you sit in a cold dark room, without eating or breathing. And actually, as individuals, we don’t need to be carbon neutral. We can emit some carbon, as long as it’s no more than the planet can recycle. Scientists can work out what the sustainable level is pretty accurately. It’s not a lot though, and it requires changing the way we do things, and the unpalatable conclusion I’ve come to is that we have to give up a lot of things, particularly consumption of energy and raw materials. (And that needs global relationships with more social justice, but that’s another rant for another day)
I’m doing this trip around the world, primarily because I want to drive around the world. I want to discover the countries and places along the way for myself. But there is an obvious hypocrisy of contributing to climate change while trying to understand how the world works. Not everyone sees it like that, fine, but I do and this is my journey. So that’s why I’m trying to run the bus on waste based fuels all the way. It’s not a perfect solution, there are things about the way I’m doing it that don’t add up, but there are some things I’m doing that really make sense and work well, and that I’m immensely proud of.
I don’t want to give up now, not because I think my journey is of worthy global importance, but because I’ve put this much work into it so far, I’ve come this far and I now more than ever, I really believe it can be done. I don’t want to see that hard graft destroyed without good reason, and I really want to get back to London and be the guy that drove around the world on chip fat. Pride, pure and simple.
The hardest part is dealing with intransigent people who put up barriers, which most of the time have no relevance. Well I’ve bitten off more than I can chew with this phone business. The longer it goes on for, the longer it looks like it will go on for, and it’s all pointless. The police know it, the newspapers here know it, I know it, so in the words of one of the regulars from Radio4’s Down the Line, “What is point?” really? Other than to save the embarrassment of a few police officers that screwed up, (again)? Hey we all screw up. Admit your men screwed up SP Tak, and everyone else admit that it’s OK they screwed up. They're only human doing a tough job in an uncertain world. We all make mistakes, what sets us apart is the integrity of how we deal with them. I only have 2 weeks left on my visa and have to be back in Pushkar right slap in the middle of the 2 weeks, so really I can’t do anything or go anywhere. I‘ve taken the bus to Mumbai to get some fuel from a biodiesel sponsor, Royal Energy, who filled my tank for me, but it was a long way in the wrong direction and the only way to get down there and back for this pointless hearing on the 10th was to fly back.
Thanks to this arrest, I've lost a lot of money, squandered a lot of time, and now I've even lost any chance of hitting the 2 tonne target. Great.
So this weekend I head to Delhi in the hope of being able to get a 3 month visa extension. I’m not optimistic, but having been impressed by the Mumbai mindset maybe I am about to be impressed by Delhi’s.
Tuesday, 12 January 2010
Gomti Biofuel
I’ve already blogged about Jatropha and that India is supposedly the world’s Jatropha garden. I really believe in the Jatropha concept, so it was with a heavy heart that I have given up looking for Jatropha oil after contacting the only people in the country who are producing oil. They told me their product is at such a premium it costs $1500/tonne.
Nothing in India is a fixed price so I dare say I should have haggled a bit, but even so, that works out at about $1.70/litre which is nuts when you think Diesel is $0.60. How is that ever going to make an economic biodiesel? They tell me it’s only used for research at the moment; bought up by producers at a premium price to experiment with.
Sounds like crap to me. The expertise for turning Jatropha oil into biodiesel has been known for a long time now. The challenge is how to grow it efficiently. Varieties/strains/crop rotation/land resting e.t.c. so that plantations can produce good yields with low levels of irrigation on marginal land.
Turns out that over the last 4-5 years since people started talking about Jatropha there’s been millions of dollars used to buy up land rights for growing the crops, but no one has done the unglamorous (and un-venture-capitalist-funded) work of actually developing varieties and production practices. The money-go-round fell apart just over a year ago when D1 Oils, one of the biggest players in securing Jatropha land rights went bust. Despite having the paper capacity to produce massive amounts of oil they only seem to have produced a couple of thousand litres that have sat in a warehouse in Tyneside since 2007. I was offered it for this trip at one point.
