I’ve been chipping away at a collection of George Orwell’s essays. They’re fascinating, whether he’s dissecting Charles Dickens’ faux-distaste of the gilded class or ruminating on the plight of unskilled laborers in Morocco, or, most vividly, reporting on his experience of shooting an elephant. At present I’m reading “England Your England”, and the following bit of wisdom stood out to me:

England is not the jewelled isle of Shakespeare’s much-quoted passage, nor is it the inferno depicted by Dr. Goebbels. More than either it resembles a family, a rather stuffy Victorian family, with not many black sheep in it but with all its cupboards bursting with skeletons. It has rich relations who have to be kow-towed to and poor relations who are horribly sat upon, and there is a deep conspiracy of silence about the source of the family income. It is a family in which the young are generally thwarted and most of the power is in the hands of irresponsible uncles and bedridden aunts. Still it is a family. It has its private language and its common memories, and at the approach of an enemy it closes its ranks.

Substitute Shakespeare with Mark Twain and Goebbels with, say, Glenn Beck, and I’d say this portrait makes for a pretty accurate assessment of the United States today.

From an interesting interview with Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic:

Jonathan Safran Foer: The question is, if we don’t say no to this, what do we say no to? If we don’t say no to something that systematically abuses 50 billion animals, if we don’t say no to the number-one cause of global causing, and not by a little bit, but by a lot, if we don’t say no to what the UN has said is one of the top two or three causes of every significant environmental problem in the world, locally and globally, if we don’t say no to something that is clearly – not clear to me, but clear to the World Health Organization – a prime factor in the generation of Avian and Swine flus, if we don’t say no to something that’s making our antibiotics less effective and ineffective, if we don’t say no to something that causes 76 million of food-borne illness every year, just what do we say no to? This is not a case where we need to go to war with another country or spend a trillion dollars or elect a new government. We just need to say no to it.

Recent posts in two environment-related blogs I read, Green Inc. and Treehugger, illustrate exactly the type of project I would love to be associated with: Desertec, a German-led consortium of energy companies looking to capitalize on the vast quantities of solar energy available in the Sahara desert. Further, I was reminded of another incredible concept, the Sahara Forest Project, that connects the use of concentrated solar power plants and seawater greenhouses for agricultural projects. Many questions and concerns about the feasibility and effects of these pie-in-the-sky ideas immediately spring to mind. While I am no expert on energy and geopolitics, I’m going to take a stab at exploring the potential risks and rewards of these two projects in broad strokes.

As the title of this post illustrates, the basic ideas at stake – renewable energy, climate change mitigation, poverty-reduction/development assistance in the third world and a tangible and hopefully long-lasting mutually beneficial relationship between a variety of cultures – are dear to my heart and mind.

Climate change and global poverty are the two biggest challenges humankind faces in the 21st century, and they happen to be inextricably linked. As well summed up in this comment, from the Green Inc. post, sub-Saharan countries will bear a disproportionate share of the terrible effects of global warming. Snip:

The African continent is uniquely vulnerable to climate shifts because 70 per cent of its workers are employed on rain-fed, small-scale farms, and farming is often the engine for national economies, generating export earnings and inexpensive food. Agriculture is the backbone of local economies and GDP in a number of African countries. On average, the sector accounts for 21 per cent of GDP (ranging from 10 to 70 per cent). In some countries, scientists project that farmers will harvest just 50% of current yields by 2020.

Based on this dire forecast, let’s take a look at some of the perceived benefits of these two projects. Both Desertec and Sahara Forest want to use large Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) arrays, with some solar photovoltaic (PV) input to generate power in the sun-rich, population-scarce deserts of northern Africa. CSP is both an old and new concept: using curved or flat mirrors to concentrate the sun’s light on a single focal point, through which water or another liquid is heated to super-high temperatures and is then used as steam to turn turbines and thus create electricity. PVs are solar panels, made mostly of silicon (aka sand), another bountiful resource in the desert.

Obviously, the need for much of the world’s energy demand to shift to carbon-neutral sources is imperative if we are to avoid catastrophic climate change, which, despite a few loud and stubborn (but nonetheless disproved) voices, is no longer a debated issue. For what might happen in a “business as usual” situation, please see this post at Climate Progress.

With both the Desertec and Sahara Forest projects, demand for this renewable energy is perceived to come mostly from Europe. Indeed, Germany itself probably uses as much energy as the entire continent of Africa, and as European countries work to combat their greenhouse gas emissions, more and more demand for renewables will keep the market strong. However, as African countries themselves continue to develop and industrialize, their consumption of energy resources will rise considerably, especially when factoring in the expected rise in population (expected to be around 2.225 billion in 2050). Although much attention is currently being paid to the way China is or is not attempting to fuel much of their own development with so-called green energy, there is a distinct potential here for countries with few natural resources or fossil fuels such as oil or coal but lots of sun and open land to leapfrog dirty industrial development straight to limitless, clean and free energy.

