JXTC GENRE : DECEMBER 08 TEMPLATE

You must read this article in conjunction with the picture published in this column. Henry Kissinger, at one stage of US foreign policy history was a Colossus. Many Secretaries of State later, Secretary Kissinger still remains colossal in US foreign policy matters. Shuttle diplomacy came of age when he and his boss Richard Milhous Nixon were fashioning out “Détente” long before we heard of Mr. Gorbachov’s “Perestroika” and “Glasnost”. This was a very serious man, Kissinger, who occasionally the cameras would catch nodding off at some conference or the other…At least, I have seen one myself before, in some magazine – I cannot tell if it was Newsweek or Time – apologies if it is neither!
But it is all about nodding off at some of the most (un)likeliest of places.

After all, apart from the English weather, what else do the British find so endearing about their country,  if not their House of Lords, where I am told the Peers are mostly fast asleep or nodding off, but the place, all the same, where the most far reaching constitutional and legislative decisions are reviewed?

I saw this picture on the Project Syndicate website taken by some prankster of a cameraman and my immediate reaction was to take umbrage (I will tell you why later), but I was overcome by the humour of it and burst out laughing! Why not, I said…
The picture shows one of the sessions of the Copenhagen Editors Forum on Climate Change. No marks for recognizing the gentleman in the rather colourful African print. To his right is a colleague, of course fast asleep. But no, that’s unfair; she may just have shut her eyes to rest them from the glare of the power point presentation! But the face in totality betrays it all: She nodded off! The man in the colourful African print, though, has an alibi, his glasses. We cannot quite tell whether his eyes too were shut, but the posture sort of betrays him – looks like a toddler struggling against sleep! A closer examination of the picture also shows that some people around the pair, though out of focus, are also exhibiting signs of somnolence.
But even before this picture appeared on the Project Syndicate website, I had discussed this same issue of nodding off with colleagues during the forum and one on them told me that he actually had to nudge a participant sitting close to him awake, because he had had gone past the “RAM” stage and had actually started a gentle snore…

Any regular attendee at workshops, seminars, conferences, forums and roundtables, or whatever they are called, would know that nodding off is as part of the programme as a coffee or lunch break. The problem is, at what time do you nod off when something vital is being tabled or said?! Pictures of delegates snoozing at the UN and other international events are common and funny. There was one about Nana Akwasi Agyeman, who was in the UN entourage of Mr. J.J. Rawlings in the early nineties, which did the rounds of the Ghanaian press. His head was so tilted backwards that you felt his neck would break! Then there was this one showing a pair of African diplomats in such contorted positions that you could not help but laugh. That one also did its fair share of rounds on the internet attracting all manner of comments!

If the inconvenient truth be told, there will be more opportunities for nodding off, dozing or snoozing when the UN Climate Change conference convenes in Copenhagen this December. It would be a gathering of serious people intent on making our planet a safe place, so that when we go to bed, we would sleep in peace knowing that the glaciers would not melt and raise our sea levels to drown us from the face of the earth or the deserts expand to dry us all out of the surface of the earth, or the rains cease and kill our crops/livestock…
These are frighteningly weighty matters that must be addressed, but with more humour than hubris. Somehow, the race would not be wiped off the face of the earth…

Mankind bashing

Let me make this absolutely clear: I am not a climate change denier. It is just that I feel my race – the human race – is being vilified, though for good reason, but in a one-sided fashion. At the Copenhagen Editor’s Forum (one of the preludes to the main event in December), I paid attention to the many words of wisdom that were spoken and agreed with everything that was put forward on how we can and should save our planet from destruction by green house gasses, the majority of which we as humans produce.  But reassuringly, I understand cows too are part of the problem: They fart or belch methane or some other such gasses that all add up to overheat our planet. You see, if things become so bad, we can at least round up all cows on the planet and slaughter them but we cannot do that to humans…

This is no subject for kidding though... Science has proved beyond reasonable doubt, that if we do not cut down on certain gaseous emissions, mostly from heavy industrial activity, we will do terrible, possibly irreparable damage to our home, Planet Earth.