D1 are now back and smaller and focussing on researching the agricultural techniques needed to get good production from Jatropha. It’s a plant that takes 5 years to start bearing fruit so it’s a long research process.
In the meantime I have struck really lucky in my quest for waste power. At the Indian border a very enthusiastic entrepreneur called Rocky and his family excitedly ask for a tour around the bus. He tells me there is a man in his town of Haldwani who makes biodiesel and I should come and visit.
I do, and Sanjeev of Gomti Biotech explains the amazing process he’s developed to extract oil from the waste products produced by a vegetable oil manufacturer. The waste looks like oily mud and Sanjeev uses his own patented system of solvent extraction to get 20% of it back as oil which makes the then uses to make great biodiesel. It’s a similar process to extracting oil from sewer grease and trap grease.
The fuel is a blend of Soya waste and Mustard waste so it should stay nice and runny even in the cold Haldwani winters. It’s quite dark and it smells pretty odd. Gomti sell their fuel at 3 local filling stations, and people buy it because it’s cheaper, and has a higher octane rating than normal diesel. There’s no pretence at being green here, but actually this process seems really green to me, and could help the fundamental problem faced by Indian Biodiesel producers that there isn’t any waste oil feedstock and many suppliers are making bio from imported palm oil.
Gomti’s fuel has cleared out my fuel starvation problem, which leads me to think it was probably caused by sludge in the bottom of the tank of the Iranian soya oil. I only had a couple of hundred litres left by the time I topped up with 400 litres from Gomti, and their fuel has probably diluted the sludgy remains and the bus is flying along at 80km/h again.
Nothing in India is a fixed price so I dare say I should have haggled a bit, but even so, that works out at about $1.70/litre which is nuts when you think Diesel is $0.60. How is that ever going to make an economic biodiesel? They tell me it’s only used for research at the moment; bought up by producers at a premium price to experiment with.
Sounds like crap to me. The expertise for turning Jatropha oil into biodiesel has been known for a long time now. The challenge is how to grow it efficiently. Varieties/strains/crop rotation/land resting e.t.c. so that plantations can produce good yields with low levels of irrigation on marginal land.
Turns out that over the last 4-5 years since people started talking about Jatropha there’s been millions of dollars used to buy up land rights for growing the crops, but no one has done the unglamorous (and un-venture-capitalist-funded) work of actually developing varieties and production practices. The money-go-round fell apart just over a year ago when D1 Oils, one of the biggest players in securing Jatropha land rights went bust. Despite having the paper capacity to produce massive amounts of oil they only seem to have produced a couple of thousand litres that have sat in a warehouse in Tyneside since 2007. I was offered it for this trip at one point.
D1 are now back and smaller and focussing on researching the agricultural techniques needed to get good production from Jatropha. It’s a plant that takes 5 years to start bearing fruit so it’s a long research process.
In the meantime I have struck really lucky in my quest for waste power. At the Indian border a very enthusiastic entrepreneur called Rocky and his family excitedly ask for a tour around the bus. He tells me there is a man in his town of Haldwani who makes biodiesel and I should come and visit.
I do, and Sanjeev of Gomti Biotech explains the amazing process he’s developed to extract oil from the waste products produced by a vegetable oil manufacturer. The waste looks like oily mud and Sanjeev uses his own patented system of solvent extraction to get 20% of it back as oil which makes the then uses to make great biodiesel. It’s a similar process to extracting oil from sewer grease and trap grease.
The fuel is a blend of Soya waste and Mustard waste so it should stay nice and runny even in the cold Haldwani winters. It’s quite dark and it smells pretty odd. Gomti sell their fuel at 3 local filling stations, and people buy it because it’s cheaper, and has a higher octane rating than normal diesel. There’s no pretence at being green here, but actually this process seems really green to me, and could help the fundamental problem faced by Indian Biodiesel producers that there isn’t any waste oil feedstock and many suppliers are making bio from imported palm oil.
