Electric vehicles are making their way on to our roads. We meet some of the people who have adopted the technology.
Bernie Hobbs is a pioneer of Australian motoring. The science broadcaster, best known as a judge on the ABC's New Inventors, is among the first people in this country to ditch her internal combustion-powered car for an all-electric set of wheels.
She is the proud owner of a Blade Electron, a car that starts life as a Hyundai Getz before Victorian-based entrepreneur Ross Blade and his team take out the petrol engine and replace it with an electric motor.
The Blade may be a small operation but make no mistake: electric is on its way. Mitsubishi will have 40 of its i-MiEV electric city car on the road by the end of the year. Nissan is likely to offer the Leaf electric hatchback by 2012.
All-electric plug-in cars are a different breed to petrol-electric hybrids, which use electric motors to supplement a petrol engine and don't require a power outlet.
All-electric cars run entirely on batteries and hence need to recharge regularly.
Electric cars aren't new - they've been around in some form for almost as long as motor vehicles have been on the road. But recent improvements in battery technology have made them a more realistic alternative to their petrol-engined cousins.
There are still big question marks over the charging infrastructure, long-term battery life, safety and resale value of electric vehicles.
But none of this matters to Hobbs; she's happy to have adopted EVs early and faces those challenges head on.
"I've been rabbiting on about the environment for 10 years," she says. "When my old car started getting the shakes I thought, 'I don't want to commit to buying petrol for another 10 years.' So I've put my money where my mouth is."
She admits she considered getting rid of a car altogether and joining a car-sharing program but decided to commit to the Blade and join the electric-car revolution.
"For me, part of the reason I'm doing this is because, with my work, I get to talk about it," she says. "It's normalising the idea of electric cars."
It came at a price, however - $48,000 to be exact - substantially more than a Hyundai Getz with a petrol engine.
But she says it's easy to justify that extra expenditure.
"For me $48,000 is a shitload of money to spend on a car," she says. "But I'm paying for my fuel upfront with the battery pack. So if I keep it for 10 years like my last car, that's $5000 a year. In 10 years I'll probably just give it to my nephew."
For critics of electric cars, Hobbs has switched her energy provider to get "green" energy instead of relying on coal-fired power.
"If you're going to use coal fire you're doing no good, you just have a feel-good car," she says.
"[Switching to green energy] takes you from three tonnes of CO2 per year to none."
She's not the only Australian driver ditching petrol power for electricity. The managing director of Adelaide-based internet service provider Internode, Simon Hackett, not only has a Blade parked in his garage but also just took delivery of the first right-hand drive Tesla Roadster in Australia.
To call Hackett a passionate believer in electric vehicles is an understatement. He has been a fan ever since he drove the GM EV1 in the mid-1990s while working in the US.
He ordered a left-hand-drive Tesla in 2006 but had to wait until 2008 for it to arrive. Last year he set a world record by driving the Roadster more than 500 kilometres on a single charge during the Global Green Challenge.
Hackett bought the Blade Electron as his daily driver because he couldn't register his left-hand-drive Tesla for road use. But with the new Tesla able to be driven on the road, it will replace the Blade as his daily commuter car.
It may have cost Hackett more than $250,000 but as far as he's concerned, it's better than buying a traditional sports car such as a Porsche or Ferrari.
"People say, 'How can it be a sports car if it doesn't go vroom vroom?' You get used to it really quickly," he says.
Home on the range
The first mass-market electric car into Australia, the Mitsubishi i-MiEV, has an official range of 100 kilometres to 160 kilometres before it needs a full recharge (the Hyundai Getz-based Blade claims 100 kilometres).
The challenge for Mitsubishi and its fellow car makers is to convince consumers that 160 kilometres is enough for them to live with.
The Drive team logged its driving habits for a week and found that all of us could comfortably use an electric car with a range of 100 kilometres each day.
But we found on the weekends that range might not be enough to satisfy us all.
Factors such as the weather, driving style and use of the heater and airconditioning all have an impact on the range; just like the fuel consumption in a traditional petrol- or diesel-powered car.
But, unlike a traditional car, topping up the battery of an electric car isn't as simple as ducking into your local service station. Charging an electric car can take up to eight hours and requires a special power outlet.
Both Hobbs and Hackett believe "range anxiety" won't be an issue for most people, providing they live close to their work.
"For the first few days I was shitting myself," Hobbs admits. "But I realised I really never drive more than 100 kilometres."
She does also admit to having a back-up plan.
"I carry a 30-metre extension cord," she says. "That gives me a bit of confidence." Hackett believes it is only a matter of time before electric cars boast a range to match a petrol car. He says he can get more than 300 kilometres from his Tesla regularly and the company's next variant, the Model S, will claim a range of more than 480 kilometres.
"There's this tendency with people to focus on what happens if you run out of electricity. Well, the same thing that happens if you run out of petrol: your car stops," he says. "But what people need to realise is that range, of 100 kilometres or 300 kilometres, is available every day."
