Tag: planetary resources

Erik Orsenna’s “La Terre a soif”.

Post author By Stanley
Post date 11 April 2023

I appreciate Erik Orsenna for his erudition, his Cartesian thinking, his poetry and his ability to find the detail that will amuse the reader while informing him. In his book, the author tackles with equal comfort a wide variety of themes relating to history, religion, philosophy, the environment, climate change, renewable energy, pure science, politics and economics.

Being first and foremost a man of the field, he quickly recognized the need to develop and maintain political contacts in many countries in order to facilitate his travels in areas often considered problematic. The reader benefits from this privileged access.

In “La Terre a soif“, he presents us with portraits of thirty-three rivers around the world. The list is not exhaustive, of course, because after years of travel and observation, he was pressed by the publisher to produce his book. I know that if it were up to him, he would still be on the road accumulating information, each more interesting than the other.

Here are some of the rivers discussed in this book: Mississippi, St. Lawrence, Loire, Nil, Congo, Ganges, Mekong, Colorado and even Panama’s two rivers. The smallest of the rivers mentions in the book flows in Brittany, France and is called Trieux, while the largest is the Amazon in Brazil.

With some of the more powerful countries like China, or Israel and a few others, negotiating for the equitable administration of a river is difficult. The dams built by a powerful country reduce the flow downstream and the smaller surrounding countries make do with what is left. Water harvesting also dries up land over long distances, affecting agricultural production.

Navigation on waterways must also adapt to the reduced flow. One example is the Panama Canal: [DeepL translation]: “ The lack of water is the great fear of Panama. We remember that the heart of the canal is the great Gatún Lake. If it were to dry up, the ships would run into rocks and sand: they would no longer be able to transport their cargo from one sea to the other. Trucks would have to take over”. (p.252)

In contrast, the author shows that there are ways to administrate a major river so that it benefits the riparian countries. He cites the management of the St. Lawrence River by the United States and Canada as an example.

Contrary to what one might think when it comes to the environment and water scarcity, not everything in this book is negative. On the contrary, Erik Orsenna has understood that the reader is tired of alarmist statements. The author has therefore designed a very well-balanced book where it is possible to make the reader’s thoughts evolve without the latter feeling the need to take an antidepressant at each chapter.

Click on the link for other books on environment and geopolitics in my blog.

Title : La Terre a soif

Author: Erik Orsenna

Edition : Fayard

ISBN : 978-2-213-72075-3

Environment Tragedy at sea

Chasing the Thunder.

Post author By Stanley
Post date 21 March 2023

This book is sure to please fans who can understand French and true stories. “In pursuit of the Thunder – the story of the longest naval chase of all time” quickly hooks us, especially since it is a first in maritime history. The authors of this investigative story are two experienced journalists by the name of Eskil Engdal and Kjetil Saeter.

The information they were able to collect through multiple interviews around the world allows the reader to better understand what hides behind the theft of fishery resources in Antarctica.

This illegal fishing is a big business where the mafia, especially Spanish, does not hesitate to order the cutting of fishing nets or simply to sink a trawler to prevent the obtaining of evidence. Click on the link for a video of this maritime accident.

The chase takes place in inhospitable waters and spans several months and over 15,000 kilometers as we follow the stories of several members of the chase team as well as the illegal fishermen.

The authors discuss the squandering of resources, the lax legislation regarding illegal fishing in international waters, the methods that criminals use to remove a boat’s registration from the registers, the lack of political courage at the international level, the omerta that reigns in the villages where illegal fishermen operate, money laundering and modern slavery.

The Thunder’s captain does everything in his power to escape the pursuers. This escape leads him to sail in very risky areas through passages almost blocked by ice, hoping that the smaller pursuing ship will not dare to venture on the same route. He also steers his trawler into areas where strong waves risk sinking the pursuing ship.

Captain Peter Hammerstedt of the pursuit ship Bob Barker does not back down from any obstacle that stands in his way during the chase. He shows a determination that infuriates the Thunder’s crew and lead them to make mistakes.

The ecological thriller Chasing the Thunder was screened in 2019 at the World Biodiversity Conference.

In March 2023, more than 100 countries signed a treaty on high seas diversity, after 15 years of effort. Greenpeace welcomed the treaty, but demands that it be translated into action…

Reading this book alone will awaken the reader to many previously under-reported aspects of illegal fishing on the high seas, all in the context of a hunt unique in the history of maritime shipping.

