Tuesday 27 April 2010

If I Pug Can Do It So You Can Do It

Don't wait for the change, you are the change. The change will come when everyone of us changes.

Thanks Charles for the link.

Sunday 25 April 2010

I Want

Much wisdom often goes with brevity of speech. Sophocles

Saturday 24 April 2010

Mr. José Quereda Sala

I attended a talk in February 2007 which was given by Mr. José Quereda Sala, a teacher who belonged and belongs to the Jaime I university's climate department and it was the first time that I listened to somebody who was not centered on the energy production when speaking about climate change. And I say that because until then (and now), the emissions of CO2 because of burning fossil fuels were the main cause of global warming.

The teacher raised overpopulation as the main cause of global warming. He said that only by existing a person, he or she is affecting the climate in terms of CO2, methane and nitrate oxides emissions (someway he was right).

As I said, until then, the energy production sector was over the last but not least overpopulation effects besides overpopulation is it itself a big deal. The theory of climate problems because of the energy production sector had been, in the recent meeting celebrated in Madrid, the main point to readdress the fight against climate change. Well, for Mr. José was not a theory but a hypothesis which is not the same...

Taking advantage of the round of questions I asked: Why don't you have into account all the carbon coming from the burning of fossil fuels which didn't existed in the atmosphere and has been incorporated? In other words: We have created a problem where there wasn't any one. One more question: Why your figures on CO2 in the atmosphere along the history don't coincide whith the rest of speakings I have attended and all the documentation I have consulted? Summarising the answer: According to Mr. José everything was pending of revision. Then I thought that all those things he was saying were business, don't you think so? Why not to give this issue the importance it supposedly deceives? But as I think the worst of people I think behind the CO2 there are many oil companies in the shadow... so we're speaking about a lot of money... but a lot of money and interests... Would this man belong to that little group which didn't accept the outlook? Their motives he would have and I had to accept them but not to share. By the way, this man also dropped a comment about oil made from oranges, but as I said in other post, other people has figured and it seems not to be so environmentally efficient. And of course, one of the best quotes during the speaking: Wind-Powered Turbines kill birds... How great! Does anybody know, at this moment on in life, a kind of energy without any impact in the environment? What I think is that we should ask ourselves if before installing the turbines have been a serious study because don't pull the leg ourselves, there are interests even for producing green energy at any price: money is the root of all evil.

Mr. Quereda also commented spaniards can go getting ready if forecasts about increase of temperatures become true: less water because of a decrase in rainfall, less water because of higher temperatures. In other words: it never rains but pours. To get an idea of what could be coming: and increase of 0.5ºC in the mean temperature supposes an evaporation increase of 10% in the place in which we live. And if we want to add fuel to the fire: optimistic forecasts are around an increase of 2-4ºC. So imagine!!

I'd like to finish with a comment Mr. Quereda did and which according to his words, it seemed to be a typical comment in his circle of friends: to make people aware of something the only thing you have to do is to terrorize them. Mr. Quereda, are you aware of the damage you can cause with such a comment? It's not a question of going to the street an begin to cry, commit suicide or rest with our arms crossed regretting ourselves. It's a question of working hard to try to fix as much as possible the problem we have generated. It's a question of working hand in hand, of pulling one's weight. It's a question of changing our way of doing things and establishing a new order. If people are difficult of making aware by nature, your comments are not helping anything at all. Thanks once more.

Tuesday 13 April 2010

Brave, Crazy or a Sixth Sense

Sometimes one doesn't know why some things happen. Sometimes some people are able to do things that are unreachable for the rest of mortals. Maybe is not a question of not being able but something built-in.

Today I'm speaking about Kevin Richardson, a man who has the ability to connect with those animals known as dangerous. Is he a brave man? Has he gone crazy? Is there anything tricky? Or is it that he just has "something" different to connect with such animals? I'm not a ethologist nor a biologist and I can't give an objective explanation. Will animals be something more than animals? Will there be anything which we don't want to see?

Maybe, as one day an elderly woman told me speaking about slaughterhouses, maybe is better not to know some things about if animals have something we call feelings.


Here you are some pictures.

Tuesday 6 April 2010

On Freedom, Licentiousness and Dictatorship

I am 35 and I don't have to make an effort to remember some elderly people speaking about the times when cars were less numerous or even an exception in the streets. Above all, having a car in a village in those times was an expression of being wealthy. cars began to become something more normal about the end of the 60s and the beginning of the 70s. Up to that moment, a car was something accepted by the rest of the means of transport: pedestrians, bicycles, buses, trolleybuses, trams, coaches, etc, etc. And I say it was accepted because the car just was one more element in the streets.

Times have changed and, for better or for worse, the car has become a model or symbol of progress (badly understood from my point of view), and what's more, I would dare to say it has become a plague. Such an incredible drive was given to the car by population and political circles that it converted democratic mobility into a tyrannical one. We passed from sharing the streets with our bicycles and the rest of vehicles to be expelled in straightforward terms in favor of a mobility based on four wheels and an inefficient engine which poisons the air we breathe.

Today, organizations of city bikers and in favour of a sustainable mobility, feel, or at least I feel, like being in a crusade. But I would like to point out that I do not want the car to die out, I want an affable crusade, I do not want to do with it what it did with us. The only thing I want is to recover the space that once belonged to our ancestors and makepeople understand that we, “the no cars”, are not a nuisanc,e but one more part of “the urban ecosystem”, where all of us, in one or other way, had and have our place. One of the problems we face is how to make addicted car drivers understand this point. It is necessary they understand their cars eat up a great quantity of natural resources which are compromising the recycling capacity of our planet. It is necessary they understand their selfish and comfortable position, we even could add that driving a car is something inactive in cultural and antinatural terms. Obviously, a great quantity of excuses are spread everywhere. Excuses like “everybody does it”, “if I do not do it others will”, etc, etc. The point is tthat we shouldn’t deceive ourselves, change has to come from inside each one of us; we do not have to wait for others, politicians included, to change things, because nobody will do it. Don't be so passive because that way we will not get to any worthy place.

So I think there are reasons to wonder about the title of this writing. I am not telling anybody not to buy a car, for the love of God, but I think that with a consumist eagerness or without it, the vehicle of four wheels has always been sold as a symbol of freedom. Can we understand freedom being slaves of a monthly bill to pay the vehicle, fuel, breakdowns and maintenance ? Thanks to the spread and imposition of the car, we have been deprived of good buses and trains networks, which are far more efficient than cars and which would also allow us to get to many places. Are we to understand progress as a highway arriving at every village in our country? Regarding buses, some people can plead that there have been some attempts that have failed, at least in our province, such as the case in Onda. But humans are conservative and creatures of habit, we do only understand of physical barriers, there is no way and time is out. A lot of money has been spent on campaigns making people aware of the wrong use of the car, so the moment of making people fed up with their cars has arrived: speed limits strictly controlled, obstacles such as level changes in the asphalt, reducing suddenly the width of the road with little gardens, shared lines for buses and bicycles s which would reduce the space to private cars, etc, etc... So taking measures like these, the private car would stop being the main character in our streets.

It is nice, really nice to be free and feel the freedom, being free to get everywhere by one's car but, when that one makes of the use an abuse, freedom becomes licentiousness and that should not be allowed, or at least I understand that this is the way.