Give it a plug
Infrastructure for electric cars is very much a case of the chicken and the egg. Car companies have the cars but there isn't any significant infrastructure in place yet. Not surprisingly, no one is interested in installing expensive public charging points for a handful of cars.
Unlike the Blade, some electric cars can't be charged using a regular household outlet - they require a 15-amp plug, the same type used for large airconditioning units.
You can get one installed in your garage or office car park for a few hundred dollars but there are a growing number of operators selling specialised charging points.
ChargePoint Australia is one of the first companies to install a commercially operated roadside outlet, in conjunction with car-sharing company GoGet.
The outlet, in inner-city Glebe, is not available for public use, though; only members of GoGet are able to charge the company's converted Toyota Prius EV.
The joint managing director of ChargePoint, Luke Grana, says the rollout of infrastructure will be a gradual process that will be tied to the amount of EVs on the roads.
"We really see it working with the early adopters like local councils, state governments and fleets," he says. "We won't be rolling out a network until 2013 and we'll be growing with the market."
He believes the most likely scenario will see shopping centres and parking stations emerge as the power provider for electric cars, potentially replacing petrol stations.
In theory, drivers will be able to take their EV to the shops, plug in while they doing their shopping and come back to a fully recharged car.
The first signs of this transition have emerged.
Special parking spaces with power outlets are beginning to pop up around major cities but they are few and far between. So far, shopping centres in Hornsby, Dural and Blacktown have become some of the first to offer electric-car drivers a place to recharge while shopping.
"I think it really needs to be led by the car-consumer marketplace," a spokeswoman for Westfield, Julia Clarke, says.
There are exceptions, though. A new multi-storey structure in downtown Perth has 12 parking spots hard-wired for charging.
To ensure the electricity is sustainable, it's sourced from roof-mounted solar panels.
The car park is overseen by the director of business units for the City of Perth, Doug Forster. He says it will serve as a test ahead of further charging points being set up. The council owns 30 parking stations across the city.
Crucially for the rollout of infrastructure and EVs, federal and state governments have so far shown little tangible support for electric cars. Overseas, governments have offered free parking, access to transit lanes or cash incentives to support early adopters of EVs.
The all-important question, however, is: will car fans miss the vroom of a petrol engine?
"I thought I would but I don't," Hackett says. "I've got an old Ferrari, a 1985 308, that's a real work of art. But I can't get motivated to drive it. Once you drive an electric car, you realise you are in a generational-changing vehicle. And I don't miss the generation I'm leaving."
Electric cars on the way
City cars, hatchbacks, sedans and even supercars; there is an electric car suited to almost every need under development somewhere in the world.
Mitsubishi i-MiEV
NissanLEAF
TeslaRoadster
Tesla ModelS
SmartED
MiniE
Holden/ChevroletVolt
Renault Fluence Z.E.
VolvoC30Plug-In Hybrid
Toyota Prius Plug-In Hybrid
VolkswagenEup!
BMWMegacity
CitroenC-ZERO
Peugeot iOn
Ford Focus BEV
Audi e-tron
Mercedes-BenzSLSE-Cell
Friday, July 23, 2010
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
New Eco Shop almost Ready...
Opening soon on Sydney Road Balgowlah..... http://www.greendemon.com.au/.... watch this space!
Thursday, July 8, 2010
First Day and night solar flight
Day and night solar flight
The first manned day and night flight by a plane powered exclusively by solar energy begins in Switzerland.
Video feedbackVideo settings
A solar powered aircraft emerged from a night flight high over Switzerland today, on course to making history as the first plane to fly around the clock on solar energy.
More than 24 hours after it took off, Solar Impulse was still flying in spectacular early morning clear skies in northwestwern Switzerland after dawn.
Pilot Andre Borschberg was set to land at Payerne at about 8:30 am (0630 GMT), after being confined to the cockpit of the single seater experimental aircraft for about 26 hours, team chief Bertrand Piccard said.
Solar Impulse's pilot Andre Borschberg flies during sunset in the solar-powered HB-SIA prototype airplane during its first night flight attempt near Payerne airport. Photo: Reuters
Applause and cheers broke out at mission control as the sun rose over Payerne airbase at 5:43 am (0343 GMT) with Solar Impulse still in the air.
"It's the first time ever that a solar airplane has flown through the night," said Piccard, who himself headed the first round the world ballon flight in 1999.
"That was the moment that proved the mission was successful, we made it," he told journalists.
Flight director Claude Nicollier said that the flight had gone well overnight as Borschberg guided the experimental aircraft towards a landing after dawn.
"It went better than that," Nicollier said.
The plane's flight during the overnight hours of darkness was powered by the charge its batteries had stored during the 14 hours of daytime flight thanks to its array of 12,000 solar cells on wings the size of an airliner's.
"It's a super flight, better than nominal," added Nicollier, a former space shuttle astronaut.
