I think SL will always prefer energy independence (who wouldn't?), so hydro power is v. important. But oil simply can't be discounted – in fact they're starting drilling & exploration off the NE coast, now that the LTTE's been crushed.

Iran, Pakistan, China, Vietnam, India – these countries stood by SL (weapons, supplies, intel & credit) in the last bitter stages of the Eelam War 4, whilst the EU lectured and pontificated about human rights. The US isn't too happy about Iran, but SL (as a small country) has to play a very subtle game, balancing the demands of various great powers.

Here's a superb account of how SL beat off EU-instigated HR bullying at the UN:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KE27Df0...

Here's a solar powered cooker which deals with many of the problems I've mentioned about firewood etc. So stuff is happening, albeit slowly.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7991654.stm

Forgive me for saying this. Whilst I can appreciate that Sri Lanka is poor, the deal with Iran strikes me as a two edged sword. To what extent do you see the hydro deal being just a sweetener to dependency on petrochemicals?

It strikes me as a bit odd too that solar power isn't used so much. I'd have thought that, assuming they are looking to the future, that most oil producing nations ought to be investing in this technology. Given their locations and open skies they could forget about what's under the ground and look at the photons falling on it instead.

There is this map. Again, you have to scroll down *sigh* which shows just how little of the Earths surface you have to cover to meet our global energy needs. It can't be that hard, can it?

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2...

On the subject of bankers. No. I just want them all exported to some sort of non money economy, much like you might get at the South Pole.

You are completely correct in seeing the jump to mobile phones as an example of bypass.

I also appreciate it. It makes a change from the ‘firing from fixed positions’ stuff. Don’t get me wrong. On clean environments, reducing pollution, emissions, waste recycling, removal of dangerous chemicals from foods etc, I’m with you 100% because its proven and immediately improves our lives.

But power generation, as always (for poor countries) comes down to cost. In SL, for instance, Iran’s just agreed to fund a new petroleum refinery & hydroelectric station. Both of these power stations will aid rural electrification – at least 1,000 villages. Who will argue against the petroleum-driven power station?

http://www.nation.lk/2009/11/08/news1.htm

Solar power provision in tropical, sun-drenched poor countries (or rather, the lack of it) has always puzzled me. Why aren’t solar panels more widely available? Is it (again) a question of cost? I was recently in Turkey and most houses had solar panels on the roof for hot water provision.

I know what you mean by the jump to modernity. The massive uptake of mobiles (in Third World countries), often bypassing the landline stage is proof of this, isn’t it?

On a completely digression, I know that China gets a lot of stick from the usual suspects for it’s poor HR record. But I wonder if the Chinese have something to teach us with this:

http://tinyurl.com/mwj43d

Full story: http://tinyurl.com/yle9ugp

What do you think?

p.s. I made a mistake about The Grauniad. The Sun burns better.

I’d like to say, before I say anything else, that this has been amongst the the most give and take discussions I have had on here. I thank you for that.

I too want their lives improved right now! I’d like to see some of the stuff I talked about earlier being implemented today. There are some, fairly simple things that can be done, solar cell technology which can provide power, right now.

[And I'd have to try to determine the nuclear cycle all over again, but it is possible to generate nuclear energy without hitting the lack of useful Uranium. We used to have a very good nuclear physicist around here for that sort of stuff.]

I suppose, at the end of the day, it is neither my call nor your call. These are betting terms, by the way…

But the question ought to be put in a way that recognises that, at least sometimes, folk could avoid a lot of transitional pain if they just jumped to modernity rather than embracing the 19c. I have seen old films of my city, Glasgow, in the 1950’s, and it was a disgrace of locally generated pollution, smogs and shit. London lost huge numbers of people through it’s early ’50’s smogs. It took a lot of deaths to get the laws changed.

Lets hope we can do bit better, no?

And I am convinced that we should be getting people away from what horrifies you, right now.