Gomti’s fuel has cleared out my fuel starvation problem, which leads me to think it was probably caused by sludge in the bottom of the tank of the Iranian soya oil. I only had a couple of hundred litres left by the time I topped up with 400 litres from Gomti, and their fuel has probably diluted the sludgy remains and the bus is flying along at 80km/h again.
Tuesday, 6 October 2009
Cotoretta Milanese
On the crowded tube my dad bumps into a respectable looking 50 year old man in a stylish suit with a briefcase on his way home from work.
“Sorry” says my dad, “there’s a lot of us here.”
Within seconds this man is telling us it’s not us there’s a lot of but it’s them, “estra comunitari” people from outside the EU, foreigners. I glance around the carriage and aside from 2 or 3 South Americans it all looks pretty Milanese to me. I’m so stunned I don’t react as I listen with incredulity to a diatribe spout forth about how they are untrustworthy, workshy, cheats, we should stamp them out...
This is obviously an acceptable voice of the Legista (supporters of the Lega Nord, a party that would give the BNP a run for their money).
What’s surprising is how easily and comfortably this all came out without invitation, but when I challenged him he shrivelled, looking at me confused like he’d just walked into the ladies toilets backtracking as he realiesed, you’re not one of us.
This at the end of the day which has seen me repeatedly fail to persuade restaurant managers to part with their waste oil. Men who have no imagination and are gripped by the fear of the unknown. It’s clear some thought I was trying to catch them out with some sort of a trick, but for most it was just easier to say no rather than do something out of the ordinary.
I found a Chinese run restaurant (serving Italian food) where they happily gave me their oil. The night before I’d eaten “Cotoretta Milanese” there. While I pumped 30 litres I had this buzzing sound of their neighbour telling me how the Chinese had tried to flush the oil away but she’d stopped them and these foreigners, you know, can’t be trusted to follow the rules...
I tuned her out and focused on the oil, too sludgy and by the time I’d got the barrels out to the bus it was all shaken up.
I’m re-reading Nick Davies, Flat Earth News. It’s about how the process of UK news gathering and journalism has been affected by cost cutting and libel laws. The day I arrived in Italy 300,000 people gathered in the main square in Rome to protest about free speech in the press.
Berlusconi controls the state TV, the main private channels, and much (though not all) of the press and his control is such that the scandal of him fucking prostitutes, including a secretly recorded conversation where he solicits one, was effectively silenced. That he wants to fuck prostitutes is his affair, he is after all over 70 and I imagine struggles to get it up or get it off so who else is going to do him? But that he lies openly about it and is able to silence the issue when he is found out as a liar is really frightening.
Italy’s economy is doing well despite the crunch, and this is down to Berlusconi’s leadership. At least he has led the country where the left has been in factionalised disarray for decades. But Musolini famously got a depressed Italy working and made the trains run on time, testament that autocracy isn’t the end-all.
The attitude and openness of the Legista on the train rings of 1930’s German attitudes towards Jews. And on that subject I discovered tonight that my great grandfather, Andrea Piva, helped Jews escape Italy to Switzerland while they were being rounded up in and sent to concentration camps. Not for money and at great risk to himself he used one of his villas in the north of Italy (they were quite a moneyed family back then and had several villas) as an assembly point then used mountain guides to get them across the border. Interesting to think there is a history of supporting oppressed communities in my family.
Even the street art in Milan is shit. “Roberto ti Amo”, “Fuck Police”, “Inter”, “Juve”. Not exactly thought leadership, and graphically little more than bad handwriting block capitals sprayed scattergun on every wall. This is a sure sign that there is no credible or thoughtful counter culture, no creativity, no angry youth interrogating and challenging authority, just like in the media. This in the birthplace of the renaissance. Buonanotte Buonarroti.
Without a counter culture there are no alternative ideas and alternative thinking has no way of leaching into the mainstream. They are hot on recycling and sorting here, but when it comes to alternative energy, environmental issues and energy savings, they are leagues behind.
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