Nicollier said 57-year-old Borschberg was "very positive" after more than 22 hours in the air in the single seater, having been forced to stay alert for the full period.
"He is in very good spirits physically and mentally," said Nicollier.
Borschberg's impassive expression broke into a broad smile as the crew announced that dawn had officially broken at Payerne, live images from a cockpit webcam showed.
The high-tech single-seater aircraft took off on the historic attempt in the early hours (0451 GMT) of Wednesday.
The controllers decided as darkness fell later to press on with the night flight, despite fears that a sudden burst of strong high altitude wings at dusk had deprived Solar Impulse of some of the stored energy to last the night.
However, Piccard revealed early Thursday that the aircraft had emerged from darkness with three hours of energy left in its batteries, a far bigger margin than expected.
The solar panels spread over the wing of the high tech craft were switched back on as the sun bathed the plane, fuelling the four electric motors and recharging batteries.
"Nothing can prevent us from another day and night... and the myth of perpetual flight," an elated Piccard told journalists, as his sights shifted towards the prospect of transatlantic and round the world flights in 2013-2014.
The first prototype, shaped like a giant dragonfly, is clad with solar panels across a wingspan of 63 metres (207 feet), the size of an Airbus A340 airliner.
The solar cells and nearly half a tonne of batteries provide enrgy for four small electric motors and propellors -- the "power of a scooter", as the crew put it -- and weigh little more than a saloon car.
Solar Impulse took off into clear summer skies at 6:51 am (0451 GMT) on Wednesday.
The team is also driven by a desire to demonstrate that clean energy is technically feasible and should be developed and used more widely for transport, in the household and at work.
"We didn't really have credibility until today," admitted Piccard. "What we have done today in the air is an example of what should be done on the ground."
The first manned day and night flight by a plane powered exclusively by solar energy begins in Switzerland.
Video feedbackVideo settings
A solar powered aircraft emerged from a night flight high over Switzerland today, on course to making history as the first plane to fly around the clock on solar energy.
More than 24 hours after it took off, Solar Impulse was still flying in spectacular early morning clear skies in northwestwern Switzerland after dawn.
Pilot Andre Borschberg was set to land at Payerne at about 8:30 am (0630 GMT), after being confined to the cockpit of the single seater experimental aircraft for about 26 hours, team chief Bertrand Piccard said.
Solar Impulse's pilot Andre Borschberg flies during sunset in the solar-powered HB-SIA prototype airplane during its first night flight attempt near Payerne airport. Photo: Reuters
Applause and cheers broke out at mission control as the sun rose over Payerne airbase at 5:43 am (0343 GMT) with Solar Impulse still in the air.
"It's the first time ever that a solar airplane has flown through the night," said Piccard, who himself headed the first round the world ballon flight in 1999.
"That was the moment that proved the mission was successful, we made it," he told journalists.
Flight director Claude Nicollier said that the flight had gone well overnight as Borschberg guided the experimental aircraft towards a landing after dawn.
"It went better than that," Nicollier said.
The plane's flight during the overnight hours of darkness was powered by the charge its batteries had stored during the 14 hours of daytime flight thanks to its array of 12,000 solar cells on wings the size of an airliner's.
"It's a super flight, better than nominal," added Nicollier, a former space shuttle astronaut.
Nicollier said 57-year-old Borschberg was "very positive" after more than 22 hours in the air in the single seater, having been forced to stay alert for the full period.
"He is in very good spirits physically and mentally," said Nicollier.
Borschberg's impassive expression broke into a broad smile as the crew announced that dawn had officially broken at Payerne, live images from a cockpit webcam showed.
The high-tech single-seater aircraft took off on the historic attempt in the early hours (0451 GMT) of Wednesday.
The controllers decided as darkness fell later to press on with the night flight, despite fears that a sudden burst of strong high altitude wings at dusk had deprived Solar Impulse of some of the stored energy to last the night.
However, Piccard revealed early Thursday that the aircraft had emerged from darkness with three hours of energy left in its batteries, a far bigger margin than expected.
The solar panels spread over the wing of the high tech craft were switched back on as the sun bathed the plane, fuelling the four electric motors and recharging batteries.
"Nothing can prevent us from another day and night... and the myth of perpetual flight," an elated Piccard told journalists, as his sights shifted towards the prospect of transatlantic and round the world flights in 2013-2014.
The first prototype, shaped like a giant dragonfly, is clad with solar panels across a wingspan of 63 metres (207 feet), the size of an Airbus A340 airliner.
The solar cells and nearly half a tonne of batteries provide enrgy for four small electric motors and propellors -- the "power of a scooter", as the crew put it -- and weigh little more than a saloon car.
Solar Impulse took off into clear summer skies at 6:51 am (0451 GMT) on Wednesday.
The team is also driven by a desire to demonstrate that clean energy is technically feasible and should be developed and used more widely for transport, in the household and at work.
