Rant about How Mobile Phones Will Save the World

 

I may have just found the most effective environmental innovation of the century.  It’s called “pay as you go”.

 

We humans are lazy and indulgent.  We are comfort-seeking and prefer to close our eyes from all the inconvenient stuff, as that might make us feel guilty or even get off our fat bottoms and do something about it, heaven forbid.  Better not to notice, to silence that little nagging voice in our heads and think that the “climate change sceptics” might have a point,* and oh well, what could I do anyway.

 

But the one thing that motivates us is money.  Not money in general, OUR money.  We don’t want to spend too much of it, and we want to make more of it.  No human being in the history of the world has ever had too much money.

 

Our decisions are made based on a tug-of-war between our financial prudence (called also “stinginess” in less flattering terms) and our laziness.  Calculating the most efficient and cheap way can’t be too complicated or we give up.  So something that saves us money is only worth it if it is easy for us to understand how and why and how much it saves.

 

Enter pay as you go. 

 

Take the most obvious example, mobile phones.  Most of us have a contract that charges us a certain basic amount per month, and this includes often a number of calls, text messages and data transfer.  We like to kid ourselves into thinking that we got a good deal by telling everyone how many “free” minutes or “free” text messages we get with our phone deal, when of course the real answer is “zero”.  Those minutes and SMSs are not free but included in our contract, and probably we don’t even use them all, meaning that we end up paying for supposedly “free” stuff we don’t use.

 

I also had one of these contracts.  I congratulated myself on a good deal and sometimes called people just to use all my “free” minutes.  But then I went to Namibia and got a pay-as-you-go phone, which I fed with vouchers I bought from street vendors.  If I had to reload more than once a week, I felt I was spending too much money and began paying attention to my phone habits.  Yet my average weekly voucher was NAM 20, which amounts to about € 1.50.  Hand on your heart: how many of you, with your great phone deals, pay less than € 6 per month?

 

This could be rolled out to all kinds of stuff.  We also had pay-as-you-go electricity in Namibia, where we fed vouchers to the machine, which then ticked down the amounts at an alarming rate.  Apart from my refusal to let go of the heater that I carried around the house (I did get used to the cold at some point and stopped doing that…), it made us VERY conscious of the consumption of electricity.  Similarly, the washing machine in our building was fitted with a card system while we were away, and I can assure you that we pay much more attention to filling the machine up properly and reducing the number of loads we wash now that we see every time exactly how much it is costing us.**

 

So every house and every flat should move to pay-as-you-go electricity.  Could the same be done with gas and water?  I don’t see why not.  In a way cars already do this, but maybe the measuring could be done more explicitly, so that behind your wheel the meter is not telling you how much petrol you have left, but how much money you have just spent driving.  Same with restaurants.  My new favourite restaurant is a buffet where you pay by the weight of the food.  Makes you MUCH more conscious of how much stuff you're piling on your plate and thus reduces waste. 

I bet several other ideas have already popped to your heads while you’ve been reading.

 

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is how the world will be saved.  Or do you disagree?

 

*They do not.  Don’t be stupid.

**An arm and a leg, that’s how much.

Rant about Wolves, Elephants and Other Forms of Stupidity

Reading this short report on the BBC environment site about the accelerating decline of world wildlife population brought back some thoughts I had when admiring the stunning flora and fauna (especially fauna) in Etosha national park in North Namibia.

There are very few who would not be awed by African wildlife.  You don’t need to visit the many parks and reserves in Africa to see and be impressed – if you haven’t seen the BBC Africa series from 2013, I’d recommend you watch it.  Immediately.  Several times.*

African wildlife is not only impressive in its own right, but even more so when compared to our own.  Part of it is of course because of exoticism, something we see every day by necessity ceases to amaze us and becomes boring.  I’m always reminded of this when I talk to people who enthuse about having been to Finland for the first time.  Apparently Finnish landscape is pretty exotic to many people.

But another reason why African wildlife appears more impressive is because it IS more impressive.  This is partly because of geography, meteorology and natural history, but to a large part because we fucked it up.  We slashed and burnt our forests, polluted our rivers and killed off everything bigger than a rabbit.  This all happened at least decades, if not centuries ago.

So it riles me when we Europeans now turn around and try to teach Africans how to take care of their wildlife.  It’s almost comic, we really are the last people they should be taking advice from on these issues, unless it is of the “look how stupid we were, don’t copy us!” –kind, which it inevitably is not.  Instead we present ourselves as experts and concerned citizens of the world. 

In reality, if we were living in Africa, and had to deal on a daily basis with the magnificent African wildlife, we would destroy it within a few decades.  Because Europeans can’t live in or with nature, we have to kill it.** 

A case on point: A few wolves have managed to survive the rampage against nature within the borders of Finland, but they are at risk all the time, and being poached illegally probably at worse rates than rhinos in Namibia.  Not because they are valuable,*** but because they are thought to be dangerous.  We don’t want them near us, we can’t share our surroundings with them.  Yet it is over 120 years since the last time a wolf killed a human in Finland.

By contrast crocodiles, lions and leopards, but also hippos and elephants, kill people in Africa all the time.****  In addition they kill livestock, a serious problem in a country like Namibia where farming is mostly of the subsistence kind.  Yet we have no problem chastising the terrible, savage Africans that shoot these beautiful, majestic creatures.

