Field Report: Green Education in Ethiopia

I am now on a flight back from Ethiopia (located near the horn of East Africa, surrounded by Sudan, Somalia, Kenya and Eritrea).

I lived for the last three weeks in the northern region of the country, in the high plateaus and mountains of Tigray.  Due to elevations of around 7,000 feet, Tigray’s climate is ideal with “13 months of sunshine,” as locals happily tell you. Daytime temperatures are in the low 80’s, with 60’s at night. 

Ethiopia and Sub-Saharan Africa are coming out of a 15-year drought with a rainy season that has already produced the best rainfall in 30 years. Fields of green crops blow in the wind — the harvest is expected to produce record amounts of the local grain Tef, as well as wheat, barley, and vegetables.

The idea for this trip germinated about 2 years ago, when I returned from a whirlwind tour of rural African schools supported by Vancouver, Canada-based Imagine1Day.org.  I had told my wife that we must take our kids to see African schools.  From that impulse the idea sprouted to create an adventure trip for “create-tributors” who would raise money to build and support a primary school.

Well, it all happened — my family got to visit our own sponsored community school called Laela Wukro.

Imagine 1 Day is a family non-profit that was endowed originally by Chip and Shannon Wilson, my brother and sister-in-law.  Its mission is to provide cutting-edge self generating primary education in Ethiopia.

The Ethiopian government covers teachers’ salaries, but top-down support ends there. The really incredible thing about these schools is their self-supporting initiative.  They aim to generate enough income internally for operating expenses after 3 years.  This means that the teachers, community, and students plant crops on school property or community-donated land in order to sell the harvest and generate income.  Some communities where irrigation is more difficult will fatten goats and cows instead, selling them to generate cash.

I would like to see public schools in the US start to generate sustainable, green income sources like Ethiopia is doing, rather than have to sell junk food, wasteful magazines and plastic toys to fundraise.

The average Ethiopian earns less than one dollar per day. Even so, modernization efforts are in full view everywhere, having expanded greatly since I last visited two years ago.  I saw a slew of useful cell/data towers, which have popped up all over the countryside, and I noticed phones in the hands of some of the farmers.

3-wheel rikshaw taxis, also prevalent in India and Thailand, have swarmed into small Ethiopian towns like beetles.  It costs about ten cents to ride these across town, and this amenity is quickening the pace in the rural areas where previously walking was the only form of transportation available to most citizens.

I got a chance to visit a giant 120 mega watt wind-power plant installed by the French company Vergnet Group outside of Mickele, Ethiopia.  Since Ethiopia has negligible oil and gas reserves, it must rely on the inventiveness and hard work of its people to generate income, and it is to its credit that renewables like wind are part of its strategy.

Clean tech is not only cleaner, but society benefits as a whole.  In most poor countries that discover significant oil reserves (like Chad) there is corruption, environmental degradation, prostitution and drug abuse following on the heels of fast oil cash.  It is a good omen that Ethiopia is bootstrapping itself to a cleaner prosperity instead.

I would guarantee that Ethiopia will go through an amazing transformation in the next 20 years.  It seems to me that once cell phones become wide-spread, incomes invariably rise as the whole economy becomes more efficient, particularly because micro-finance using cell phones becomes feasible.

Sure, this culture is not known for its industrial efficiency. Yet in time, I know that the patience and hard work of Ethiopians will move them from food-insecurity toward the ideal conditions for realizing their talents, and reaping well-deserved rewards. It’s the kind of optimism you gain after you meet a people, learn about their culture, and delight in the gleam of hope in their eyes as they work together for change.

Clean Tech: The Truly Conservative Choice

We need to move fast to clean tech and we need to start now.

I just finished watching Matt Damon in The Green Zone.  The movie’s story was drawn from events surrounding the justification for the US invasion of Iraq. 

Agitating a fear-frenzy after the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration “found” its evidence for huge stores of chemical and nuclear weapons held in Iraq (weapons of mass destruction).  Their only problem was with the source of this evidence.  The informant named “Curveball” was deemed unreliable by the Germans, and this person was never even interviewed by the US, much less ever identified.  Then came the unsubstantiated assertion that Saddam was aligned with Al-Qaeda and therefore a grave threat to the United States.

It is truly amazing how the American people and the American Congress fell for these coercions, albeit during a state of shock.  Yet we can understand how fear works.  The consequences of deciding to invade Iraq are no less shocking.  Looking at the war from an economic standpoint, it will end up costing $3.4 trillion dollars, or about $30,000 per average US household.