"We didn't really have credibility until today," admitted Piccard. "What we have done today in the air is an example of what should be done on the ground."
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Oil companies out of control
Think the current BP spill is bad?
"More oil is spilled from the delta's network of terminals, pipes, pumping stations and oil platforms every year than has been lost in the Gulf of Mexico"
Oil spills have become a fact of life for people living in the Niger delta, writes John Vidal.
We reached the edge of the oil spill near the Nigerian village of Otuegwe after a long hike through cassava plantations. Ahead of us lay swamp. We waded into the warm tropical water and began swimming, cameras and notebooks held above our heads. We could smell the oil long before we saw it - the stench of garage forecourts and rotting vegetation hanging thickly in the air.
The farther we travelled, the more nauseous it became. Soon we were swimming in pools of light Nigerian crude, the best-quality oil in the world. One of the many hundreds of 40-year-old pipelines that crisscross the Niger delta had corroded and spewed oil for several months.
Forest and farmland were now covered in a sheen of greasy oil. Drinking wells were polluted and people were distraught. No one knew how much oil had leaked. ''We lost our nets, huts and fishing pots,'' said Chief Promise, village leader of Otuegwe and our guide. ''This is where we fished and farmed. We have lost our forest. We told Shell of the spill within days, but they did nothing for six months.''
That was the Niger delta a few years ago, where, say Nigerian academics, writers and environment groups, oil companies have acted with such impunity and recklessness that much of the region has been devastated by leaks.
In fact, more oil is spilled from the delta's network of terminals, pipes, pumping stations and oil platforms every year than has been lost in the Gulf of Mexico, the site of an ecological catastrophe caused by oil that has poured from a leak triggered by the explosion that wrecked BP's Deepwater Horizon rig in April.
That disaster, which claimed the lives of 11 rig workers, has made headlines around the world. By contrast, little information has emerged about the damage inflicted on the Niger delta. Yet the destruction there provides us with a far more accurate picture of the price we have to pay for drilling oil today.
On May 1 a ruptured ExxonMobil pipeline in Ibeno in the state of Akwa Ibom spilled more than 4.5 million litres into the delta over seven days before the leak was stopped. Local people demonstrated against the company but say they were attacked by security guards. Community leaders are now demanding $US1 billion ($1.1 billion) in compensation for the illness and loss of livelihood they suffered. Few expect they will succeed. In the meantime, thick balls of tar are being washed up along the coast.
Within days of the Ibeno spill, thousands of barrels of oil were spilled when the nearby Shell Trans Niger pipeline was attacked by rebels. A few days after that, a large oil slick was found floating on Lake Adibawa in Bayelsa state, and another in Ogoniland. ''We are faced with incessant oil spills from rusty pipes, some of which are 40 years old,'' said Bonny Otavie, a Bayelsa MP.
This point was backed by Williams Mkpa, a community leader in Ibeno: ''Oil companies do not value our life; they want us to all die. In the past two years, we have experienced 10 oil spills and fishermen can no longer sustain their families. It is not tolerable.''
With 606 oilfields, the Niger delta supplies 40 per cent of all the crude the US imports and is the world capital of oil pollution. Life expectancy in its rural areas, half of which have no access to clean water, has fallen to little more than 40 years over the past two generations. Locals blame the oil that pollutes their land and can scarcely believe the contrast with the steps taken by BP and the US government to try to stop the gulf oil leak and to protect the Louisiana shore from pollution.
''If this gulf accident had happened in Nigeria, neither the government nor the company would have paid much attention,'' said the writer Ben Ikari, a member of the Ogoni people. ''This kind of spill happens all the time in the delta.
''The oil companies just ignore it. The lawmakers do not care and people must live with pollution daily. The situation is now worse than it was 30 years ago. Nothing is changing. When I see the efforts that are being made in the US I feel a great sense of sadness at the double standards. What they do in the US or in Europe is very different.''
Nnimo Bassey, the Nigerian head of Friends of the Earth International, said, ''We see frantic efforts being made to stop the spill in the US. But in Nigeria, oil companies largely ignore their spills, cover them up and destroy people's livelihood and environments. The gulf spill can be seen as a metaphor for what is happening daily in the oilfields of Nigeria and other parts of Africa.
''This has gone on for 50 years in Nigeria. People depend completely on the environment for their drinking water and farming and fishing. They are amazed that the President of the US can be making speeches daily, because in Nigeria people there would not hear a whimper,'' he said.
It is impossible to know how much oil is spilled in the Niger delta each year because the companies and the government keep that secret. However, two big independent investigations over the past four years suggest that as much is spilled at sea, in the swamps and on land every year as has been lost in the Gulf of Mexico so far.
One report, compiled by WWF UK, the World Conservation Union and representatives from the Nigerian federal government and the Nigerian Conservation Foundation, calculated in 2006 that up to 1.5 million tonnes of oil - 50 times the pollution unleashed in the Exxon Valdez tanker disaster in Alaska - has been spilled in the delta over the past half century. Last year Amnesty calculated that the equivalent of at least 9 million barrels of oil was spilled and accused the oil companies of a human rights outrage.
