Scrubbing

Here's some environmental thoughts from an article in National Geographic.

Scrubbing the skies to remove CO₂ seems to be one of the next great ideas currently being promoted in relation to climate change. It seems to make sense. If CO₂ as a major green-house gas and being direclty linked with human activity is one of the reasons for global warming, then it seems reasonable that finding a way to remove the excess of CO₂ from the atmosphere must surely be a good thing. The Nat Geo article in the August 2010 issue explains some of the ideas behind the proposed technology and shows a method currently being considered. Now while I agree with the idea a few alarm bells began to ring while reading this article and one of my biggest fears became reality in the final paragraph. I shall explain further.

The whole proposal seemed to be an excellent idea but my one big fear was that we would view this technology as a solution rather than part of a cure, and that because we could remove the CO₂, then we would not need to change our bad habits. I believed that surely somebody intelligent enough to come up with this technology would not be so short-sighted as to believe their ideas were sufficient, but I was wrong. In the final paragraph of the article are the words “jet travel would become guilt free again. We could keep our cars and gas stations - no need for a whole new hydrogen- or electric powered infrastructure. Subversive thought: We could keep our lifestyles. That’s historically what we’ve done”. Surely we should be looking to the future and making all the changes necessary, not looking to the past, or simply fixing each problem as it arises. Have greater vision and consider many possibilities, even consider how our actions may cause new problems in the future and do something about it now. Just because historically we have always taken one course of action, it does not make it right.

If you read the article you will note that they talk about removing the CO₂ and then we can do this with it, or put it there, or store it. Never at any point to they suggest that consideration has been given to the consequences of storing it in one place or another. What would be the long term consequences, would we be passing on new problems. The options they offer may well be viable, they may well be the only ones we have at present, but at the very least show that you are aware that we may be passing on problems for the future by solving our own current ones

Talking of National Geographic, here's another photograph.

And just for any surfers who haven't been surfing recently, i.e. me

Finally:

Look around the day, I’m alive on being around where waves come sailing with curls all flying, yeah I spend a lot of time inside the world of delightful rain and the whirling wind blows its song around the bay, and the wind knows my name.

Peter Howe “I’m alive”

My path

The surfer’s path is the path that I try to follow, not so much by choice but more through need. Read this statement and you may understand.

Surfers are dreamers. We ride waves through the day, then we re-ride them in our sleep and mind-surf  them in our daydreams. These little flashbacks keep us going through the flat spells and dry times inevitably encountered in “real life”

Fuelling these dreams are visions of perfection. Perfect waves are what we all want, and so we travel - monthly, twice a year, annually or whenever we can afford it. One thing is for certain, regular surf missions are essential.

However we do it, we surfers are doing what so many others can’t seem to achieve in their lives - we’re making daydreams happen - we’re hunting for our own kinds of perfection, and sometimes we actually find it.

Our paths might just be local, or they might take us across the world, but either way there’s no doubt we are some of the luckiest people around in a world full of beauty, diversity and maybe endless perfect waves.

Who knows what it means to be a surfer? Perhaps it’s something in our exposure and connection to the passions of nature that makes our lives wildly different from those of the uninitiated. One thing we know for sure: we want those perfect waves ... and those perfect moments we find along the way. Like the pilgrim or the holy man,we follow our own roads to our perfection. Call it what you will, it is known as the surfer’s path.

For those of you in the know, it is also a very good magazine, one that is based on sound environmental/sustainable principles, with some fabulous images.

Most surfers are very environmentally aware, maybe because of our close link to the movements and cycles of nature, and as such we all try to do all that we can. It is a great source of angst to many of us that the passion we have also happens to be a bad example of sound environmental principles i.e. travel (especially by air), surf board & wet-suit manufacture. But it goes beyond individual needs and many surfers passionately support environmental organisations such as Surfrider Foundation, Surfer’s Against Sewage and Save Our Surf

And just because

Finally an inspirational thought:

There is great happiness in not wanting, in not being something, in not going somewhere.