So essentially what we get is clean energy  for (initially) mostly European consumption, likely using the labor forces available in African countries. Here’s where things get sticky. The developed world’s record of interaction with most of Africa is abysmal. From the slave trade to colonization to apartheid to post-colonial political meddling and exploitation of natural resources by multinational corporations that has continued non-stop for hundreds of years and indeed right up to the present day, there is a serious gulf to be bridged in terms of trust and cooperation. While it is arguably true that most African countries are quite right to distrust any foreign energy schemes, it is also true that many of them are incapable or unwilling to develop on their own and are asking for aid trade with the international community. Corruption, bureaucracy and cultural or religious insularity could also hinder progress.

(I will leave aside for now the equally sticky issue of whether some countries should develop at all, or whether allowing some countries – Somalia comes to mind – to simply fester and possibly become havens for terrorist groups is an immediate security interest. I will say I am a firm supporter of a people’s right to self-determination, whether or not that leads to their own extinction or survival.)

Desertec seems to be aware of these issues. The very first of their Frequently Asked Questions list is the following:

Is this simply another way in which Europe will exploit Africa? What are the benefits for the MENA communities?

• The current situation is based on exploiting limited resources like gas and oil, but solar energy is practically unlimited and as such, the owners can’t be “exploited”.
• In the period up to 2050, the MENA Region could become as prosperous as Europe and urgently needs renewables for the generation of electricity and drinking water (considered in the TRANS-CSP study).
• Saving fossil fuels in the subsidized energy supply of African countries will allow selling the fuels more profitably on the world market.
• Earnings from export of electricity by using the unused potential of renewable energies.
• Jobs especially in the construction of solar collectors ==> income ==> building a middle class, instead of the emigration of well-qualified engineers.
• Consequences of climate change produced by Europe will hurt the MENA region first, so it’s only fair if Europe supports the introduction of renewables in MENA
• Technology transfer and development of training programs and studies for renewables in MENA is explicitly promoted by the European side in the framework of the Union for the Mediterranean

This answer isn’t especially explicit that “we will not exploit and plunder”, so as with all big agreements the details would have to be sussed out much further down the road. Furthermore, while the EU may be able to act in unison as an economic bloc, there is little reason to think that the northern African countries will also. Certainly they have their own problems, and if piecemeal agreements with different governments are not carefully crafted, there is a chance that a regional and/or local competition, say, in labor costs or environmental regulations or leases on tribal lands could lead to further strife.

What I’d hope is that agreements can be structured with long-term development in mind. That means training and employing local workers and contributing a good chunk of revenue to local economic development – meaning schools, hospitals, manufacturing, outsourced service centers (like the kind sprouting up all over India now and just starting in places like Rwanda, which I blogged about a while ago), agriculture and so on. It also means attention to the environment – so those high-voltage DC power lines will not be passing through villages and getting the locals killed, a la Shell Oil in Nigeria.

This is where I think the Sahara Forest project becomes quite interesting. While Desertec seems to be further along, likely because the SFP is a private enterprise as opposed to a EU-backed consortium, I love the idea of helping to increase the potential of the local agricultural economy, which is much closer to the traditions of the local people than manufacturing. The way it works is that the seawater used by the CSP arrays and greenhouses is purified in the process (through evaporation and filtration) and can then be used in orchards or jatropha plants (a native crop suitable for biofuel) nearby. As access to fresh water is also one of the paramount challenges of the 21st century, I see this as a triple solution. And that’s not factoring in any carbon-sequestration by the added forestation.

So while the concepts seem rosy, there are many barriers both real and perceived. These are summed up in this Treehugger post, and basically come down to this: it’s the political, not the technological challenges that stand in the way. North African countries are a long way from being considered “safe” places to invest the billions of dollars needed to get these projects up and running. Hell, we can’t even be sure our own unusually-progressive governmental majority can get a half-decent climate bill made into law.

What that means is that there’s time to wait, and for me, to plan. I see the destination, now I just gotta figure out how to get there.

A video short by my friend Magee. The artist is named Outspoken, from Zimbabwe, and the poem is called “Freedom Train”.