According to Nigerian federal government figures, there were more than 7000 spills between 1970 and 2000, and there are 2000 official major spillages sites, many going back decades, with thousands of smaller ones still waiting to be cleared up. More than 1000 spill cases have been filed against Shell alone.
Last month Shell admitted to having spilled 14,000 tonnes of oil last year. The bulk of it, the company said, was lost through two incidents - one in which the company claims that thieves damaged a wellhead at its Odidi field and another where militants bombed the Trans Escravos pipeline.
Shell, which works in partnership with the Nigerian government in the delta, says that 98 per cent of all its oil spills are caused by vandalism, theft or sabotage by militants and only a minimal amount by deteriorating infrastructure.
''We had 132 spills last year, as against 175 on average. Safety valves were vandalised; one pipe had 300 illegal taps. We found five explosive devices on one. Sometimes communities do not give us access to clean up the pollution because they can make more money from compensation,'' a spokesman said.
''We have a full-time oil spill response team. Last year we replaced 197 miles [315 kilometres] of pipeline and are using every known way to clean up pollution, including microbes. We are committed to cleaning up any spill as fast as possible as soon as and for whatever reason they occur.''
These claims are hotly disputed by communities and environmental watchdog groups. They mostly blame the companies' vast network of rusting pipes and storage tanks, corroding pipelines, semi-derelict pumping stations and old wellheads, as well as tankers and vessels cleaning out tanks.
The scale of the pollution is mind-boggling. The government's National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency says that between 1976 and 1996 alone, more than 2.4 million barrels contaminated the environment.
''Oil spills and the dumping of oil into waterways has been extensive, often poisoning drinking water and destroying vegetation. These incidents have become common due to the lack of laws and enforcement measures within the existing political regime,'' a spokesman for the agency said.
The sense of outrage is widespread. ''There are more than 300 spills, major and minor, a year,'' Bassey said. ''It happens all the year round. The whole environment is devastated. The latest revelations highlight the massive difference in the response to oil spills. In Nigeria, both companies and government have come to treat an extraordinary level of oil spills as the norm.''
A spokesman for the Stakeholder Democracy Network in Lagos, which works to empower those in communities affected by the oil companies' activities, said: ''The response to the spill in the United States should serve as a stiff reminder as to how far spill management in Nigeria has drifted from standards across the world.''
Other voices of protest point out that the world has overlooked the scale of the environmental impact. Ben Amunwa, an activist with the London oil watch group Platform, said: ''Deepwater Horizon may have exceeded Exxon Valdez, but within a few years in Nigeria offshore spills from four locations dwarfed the scale of the Exxon Valdez disaster many times over. Estimates put spill volumes in the Niger delta among the worst on the planet, but they do not include the crude oil from waste water and gas flares. Companies such as Shell continue to avoid independent monitoring and keep key data secret.''
Worse may be to come. One industry insider, who asked not to be named, said: ''Major spills are likely to increase in the coming years as the industry strives to extract oil from increasingly remote and difficult terrains. Future supplies will be offshore, deeper and harder to work. When things go wrong, it will be harder to respond.''
Judith Kimerling, a professor of law and policy at the City University of New York and author of Amazon Crude, a book about oil development in Ecuador, said: ''Spills, leaks and deliberate discharges are happening in oilfields all over the world and very few people seem to care.''
There is an overwhelming sense that the big oil companies act as if they are beyond the law. Bassey said: ''What we conclude from the Gulf of Mexico pollution incident is that the oil companies are out of control.
''It is clear that BP has been blocking progressive legislation, both in the US and here. In Nigeria, they have been living above the law. They are now clearly a danger to the planet. The dangers of this happening again and again are high. They must be taken to the International Court of Justice.''
"More oil is spilled from the delta's network of terminals, pipes, pumping stations and oil platforms every year than has been lost in the Gulf of Mexico"
Oil spills have become a fact of life for people living in the Niger delta, writes John Vidal.
We reached the edge of the oil spill near the Nigerian village of Otuegwe after a long hike through cassava plantations. Ahead of us lay swamp. We waded into the warm tropical water and began swimming, cameras and notebooks held above our heads. We could smell the oil long before we saw it - the stench of garage forecourts and rotting vegetation hanging thickly in the air.
The farther we travelled, the more nauseous it became. Soon we were swimming in pools of light Nigerian crude, the best-quality oil in the world. One of the many hundreds of 40-year-old pipelines that crisscross the Niger delta had corroded and spewed oil for several months.
Forest and farmland were now covered in a sheen of greasy oil. Drinking wells were polluted and people were distraught. No one knew how much oil had leaked. ''We lost our nets, huts and fishing pots,'' said Chief Promise, village leader of Otuegwe and our guide. ''This is where we fished and farmed. We have lost our forest. We told Shell of the spill within days, but they did nothing for six months.''