But how did we allow ourselves to travel so far on this route to self-destruction? Simple: Human progress. And that is why I feel we are also not being fair to our race. In coming this far, from our days when we went upright on the African plains, to today, when we are visitors to other celestial bodies,  it’s been one heck of a digging, drilling and cutting experience. All of these activities ended in value addition. We moved from tree tops and caves to houses; we got the wheel going and travel became easier; we moved from nakedness to clothing, etc. As our confidence grew, we started taking on Mother Nature herself, changing things to suit our expanding horizons and before long we became masters of our planet…

The refining that went with the digging, drilling and cutting, started the buildup of what today is threatening our existence. But without these activities could we have come this far with all the inventions and discoveries that have made human life worth living? Hardly. So the debate for me is how we can continue with this progress and also protect our home.
Some six years ago, I underwent a full brain surgery to dislodge a pituitary adenoma. It was a successful procedure but I ended with two tiny clamps in my cranium – they will remain there for the duration of my stay on earth. They were fashioned from some special metals – a product of drilling or mining the earth. Of course the surgeon’s skill is another product of human progress. The scalpels he used, the suturing needles, indeed the heart lung machine they put me on, the MRI and CT scans – all those things that worked in unison to save my life – products of great human inventiveness, also contributed to global warming because they were forged from substances from the bowel of the earth.

I need not belabor this argument because it is self-evident; given the chance, humankind can rise above this climate change Armageddon, but how? Again it is simple. The science and technology that brought us this far from our wonderings on the African plains can help us seal the expanding hole in our ozone layer.

The future lies in the hands of our scientists and technologists, our future heroes. The money must go to them. They must be our big time earners, not footballers, rock stars or greedy bankers. Oh yes, we must have the mandatory cuts or caps on our carbon emissions but it is the same science and technology which has brought us this far and also warned us in the first place about global warming that would find the answers. My bet is on our scientists and technologists…  


Samsoe’s Windmills

The noble knight from La Mancha turned them into monsters to be fought till the last drop of blood. If over the years, windmills have become objects of derision, subjects for mild amusement or reference points for the highest expression of eccentric behaviour, it is because, in giving us Don Quixote, (one of the most likeable characters in the history of human literature), his inventor, Miguel de Cerevantes pitted him against a windmill to give full vent to his 16th century code of chivalric honour.   "Tilting at windmills" has gone into usage to describe any hare-brained venture but specifically to attack non-existent enemies. In the 16th century, windmills of course, were ubiquitous in many parts of Europe, where even in those far off days they utilized wind power to provide the energy to mill grain. Their brooding and impressive presence on the landscape must have seemed so foreboding and with just a little imagination, they could be turned into real, living, breathing creatures to engage the attention of any knight looking for a cause worth dying for…

Five or so centuries down the line, windmills have joined the frontline strategies of trying to save our planet from the ravages of climate change. Science and technology have refined them to such an extent that Don Quixote would think twice before rushing at one with a lance, but the principle remains the same: use wind power to generate energy. A number of countries have gone past the experimental stage and windmills are now a serious part of the energy supply chain. It was in the Moroccan town of Essaouira that a “farm” was pointed out to me some three years ago. Somewhere in the distance, I saw them, rather elegant structures, I thought, with the blades gently turning round and round…Essaouira has the reputation of being the windiest place in Morocco, perhaps even the whole of Africa, so the Moroccans decided to tap into this free natural resource to provide part of their energy requirements.
I am told that the town of Winneba, thirty miles in a westerly direction from the Ghanaian capital, Accra, was once referred to as Windy Bay and over the years, it morphed into what it is today – Winneba. Could Winneba, one of these days also use its abundance of wind to become a farmland for Ghanaian windmills?

But that’s what precisely they’ve been doing on the island of Samsoe in Denmark, for some years now. The literature goes like this: “In November 1997, the island of Samsoe won a competition between five Danish islands. The challenge was to convert the island’s energy system to renewable energy within a period of 10 years. Today, Samsoe is almost entirely independent of fossil fuels and 100% self-sufficient in terms of electricity supply.”

And we are told that:”In 1997, the energy supply on Samsoe was based almost entirely on fossil energy sources. Today the islands 11 onshore wind turbines supply enough energy to meet the islands entire electricity needs. Almost 70% of island’s heating needs are met by way of renewable energy based on straw, solar power and woodchips and energy used for transportation is 100% compensated by the electricity production from the island’s 10 offshore wind turbines.”

I went with other editors after the Copenhagen Project Syndicate Editors Forum to Samsoe to have a close encounter with this energy efficient island. First stop was at the Samsoe Energy Academy. It was established in 2007 and “utilizes knowledge acquired on renewable technologies and their successful implementation…” Housed in an unassuming structure, its walls and windows are insulated to minimize energy consumption. The building itself is heated by the local straw-fired district heating plant. It’s been described as a "unique meeting point for business, academic institutions, energy organizations and politicians in a setting which exemplifies the aim and idea of energy self-sufficiency.”

Samsoe is all the rage and the Danes justifiably want to show it off because, again, as the literature tells us, “Renewable energy sources have an advantage over fossil fuels, in that they do not increase atmospheric CO2 levels. Wind and wave power for example are intrinsically CO2 free, while combusting biomass releases the same amount of CO2 that was absorbed from the air to create it – a neutral process overall. Hence investing in renewable technologies is an effective way to combat global warming.” The Danes saw far into the future and took the lead in developing wind power from the 1970s and today, as the world turns towards renewable energy, “almost half the world’s wind turbines are produced by Danish manufacturers.”