This is an unacceptably high price for American families to shoulder, considering that not a dime of it was lying around in excess cash.  Debt had to be sold to finance the war.  That spending had no visible return on investment and was therefore irresponsible.  It was by no means “conservative”.  If anyone calls himself or herself a Conservative, check the facts first. 

Another bogusly fabricated agenda is being introduced in the US today by some of these same wolves in sheep’s clothing, and it is about to cost the US more jobs and money.

I am talking about the whole pro fossil fuel movement.  Its lobbyists are attempting to tell you that clean technology is a weapon of mass (financial) destruction, and that the federal government and states better do things the same old way, even burn more oil and coal.  They are basically capitalizing upon people’s shock about our Great Recession to bolster Big Oil (arguably the same root interests that acted to create a post-9/11 frenzy).

But we have heard from the pro fossil fuel folks many times.

In 1970, before Richard Nixon signed the Clean Air Act, these naysayers predicted that entire US industries would collapse.  Here 40 years later, it has been estimated that the benefits of the Act have outweighed the implementation costs by 40:1.  In effect this was a very conservative piece of legislation.

Behind the current headlines of “drill, baby, drill” lies the subtext of “subsidize, baby, subsidize”.  It is estimated that the US subsidizes oil and coal 10:1 over clean technology.  Why businesses that have been around more than a century need any subsidies at all, is baffling.

The US needs to be supporting the future, not the past.  That’s the American Way, after all.

The past is dirty skies, mercury-laden oceans, rising atmospheric carbon dioxide, respiratory complications and noise pollution.  These all cost society dearly in real dollars.

The future is clean.  Clean air, clean water, nearly silent electric motors inside automobiles and machinery. The future belongs to our kids, and our grandchildren.

Everyone knows it will take a concerted effort to get there.  Government itself needs to set the example by working in concert with industry to get clean.  This is happening in places as diverse as China, Ethiopia, Germany, and Brazil — all of whom have faster GDP growth than the US.  It is interesting to note that the countries scorning investment in clean tech include Russia and Venezuela — run by petrol-dictators and known for corruption and government repression.

Initiatives like Proposition 23 in California (“the dirty air proposition”) need to be squashed, because this is not the time to take steps backward.  The US needs to be competitive by retaining and attracting talent, on an ever-shrinking planet where quality of life and sustainable growth are crucial for our prosperity.

The time is now to get out of the fear-based mentality and keep on the clean tech path.  This responsible and economically sound approach to both domestic and international policy is how I suggest “conservative values” should be (re)defined.  Obviously, every American, regardless of political affiliation, has a natural stake in this conservative outlook: sustainability is not a political question at all.

Fortunately, sustainability is much simpler — it’s about our common stake in continued life on earth.  

Field Report: Conference in Manhattan

I just returned from the Rodman and Renshaw Investment Conference in New York City.  I got to chat with former General Wesley Clark, a strong advocate of clean tech.

These military guys are pretty smart.  They see first-hand the incredible toll that protection of oil supplies takes on the US military.  Not only is economic security compromised by the debt generated by intensive military operations in the Middle East, but there’s also the incredible energy intensity of running a war.

The military wants ways to reduce energy consumption during combat operations because of the cost and danger of getting fuel to the battle field.  Depending on how it is calculated, fuel can cost between $10 and $25 per gallon when delivered into combat.  Lives are lost in the delivery process, along with the opportunity costs of troops focused on ferrying fuel instead of fighting.

The national debt is the single biggest threat to national security, according to Adm. Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  Tax payers will be paying around $600 billion in interest on the national debt by 2012, the Chairman told students and local leaders in Detroit.

Some of the clean tech management with whom I visited at the conference were from these companies:

Ecotality (ECTY):  The leader in smart electric charger installations (filling stations) for the new wave of electric vehicles.

China Wind Systems (CWS):  Creating lower cost wind turbine components in China

International Fuel Technology (IFUE):  Rolling out a fuel additive for diesel-powered trains that reduces energy consumption 3%.

China Green Material Technologies (CAGM):  Producing corn starch based cups, utensils and even food packaging that work better than plastic, while cheaper and compostable.

China Intelligent Lighting (CIL):  Manufacturing and distributing energy efficient LED lighting products primarily in China.

Dais Analytic  (DLYT):  Creating proprietary heat exchange and water filtration products through the use of it’s patented membrane.