I am not saying that lions, cheetahs or elephants should be killed.  I am saying that it is not for us Europeans to decide whether they are killed or not.  It is for the Namibians and their neighbours that come face to face with them.  If we want to protect wild animals, we should focus on making them profitable for the local people that are currently suffering from their attacks.  We can do this by handing over cash (e.g. by visiting parks and reserves) or by making innovative suggestions, to the extent we have any.  But the suggestions cannot start from the premise of telling Namibians what they should do and in particular what they should not do (i.e. kill wildlife).  Given our history, we have no leg to stand on in criticising them for anything when it comes to the treatment of the human-wildlife conflict.  Until we have cleaned up our own backyard, which is a sad, concrete-covered place in which nothing grows or lives, we cannot start telling others how to handle theirs.  We can only humbly request permission to go and play there from time to time.

(This was more preachy than my usual style.  But it doesn’t mean I don’t want people to comment and disagree!)

 

*Here is a link to a site that seems to stream the full series.  I haven’t tested the streams and I don’t know if it is legal, so take no responsibility.  Here is a link to the BBC presentation site for the series, which is definitely legal.

**Here is a link to a story of Bruno the bear that made the mistake of crossing into German territory in 2006, if you need evidence.

***Rhino horns are insanely valuable, which is why I have some sympathy with the (often poor) locals in Namibia who help the poachers.  If you want to address the problem of rhino poaching, focus on the demand, not the supply.  Same with drugs.  Free advice here to any concerned governments, NGOs etc.  You’re welcome.

****Numbers are hard to come by, but here are some from the FAO.

Rant about Water

Not long ago I read in Newsweek a short review of Brahma Chellaney’s Water, Peace, and War: Confronting the Global Water Crisis,* in which it was stated that “by the 2020’s two thirds of the world’s population will face problems getting enough of the stuff” – the “stuff” being water. 

I felt like I was taken back a few decades, to my childhood and youth, where we were told that people in Africa don’t have enough water and are dying of thirst.  This was the prelude to telling us kids to stop wasting water.  Small changes might have occurred, you know, turning off the tap while brushing our teeth or shampooing our hair, but nothing major.  Some years later the toilets with two different flush sizes came on the markets, but that was about the end of that.  I haven’t heard anyone talk about water shortages in years, and it is certainly not something I or those around me take into account in our lives, no matter how socially and ecologically conscientious we try to be in our daily choices.  I can personally say, for example, that I have learnt to LOVE a long hot shower on a cold evening...

And yet, in a few years’ time TWO THIRDS of the world’s population will face problems getting enough water.  That should be a huge problem and a scandal on a global scale.

What is it that turns an imminent humanitarian crisis into news and a global scandal?  Do we just have too many of them, so we have to select which ones to attend to?  What else is happening out there, as potentially disastrous and large in scale as the developing water scandal, that I know nothing about, because for some reason it has not made it into mainstream media – or if it has, then only into a tiny article in Newsweek that I might as well have missed?

*Christopher Dickey, “Big Think: Water Wars”, Newsweek, 22 April 2013

Rant about the Sex Life of Giant Pandas

I used to LOVE going to the Berlin zoo.  This is because that is where I met my “secondary boyfriend” Bao Bao.  It is also where our romance blossomed and finally came to an end when Bao Bao passed away last August.  Snif.  I haven’t been back since.

I always visited the zoo with my “primary boyfriend” F, an understanding fella, since he would patiently wait while I fawned at the panda enclosure for what must have felt like an eternity. 

F doesn’t like zoos.  He thinks the most interesting species at any zoo, in a disturbing and aggravating kind of way, is the homo sapiens.  People often tend to get quite rude and aggressive with their cameras and stick them as close as possible to the animals’ faces, ignoring all “no photography” signs as well as fellow humans also trying to get a glimpse of the imprisoned creatures.  This is particularly bad in Berlin, where visitors are often permitted VERY close to the animals. 

The other reason F doesn’t like zoos is the treatment of animals.  He says it is torture to keep for example a polar bear or a cheetah – both species used to travelling large distances in the wild – in a small zoo enclosure.  While I don’t disagree with him, it does baffle me how he, and many people who think like him, are nonetheless happy meat-munchers.  That, however, might be a post for another day.

I must admit that for a long time I didn’t really think much about the ethics of zoos.  I just liked seeing animals.  When I did think about it, I thought there were two reasons why zoos were acceptable, both linked to the protection of endangered species:

1. Some animals have trouble conceiving in the wild and local populations have shrunk so much that genetic diversity becomes precariously limited.  Zoo breeding programs, in which animals are loaned to other zoos so that they can mate with partners with a different genetic makeup, can arguably help make the worldwide population healthier.
2. Zoos sensitise and educate people about animals in a way that is hard to achieve in other ways.  I must admit that seeing a lion or a gorilla for the first time impressed me, even if I had previously seen them both on TV.

With my recent obsession with pandas I have learnt that the first of these reasons is not as persuasive as I once thought.  While breeding giant pandas in captivity, in particular in zoos, has been extremely difficult (including Bao Bao’s failed attempts with an earlier girlfriend Ming Ming on a romantic getaway in London), this does not mean that they don’t procreate in the wild.  They’re just shy, and who can blame them.  Would you feel particularly aroused with a horde of vets and in the worst case scenario curious visitors peeping at your intimate moments...?  In fact it appears that the giant panda population is on the increase, in particular due to the Chinese government’s efforts at enlarging reserves and creating green corridors between them.  (Lots more info here.)  So perhaps that is the way forward, rather than imprisoning pandas in zoos.

The second reason probably still remains.  However, is it – on its own – enough?  While zoos give kids in particular an opportunity to see and learn about species they would possibly otherwise not appreciate or understand, this may not be enough to justify the expense and cruelty of the institution. 

I wonder, will zoos slowly disappear and be just a relic we think about shaking our heads 50 years from now?