Since last year when Ghana’s “oil find” was announced, Ghanaians have been waiting for the day the black gold would start gushing to the refineries, but even though it would rake in some much needed cash for development in other sectors, it would be the renewable energy sources that would be the future, and some of the money from the “oil find” would no doubt, or perhaps hopefully, go into developing our windy bays like Winneba into wind mill enclaves that would eventually reduce our dependence on fossil fuels…

That cannot be a Quixotic undertaking and Don Quixote himself would lowe his lance and bow his head in respect.


Where the Bicycle rules

Of course my little town, Tamale (in the NR), has many bicycle riders. Another hundred or so miles up north from Tamale to Bolgatanga (in the UER), you will see equally impressive bicycle riders. I do not know if you’ve gone farther up north than that, where you would be mesmerized by the sheer volumes of bicycle riders – the motorized and the manual. I am here referring to Ouagadougu, the capital of Burkina Faso.

But it is not these little Ghanaian towns or the Burkina capital that have taken my fancy in this article. It is the capital of this little Nordic nation I am here talking about: Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark.

I was recently sponsored by Project Syndicate to participate in the Global Editors’ Forum on Climate Change in that City. This was a kind of prelude to the really big one expected in December.
Over the years, like a collector of souvenirs, I have added many cities to my collection. It is a collection that spans several continents and I just added this lovely Nordic city.

Historically, Ghana and Denmark go a long way back. I believe the Osu Castle was originally built by the Danes. Called Christiansbourg Castle it went through other hands eventually ending with the British who ruled us for centuries up to March 6 1957 when we took over from them and started messing ourselves up! Sorry, no matter what holidays we declare for our “Founding Father(s)”, the rut started after the British packed and left, but that’s another matter…

I arrived in Copenhagen after crossing two mini time differences, first through London, an hour ahead of us and then my final destination, two hours ahead. Though not as vast as the huge time zones I have traversed over many years of collecting cities, this mini one was enough to kind of slow me down a little.

The general impression: Well, like any other modern European city. Because they all have almost identical templates for urban planning and development, all the European cities I have collected have aspects that are more or less the same: the roads, the buildings, the traffic, the environment – they are all approached with the same kind of mentality, which is “follow the rules”. Though the Danes have refused to join the EU, they operate in many respects like member states of the Union. They are very fastidious about the environment and from what I observed, absolutely terrified by the havoc science has proven beyond reasonable doubt that Climate Change would wreak if mankind does not take remedial measures immediately.

Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen, opening the Editors’ Forum had this to say among other words: “Concluding a global agreement is about securing our future generations. It is about assisting millions of people already affected by climate change. It is about creating more green jobs, clean energy, better climate, green growth.”

Continuing, he said: “The world has already come a long way. By now many countries have developed far reaching national emission reduction policies. They are implement low carbon development plans. They realize that the green agenda is both vital to combat global warming and at the same time part of the solution to the current economic crisis. This is indeed encouraging. We are moving in the right direction.”
But please forgive me, I had to suppress a loud sigh of anguish at that as I remarked quietly to myself: “Certainly not in my country, Ghana, where those who should be raising our awareness of such things are more interested in megalomania, hubris and unenlightened trivia.”

Wait till you hear this. Prime Minister Rasmussen in the introductory remarks to his address said: “In recent years – seen from a newspaper perspective – climate change has moved from the back of the newspaper – through the science and technology pages, via domestic and foreign affairs sections, and – for better and for worse – onto the front pages.” That did amuse me. Which front pages? Again I said to myself, hoping Mr. Rasmussen would hear me: Please come to Ghana and see the rubbish we purvey on our front pages. Climate change stories on the front page of a Ghanaian newspaper…?!

But even before articulating the above, he had said, “It is not often we as politicians get a chance to chart a new course for our planet. One of these rare moments is coming up this December here in December. We know that you – the media – will play an important – and equally difficult role.” Emphasis mine…

He put across five points which he said should be ambitious and binding:
1.    Industrialized countries must commit to substantial reduction targets and take the lead and accept their special historic responsibility.
2.    Major developing countries must commit to unilateral mitigation actions.
3.    Assistance to the most vulnerable developing countries in their attempts to adapt to effects of climate change
4.    Strengthen the carbon market and private sector involvement through a framework that creates incentives for green investments and…
5.    Establish a system of measurement, reporting and verification…which would not be about pointing fingers, but about achieving practical results.

By Alhaji Abdul-Rahman Harruna attah