Anyone still not convinced, try this experiment at home to re-create the authentic cooking with firewood experience. Just use plenty of old newspapers (the Guardian burns particularly well) to make a fire, place your pot on some bricks (see picture above) to boil an egg.

Thanks for your comments. I obviously agree with you completely on the money front. I have two, I hope, related point to make about this.

First off, if this map is accurate, then the nations that are most at risk of climate change are clustered around the Indian Ocean, and extends across a wide swathe of sub Saharan Africa. Sri-Lanka itself is, as far as I can tell, in the highest risk category.

http://www.maplecroft.com/climateChangeReport.php

(You need to scroll down a little.)

It would seem to me that continuing to advocate a global carbon based economy means that, for nations like that, you are almost playing dice with God. You are assuming that anthropogenic global warming is not a risk, and your gamble, for that is what it is, is not just for the economic welfare of the people that are most likely to be effected but for their very lives, and in many cases the land they live on. I’d rather not gamble.

Moving on, it also seems to me that, with the exception of India, and to a lesser extent Pakistan, these are almost all very poor countries. If we are to bootstrap them into the 21c then energy investment ought to be directed as much at risk reduction as power generation. But I do not see these as exclusive objectives.

There are charts and graphs that show, fairly clearly, that GNP and power usage are positively related. (Both reduced to a per capita basis).

What they do not, and this is a point that has been hammered here ad nauseum, is account for the economics of externalities. By which I mean that a company that derives profits from say plastic manufacture, ought to be accountable for the economic damage it does outwith it’s balance sheet. The example I have in mind is this one:

http://www1.american.edu/ted/MINIMATA.HTM

But nations are as guilty of this as corporations. It is simply that the externality is half a globe away and in a country of which we know very little.

Anyway, that is where I am coming from.

There are good and bad articles in Spiked, as there are on this blog and the one I linked to is excellent.

It makes some irrefutable points about how the West’s eco/green obsession is hindering industrialisation & development in the poor South. The whole point about science is that nothing is truly settled or agreed upon – especially not something contentious as global warming. e.g. Greenpeace wanted to ‘ban’ chlorine. A naturally occurring compound, listed in the periodic table! Jeez!

Trofim: the first thing to do is to ignore the doom mongers, who, from Malthus onwards have been consistently proven to be wrong. I buy locally produced food when I can (e.g. local meat, fresh fruit etc, especially Kent cherries when they can be found) but I also buy food from overseas. e.g. air-freighted Asian vegetables, fruit (Pakistani mangos, a particular favourite) etc. If we were to agree to your argument, the Scottish whiskey industry would be dead. They make Whisky in Japan (and they love their whiskey in Japan), so why import more from Scotland?

You rightly bemoan the UK consumer rejecting ‘imperfect’ fruit & veg. Again, we know how this process was allowed to happen, over 20-30 years….

“….the past 20 years, the EU-wide marketing standards have restricted over 36 types of fruit and vegetables – with only the “finest” looking produce being permitted to sit on our grocery shelves. This has resulted in around 20 per cent of perfectly edible produce being excluded from general sale and wasted.”
http://tinyurl.com/yeftc58

DEFRA & food security? You’re ‘aving a larf, aintcha? I suggest we look at EU farming policy and the disgraceful CAP for examples of incredible waste & over-production.

I’d rather trust the Taleban with farming policy than DEFRA. It seems that the Welsh farmers aren’t too keen on DEFRA’s latest piece of madness, either. http://tinyurl.com/y9hd4mz

Sunny, I hope you’ll join my campaign for Air conditioning, cars and fridges for everyone on the planet and not just for the developed First World!

And will you continue to do so as the price of oil rises and as competition for food and water hots up over the next 20 years, as it is almost bound to if the population rises. And what if the third world farmers prefer to, or have to feed their own populations first? Have you listened to Farming Today? Have you looked up “food security” or “Defra”?