Click on the links for other books on the environment, geopolitics, tragedies at sea or controversial issues on my blog.

Title: À la poursuite du Thunder

Authors: Eskil Engdal and Kjetil Saeter

ISBN: 978-2-330-14724-2

Environment

The Conundrum

Post author By Stanley
Post date 16 September 2014

The Conundrum: How Scientific Innovation, Increased Efficiency and Good Intentions can Make Our Energy and Climate Problems Worse. Originally published by Riverhead Books, 2011.

This book is certainly a nice surprise. The author, David Owen, adopts a contrarian view on the supposedly positive effects of eco-energetic products on the environment. He develops his subject in a humoristic way, often citing himself as a bad student when it comes to excessive consumption of planetary resources. Owen makes the argument that it is often easier to think at length about a problem than to actually do something about it.

Mr. Owen successfully demonstrates that the only efficient solution to slow down global warming and act against excessive use of planetary resources is to lower general consumption. Instead of supporting the idea that eco-energetic solutions will save the environment, he demonstrates that they have, in fact, a rebound effect.

With science helping to create new and less expensive products, overuse gradually becomes the norm. Because of their low cost, these same products become available to a greater number of new users, thus creating a rebound effect and increasing the consumption and impact on the environment. The idea here is not to forbid the poorest people to have access to products that could improve their quality of life, but to aim for a better distribution of the planetary resources by asking the richest countries of the world to lower their own consumption.

Many forms of transportation are analyzed: the use of the electric car, commuter train and modern aviation. Let’s consider aviation: decades ago, a plane on an intercontinental flight was polluting the air more than today. Technological innovations helped diminish the level of pollution produced for each individual flight. The engines need less fuel and aircrafts are made of lighter components, etc. On a micro-scale effect, we could assume that this is a real success. But on a planetary scale, it is easy to realize that the number of flights have increased tremendously. A growing population, added to lower ticket prices and easier access to new customers help increase the carbon footprint.

When it comes to the impact of consumption on the environment, the micro-scale vision prevails. The responsible consumer tells himself: “I bought an electric car, or a hybrid vehicle, so I did my share for the environment”. The real solution does not reside in the possibility of doing more kilometers for a liter of fuel, but to do less kilometers on a yearly basis and eventually reduce the total number of drivers and vehicles. This looks like a huge proposition. The author explains that the use of a vehicle, whatever it is, requires the development and maintenance of an ever increasing number of kilometers of roads and highways. This also has the indirect effect of facilitating, for an ever larger number of drivers, access to suburbs that are increasingly farther from higher density zones.

David Owen stresses the importance of densification. Not any densification, but a well-planned one, where the citizen does not need to use a vehicle since he has access to all the essential services within a short distance. The site www.walkscore.com has some interesting information on the subject. The author names New-York and Hong-Kong as the two most eco-energetic cities in the world. Easier said than done. Especially when we realize that those cities are becoming environmental examples because they do not have a choice due to the limitation of a small territory that forces massive densification. We cannot deny, though, that a planned densification increases the number and diversity of available services.

But if we densify some areas while widening and extending highways that facilitate access to suburbs and low density areas, we apply opposite policies, thus greatly slowing down the densification process. This is a balance difficult to achieve. In order to solve some traffic problems, many cities have adopted the commuter train when it is clear in advance that the poor density of the population, added to a large territory, will prove ineffective.

The author names Phoenix as an example: this city has a modern commuter train serving a population twice as big as Manhattan but operating on a territory that is two hundred times larger. So the operation is solved by a yearly recurrent deficit.
In the end, the main problem is that it is easier to buy eco-energetic products and preserve a lifestyle, than to diminish our level of general comfort by reducing our consumption of planetary resources. But one must admit that it is not easy for the consumer to change his lifestyle, especially when he is constantly solicited by publicity and propaganda to increase his consumption.

At the end of his book, David Owen quotes Daniel Nocera, who holds the Henry Dreyfuss Chair in Science of Energy, at MIT: [my translation] “…confusion arises when we believe that with our heart we can solve environmental problems while, doing so, we only solve the problems of consciousness”.

Note: David Owen is a regular contributor to the New Yorker. He has written many books, among them Green Metropolis (2009), about the ecological superiority of megalopolis like New-York.