That was the Niger delta a few years ago, where, say Nigerian academics, writers and environment groups, oil companies have acted with such impunity and recklessness that much of the region has been devastated by leaks.
In fact, more oil is spilled from the delta's network of terminals, pipes, pumping stations and oil platforms every year than has been lost in the Gulf of Mexico, the site of an ecological catastrophe caused by oil that has poured from a leak triggered by the explosion that wrecked BP's Deepwater Horizon rig in April.
That disaster, which claimed the lives of 11 rig workers, has made headlines around the world. By contrast, little information has emerged about the damage inflicted on the Niger delta. Yet the destruction there provides us with a far more accurate picture of the price we have to pay for drilling oil today.
On May 1 a ruptured ExxonMobil pipeline in Ibeno in the state of Akwa Ibom spilled more than 4.5 million litres into the delta over seven days before the leak was stopped. Local people demonstrated against the company but say they were attacked by security guards. Community leaders are now demanding $US1 billion ($1.1 billion) in compensation for the illness and loss of livelihood they suffered. Few expect they will succeed. In the meantime, thick balls of tar are being washed up along the coast.
Within days of the Ibeno spill, thousands of barrels of oil were spilled when the nearby Shell Trans Niger pipeline was attacked by rebels. A few days after that, a large oil slick was found floating on Lake Adibawa in Bayelsa state, and another in Ogoniland. ''We are faced with incessant oil spills from rusty pipes, some of which are 40 years old,'' said Bonny Otavie, a Bayelsa MP.
This point was backed by Williams Mkpa, a community leader in Ibeno: ''Oil companies do not value our life; they want us to all die. In the past two years, we have experienced 10 oil spills and fishermen can no longer sustain their families. It is not tolerable.''
With 606 oilfields, the Niger delta supplies 40 per cent of all the crude the US imports and is the world capital of oil pollution. Life expectancy in its rural areas, half of which have no access to clean water, has fallen to little more than 40 years over the past two generations. Locals blame the oil that pollutes their land and can scarcely believe the contrast with the steps taken by BP and the US government to try to stop the gulf oil leak and to protect the Louisiana shore from pollution.
''If this gulf accident had happened in Nigeria, neither the government nor the company would have paid much attention,'' said the writer Ben Ikari, a member of the Ogoni people. ''This kind of spill happens all the time in the delta.
''The oil companies just ignore it. The lawmakers do not care and people must live with pollution daily. The situation is now worse than it was 30 years ago. Nothing is changing. When I see the efforts that are being made in the US I feel a great sense of sadness at the double standards. What they do in the US or in Europe is very different.''
Nnimo Bassey, the Nigerian head of Friends of the Earth International, said, ''We see frantic efforts being made to stop the spill in the US. But in Nigeria, oil companies largely ignore their spills, cover them up and destroy people's livelihood and environments. The gulf spill can be seen as a metaphor for what is happening daily in the oilfields of Nigeria and other parts of Africa.
''This has gone on for 50 years in Nigeria. People depend completely on the environment for their drinking water and farming and fishing. They are amazed that the President of the US can be making speeches daily, because in Nigeria people there would not hear a whimper,'' he said.
It is impossible to know how much oil is spilled in the Niger delta each year because the companies and the government keep that secret. However, two big independent investigations over the past four years suggest that as much is spilled at sea, in the swamps and on land every year as has been lost in the Gulf of Mexico so far.
One report, compiled by WWF UK, the World Conservation Union and representatives from the Nigerian federal government and the Nigerian Conservation Foundation, calculated in 2006 that up to 1.5 million tonnes of oil - 50 times the pollution unleashed in the Exxon Valdez tanker disaster in Alaska - has been spilled in the delta over the past half century. Last year Amnesty calculated that the equivalent of at least 9 million barrels of oil was spilled and accused the oil companies of a human rights outrage.
According to Nigerian federal government figures, there were more than 7000 spills between 1970 and 2000, and there are 2000 official major spillages sites, many going back decades, with thousands of smaller ones still waiting to be cleared up. More than 1000 spill cases have been filed against Shell alone.
Last month Shell admitted to having spilled 14,000 tonnes of oil last year. The bulk of it, the company said, was lost through two incidents - one in which the company claims that thieves damaged a wellhead at its Odidi field and another where militants bombed the Trans Escravos pipeline.
Shell, which works in partnership with the Nigerian government in the delta, says that 98 per cent of all its oil spills are caused by vandalism, theft or sabotage by militants and only a minimal amount by deteriorating infrastructure.
''We had 132 spills last year, as against 175 on average. Safety valves were vandalised; one pipe had 300 illegal taps. We found five explosive devices on one. Sometimes communities do not give us access to clean up the pollution because they can make more money from compensation,'' a spokesman said.