This year the best plums you can get in Britain, from round Evesham and Pershore had to be left to rot or thrown away because, as one grower told me, young people won’t eat anything with a blemish on or a scab or a hole where a wasp has had a nibble. They’d rather have the pristine Californian plums carted 7000 miles. Pristine, because they’ve had more dousings of fungicide and insecticide. Pristine but half the flavour. Appearance is so important to youngsters.
I think that having to import 40% of your food, is not a particularly handy state to arrive at.

Linking to Spiked is like linking to Esso to discuss global warming

….I’m left standing there with no comeback.
I’ve been trumped by someone waving their science degree at me when I couldn’t even get an O level in it.

Though I do think that Spiked mocking the likes of Plane Stupid, and those direct action twerps who invade power stations and climb to the top of the cooling towers is fully justified.

All excellent points (especially irrigation, biofuels etc) with one tiny little problem. Money. I know that they’re even looking at nuclear power options. BTW, the kitchen example isn’t ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Its awful.

I’ve added captions to the kitchen pic to highlight how it works and you’ll see my point even more clearly – hopefully!

http://img211.yfrog.com/i/slkitcheninfo.jpg/

But for most people, they want and need their lives improved now. That includes the incredibly useful personal transportation device, commonly called a car. You wonder why its drooled over? Personal transportation at a time of your own choosing rather than relying purely on mass-transport. Or should cars just be reserved for the rich?

p.s. this reminds me to ensure that I buy all the ‘high food miles’ produce I can, so that farmers in Africa and Asia have a chance of leading a decent life – unlike the Ecotards who’d have us all stop buying food from overseas.

You know what I’d pay to see? A greentard activist going to a remote village in Sri Lanka (or somewhere similar) and telling the people there that they aren’t allowed to avail themselves of modern conveniences powered by fossil fuels. For example they have to continue to wash their clothes by bashing them against rocks in the nearby river, rather than use electric-powered washing machines.

What I’d prefer to see is someone with a whole heap of money from the World Bank going there, looking at their energy needs and their local geography and determining what could be done in partnership with them.

If the situation is as bad as you say then it is going to be just about as simple to build a carbon free rather than a carbon dependent infrastructure. There is, for instance, an approximate tidal rise and fall of six feet around Ceylon. Whilst not great, it is enough to generate energy from tidal power. There is also, rather obviously, the potential for solar energy to make a contribution, and with pumped hydoelectric schemes that does not need to be a daytime only resource.

I agree, obviously, that this only goes to meet the electrical needs of the nation, and I don’t know enough about the country to say for sure, but if you use some of that electricity for irrigation, you could probably grow enough bio-fuel crops, which would let you use the i/c engines that everyone seems to drool over, everywhere. It would also make Sri-Lanka energy independent, which would be a good thing in itself.

Even if the World Bank wouldn’t fund it without expecting a return, it would still be worthwhile.

Thanks. We have to use both. Fossils, hydroelectric, thermal, solar, nuclear; the whole combination. If you don’t want the poor countries to use fossils, how will they convert to other forms of energy? Are they to wait until electric cars are useable or continue to use petrol powered cars until electric vehicles powered by ‘clean’ power plants become a reality?

You can do without fossils if you choose, but you cannot make that decision for people in other, poorer countries.

You know what I’d pay to see? A greentard activist going to a remote village in Sri Lanka (or somewhere similar) and telling the people there that they aren’t allowed to avail themselves of modern conveniences powered by fossil fuels. For example they have to continue to wash their clothes by bashing them against rocks in the nearby river, rather than use electric-powered washing machines.

Another example: in my uncle’s village, the most immediate beneficiaries of electrification and permanent street lights were the children. They no longer had to study using foul oil lamps and snake bite injuries were drastically curtailed. You know why? They could see the ground in front of their feet and thus avoided stepping on snakes. The power for the street lighting came from diesel powered electricity stations.