In order to be somebody, people must feel themselves part of something. In the nonviolent army, there is room for everyone who wants to join up. There is no color distinction. There is no examination, no pledge, except that, as a soldier in the armies of violence is expected to inspect his carbine and keep it clean, nonviolent soldiers are called upon to examine and burnish their greatest weapons – their heart, their conscience, their courage and their sense of justice.

…

Human beings with all their faults and strengths constitute the mechanism of a social movement. They must make mistakes and learn from them, make more mistakes and learn anew. They must taste defeat as well as success, and discover how to live with each. Time and action are the teachers.

MLK, Why We Can’t Wait, 1963.

I’m moving to California in ten days. Los Angeles to be more precise. I say “back” in the title because I lived in San Francisco for three months in college and because it’s a classic LL Cool J track. I’m going to drive across the United States of America, stopping in at least nine states on the way there. I’ll see friends in New York, family in New Jersey and Atlanta, friends in D.C., Mississippi, New Orleans (where I’ll catch the last two days of Mardi Gras), Austin and possibly New Mexico; more friends and family-friends in Arizona, and finally out to the city of angels, where I hope to add the next splash of paint in this Pollock-style work-in-progress I call a life.

Since I got back, I knew I’d be moving to either New York City or Los Angeles. Boston is a bit too small for me right now, and anyway, I’m not really in Boston. New York, as the center of the known universe, always exerts a certain gravitational pull, not least because many of my friends now call that city home.

But I’ve decided that I need a cleaner slate, a fresher restart, something completely different than the layered atmosphere of old Europe and the gritty but still distinctly Eastern intensity of New York, and LA is all of that. I also have friends in LA – people from high school and college and acquaintance and random chance – that I don’t really know well but would like to. Even better, I have family – well, the younger side of the family – which will help bring some soul to that reportedly soul-less sprawl. My nephews should have a proper Unkie.

There’s also the weather. Tomorrow it’s going to be 79/26 degrees and sunny. And also the next day.

Living in Hungary helped me appreciate the sun. Now I am a glutton for it. I want to be riding my bike and my skateboard every single day, or in the car with the windows down and the stereo up loud, or sitting shotgun rolling down Rodeo or Sunset or the PCH. I will need more t-shirts with funny things written on them. And I want to work with the sun, become business partners with the ultimate source of all the energy and life on this entire planet. The past is indeed the future.

I’m going to do my best to blog the trip, from preparations (I’ve already bought a GPS and arranged places to stay along the way) to move-in at my presently non-existent first sublet. If anyone has any contacts, friends, suggestions, fun things to do or see, secret bars or used-clothing stores, hella dope slang, job leads having to do with renewable energy, art projects, flash mobs, Californian recipes (vegetarian, fish ok), surf/skate shops, condos at Mammoth/Tahoe (with or without jacuzzi), movies, music or anything else they’d like to share, I would love to hear from you.

You can write me at info@what-what.com or my other addresses if you know them.

P.S. Those that hollered that I forgot about the Biggie track with the same title, you know why I’m going back to Cali. Strictly. See you when I get there.

No, the title of this post does not refer in any way to this blog, it refers to the latest novel by Dave Eggers (“A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius”), which tells the story of Valentino Achak Deng, one of the Lost Boys of Sudan. It’s a novel, as opposed to autobiography, because while Deng’s story is told in the first person, it recounts experiences of both himself and others, the effect being to illustrate the general plight of the more than 27,000 young male refugees from the Second Sudanese Civil War who attempted (and to some degree, succeeded) to escape the violence by going to Ethiopia, then Kenya, on foot. This is an interesting facet of the story, as it perhaps reflects a cultural identity as being group-like in nature, as opposed to our western idea of the sole individual path. But I’ll leave those thoughts for another time.

The book was given to me by my uncle, though it has been recommended by others, and he said I’d be hooked almost instantly. I’ve only read about 40 pages, and can already tell you that he was right. However, the reason I’m writing about it now is that something in particular jumped out at me from the first chapter. At this point in the story, Deng has been living in the U.S. for a few years, and although he has been warned about theft and violence in the low-rent community where he lives, he naively opens the door to some strangers and is robbed and beaten. After being intially pistol-whipped and subdued, he begins to take stock of what they might steal:

Lying here, I begin to calculate what they can take from me. I realize with some satisfaction that my computer is in my car, and will be spared. But [Deng's roomate] Achor Achor’s new laptop will be stolen… The records of all the meetings, the finances, thousands of e-mails.

For a victim of civil war, who for years has hidden, been shot at, seen friends killed by planes, soldiers, disease, starvation, even taken by lions, has walked hundreds if not thousands of miles through harsh terrain, then been transplanted to a new and mind-bogglingly different place, a laptop computer is the first thing that he thinks of.

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