''We have a full-time oil spill response team. Last year we replaced 197 miles [315 kilometres] of pipeline and are using every known way to clean up pollution, including microbes. We are committed to cleaning up any spill as fast as possible as soon as and for whatever reason they occur.''
These claims are hotly disputed by communities and environmental watchdog groups. They mostly blame the companies' vast network of rusting pipes and storage tanks, corroding pipelines, semi-derelict pumping stations and old wellheads, as well as tankers and vessels cleaning out tanks.
The scale of the pollution is mind-boggling. The government's National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency says that between 1976 and 1996 alone, more than 2.4 million barrels contaminated the environment.
''Oil spills and the dumping of oil into waterways has been extensive, often poisoning drinking water and destroying vegetation. These incidents have become common due to the lack of laws and enforcement measures within the existing political regime,'' a spokesman for the agency said.
The sense of outrage is widespread. ''There are more than 300 spills, major and minor, a year,'' Bassey said. ''It happens all the year round. The whole environment is devastated. The latest revelations highlight the massive difference in the response to oil spills. In Nigeria, both companies and government have come to treat an extraordinary level of oil spills as the norm.''
A spokesman for the Stakeholder Democracy Network in Lagos, which works to empower those in communities affected by the oil companies' activities, said: ''The response to the spill in the United States should serve as a stiff reminder as to how far spill management in Nigeria has drifted from standards across the world.''
Other voices of protest point out that the world has overlooked the scale of the environmental impact. Ben Amunwa, an activist with the London oil watch group Platform, said: ''Deepwater Horizon may have exceeded Exxon Valdez, but within a few years in Nigeria offshore spills from four locations dwarfed the scale of the Exxon Valdez disaster many times over. Estimates put spill volumes in the Niger delta among the worst on the planet, but they do not include the crude oil from waste water and gas flares. Companies such as Shell continue to avoid independent monitoring and keep key data secret.''
Worse may be to come. One industry insider, who asked not to be named, said: ''Major spills are likely to increase in the coming years as the industry strives to extract oil from increasingly remote and difficult terrains. Future supplies will be offshore, deeper and harder to work. When things go wrong, it will be harder to respond.''
Judith Kimerling, a professor of law and policy at the City University of New York and author of Amazon Crude, a book about oil development in Ecuador, said: ''Spills, leaks and deliberate discharges are happening in oilfields all over the world and very few people seem to care.''
There is an overwhelming sense that the big oil companies act as if they are beyond the law. Bassey said: ''What we conclude from the Gulf of Mexico pollution incident is that the oil companies are out of control.
''It is clear that BP has been blocking progressive legislation, both in the US and here. In Nigeria, they have been living above the law. They are now clearly a danger to the planet. The dangers of this happening again and again are high. They must be taken to the International Court of Justice.''
Monday, June 14, 2010
Shark expert honoured for conservation
Underwater adventurer and shark expert Valerie Taylor has been appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for her service to conservation.
Together with her husband Ronald, Ms Taylor has fought for more than 50 years for the protection of underwater creatures, in particular the great white shark, the grey nurse shark, sea lions, the potato cod, the southern right whale and marine turtles.
She has also fought for the conservation of habitats, such as the Great Barrier Reef and Ningaloo Reef Marine Park in Western Australia.
Born in Sydney in 1935, Ms Taylor spent her teenage years living near the sea in Cronulla, in Sydney's south, and met her husband when they were both members of the Sydney's St George spearfishing club.
After they both became champion spearfishers in the early 1960s, they decided to switch from killing fish to filming and photographing them.
"We saw what a terrible thing we were doing," Ms Taylor told AAP.
"I could speak about it because I was there.
"We were both champions and I knew that if we went out to a reef, we could take every good fish off it.
"We were decimating reef life."
Ms Taylor went on to became a multi-award winning underwater cinematographer and photographer, working on dozens of documentaries and major feature films, such as as Jaws, Orca and Sky Pirates.
Her fascination with the underwater world and admiration and respect for sharks has prompted her to risk her life on occasions.
In 1979, Ms Taylor was the first to test a stainless steel mesh suit designed by her husband as protection from sharks.
While wearing the suit, Ms Taylor enticed sharks to bite her by placing tuna under the mesh. Her husband filmed the encounters, enabling them both to gain insights into how different species of sharks feed and attack.
The Taylors' long-lasting relationship and adventurous careers have also been the subject of several films, including Sea Lovers and In the Realm of the Shark.
Together with her husband Ronald, Ms Taylor has fought for more than 50 years for the protection of underwater creatures, in particular the great white shark, the grey nurse shark, sea lions, the potato cod, the southern right whale and marine turtles.
She has also fought for the conservation of habitats, such as the Great Barrier Reef and Ningaloo Reef Marine Park in Western Australia.
Born in Sydney in 1935, Ms Taylor spent her teenage years living near the sea in Cronulla, in Sydney's south, and met her husband when they were both members of the Sydney's St George spearfishing club.