Similarly, use of gas or electricity for cooking versus wood, cow-dung or coconut husks. A quick google illustrates my point perfectly.

‘Traditional’ kitchen for a poor family: http://tinyurl.com/ye2xf3h

‘Modern’ kitchen for a poor family: http://tinyurl.com/yh3l9s5

What if I were to say to you that I do want people in the ‘Poor South’ to have cars, fridges and air conditioning? What if I were to say to you that we should do it without fossil fuels?

I’d like an answer.

“This was the first time I heard the suggestion that flying abroad should be rationed, or worse still, banned. The denunciation of material comfort is so widespread in the West that even schoolchildren seem to think affluence is an evil. Many people I met in Britain told me that there is less happiness and laughter in British society due to economic development. Some said that Africans are happier than Brits even though they are poorer. I thought that freedom from toil was the centrepiece of economic development, handing anybody the ability to unleash their potential and gain unlimited opportunities: most people in Britain have that freedom; we in Ghana do not.

If Westerners are not happy with such great things, perhaps they should swap with us Africans. We would love to have what these people seem to hate. You see, we believe in the material progress of mankind; the vast majority of Ghanaians I spoke to while making Damned by Debt Relief said they want more from life: more goods, more products, more choice. We hate being constantly subdued by nature; we are tired of dying early; we are tired of sleeping in mud huts; we are tired of walking long distances for water, food and fuel; we are tired of doing our washing by hand; we are tired of farming with hoes and cutlasses and waiting for nature to be merciful unto us. You think this way of life is ‘natural’ and happiness-inducing? Then you should try it out.”

So, I ask again, do you, like me want everyone in the ‘Poor South’ to have cars, fridges and air-conditioning or do you want them to walk everywhere, cook with brushwood and cow-dung and use oil lamps against the darkness?

On a slight digression, if nasty companies like Esso don’t extract fossil fuels, who will? Greenpeace?

Well:

Also, per-lifetime carbon usage must be noted.

Yes.

But.

If it is possible to largely transition us from a carbon using lifetime to, at least, a carbon neutral one, then what?

You are losing me…

You are, I think, pointing out the problems with no corresponding solutions because you see population reduction as the only answer.

I’d be a fool to argue that fossil fuel lobbies don’t carry enormous clout. Of course they do, and they have to be defeated.

There are better ways of generating power anyway, rather than through dead matter.

Also, per-lifetime carbon usage must be noted.

Many, for instance will fly across the globe from a warm country and come to live here… In our automated society. For as long as we have central heating.

In the USA there used to be a company that made a 4 cylinder, swash plate, 100Kw (75hp) stirling cycle motor generator with a 100,000 hour service life between servicing. This motor could be carried in one arm. It ran on any flammable liquid or gas *ahem*. The company went bust a few years ago.

Fossil fuels carry a huge political clout. You don’t think Any of this will be taken seriously?

Yes, there were diagrams and the like about various forms of solar to energy transfer in the original article. I could see how some of the others required water as a coolant, but it is certainly not clear how a Stirling Engine does….I’d have thought.

Wanting to reduce carbon emissions is not just as easy
as reducing population what with rising GNP, which – in some parts of the world – is a necessity. Unless of course you are talking about population reduction. I’d ask you, and anyone else still reading, is that a more realistic option?

But it ought to be entirely possible to leapfrog the industrial revolutions’ reliance on fossil fuels at least for large swathes of power needs That ought to gain us the breathing space we need.

Naadir @ 18. I think it would be fair to say that the initial concerns about a runaway greenhouse effect were a scientific issue long before they became an economic issue. Or a political issue.

The initial concerns over climate change were never a green issue. They were and are still always a socioeconomic issue. 2/3rds of the IPCC reports are devoted to socioeconomic impacts, and a full 100% of the Stern Report is too.

That environmentalists took up the cause is another thing altogether.