After they both became champion spearfishers in the early 1960s, they decided to switch from killing fish to filming and photographing them.
"We saw what a terrible thing we were doing," Ms Taylor told AAP.
"I could speak about it because I was there.
"We were both champions and I knew that if we went out to a reef, we could take every good fish off it.
"We were decimating reef life."
Ms Taylor went on to became a multi-award winning underwater cinematographer and photographer, working on dozens of documentaries and major feature films, such as as Jaws, Orca and Sky Pirates.
Her fascination with the underwater world and admiration and respect for sharks has prompted her to risk her life on occasions.
In 1979, Ms Taylor was the first to test a stainless steel mesh suit designed by her husband as protection from sharks.
While wearing the suit, Ms Taylor enticed sharks to bite her by placing tuna under the mesh. Her husband filmed the encounters, enabling them both to gain insights into how different species of sharks feed and attack.
The Taylors' long-lasting relationship and adventurous careers have also been the subject of several films, including Sea Lovers and In the Realm of the Shark.
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Easy to be lean when you're green
The no plastic diet ... packaged foods are often the most fattening.
Saying no to plastic packaging can have an unexpected benefit - weight loss.
When she goes to the supermarket, Bea Johnson takes along a sealable glass jar so the butcher can slide in a pork cutlet. In the bulk aisle, she fills reusable bags she makes from old bed sheets to carry rice, pasta, oatmeal or nuts.
In fact, everything she and her husband buy is without packaging: they make their own household cleaning products, buy soap that comes unwrapped and return milk bottles to suppliers for refills.
At least three times a week, Johnson phones marketing companies in her unrelenting war against junk mail.
"The amount of money you can save by just carrying your own water bottle is huge. Plus, the more you get away from plastic, the more likely you are to buy fresh," said Johnson, who blogs about her lifestyle in Marin County, California, at zerowastehome.blogspot.com.
The health benefits of a wrapper-free life are also a major theme for Colin Beavan in New York. He wrote a book, No Impact Man, which was about a year that he and his family spent without electricity and living with as little waste as they could. Although their experiment ended in November 2007, they have committed to staying packaging free.
"Most of the fattening foods, the bad stuff, come heavily wrapped. If you confine yourself to fresh products from the supermarket or farmer's market, your family is going to be a lot healthier," he said.
Beavan buys most of his food at the local farmers market. He returns his egg cartons and milk bottles to the farmers and buys round blocks of cheese that come without packaging.
"I think my family is a lot happier now," he said. "It's not simply about less packaging; it's about changing your whole outlook, about wanting less and getting so much more as a family."
I wondered if I, too, could live without any packaging, except for plastic bags I reuse during trips to the supermarket.
For the past month, every grocery item I've purchased has been without wrapping. I go to the bulk aisle of my local food co-op for pasta, rice, beans, flour, oatmeal, nuts and anything else that I can pour into my own bags, which are then weighed at the checkout counter.
I now have ten reusable bags, including a plastic one I use to buy loose spinach and broccoli. One of the strangest byproducts of this experiment has been my newfound respect for plastic; it is no longer discarded after a one-night stand, but has become more like a long-term relationship.
Apart from saving vast amounts of chemicals and oil that go into making shopping bags and reducing the giant soup of plastic clogging oceans, saying no to packaging has improved my waistline and my wallet.
With no more sad looking, single-serving microwave meals, and my coffee from a paper cup replaced with a drink from my water bottle, I feel more energetic and less stressed. Because I bring broccoli and carrots to work and do not touch additives, my skin is clearer. The sudden arrival of middle age spread has completely disappeared from my waist.
I also find myself cooking less. I have my plastic container of spinach and broccoli at work every day, so I feel less of a need for big meals.
Finding cage-free eggs and dairy products can be a problem, but many local farmers markets will refill your egg boxes and replace your milk bottles. I was almost overcome with joy when I found a supermarket steps from my home that sold chocolate and dried apricots in bulk, so dessert was back on.
Financially, all of this has been a major boost. Carrots and onions unburdened by plastic are a lot cheaper, and making my own shampoo saves money.
The major downside is that I am now a crushing bore. Where once my conversations might have been about sports and cinema, now all my sentences seem to begin with, "Did you know ..." followed by a list of places you can get refills on shampoo, honey or milk, or the best type of reusable bags for buying flour.
Saying no to plastic packaging can have an unexpected benefit - weight loss.
When she goes to the supermarket, Bea Johnson takes along a sealable glass jar so the butcher can slide in a pork cutlet. In the bulk aisle, she fills reusable bags she makes from old bed sheets to carry rice, pasta, oatmeal or nuts.
In fact, everything she and her husband buy is without packaging: they make their own household cleaning products, buy soap that comes unwrapped and return milk bottles to suppliers for refills.
At least three times a week, Johnson phones marketing companies in her unrelenting war against junk mail.
"The amount of money you can save by just carrying your own water bottle is huge. Plus, the more you get away from plastic, the more likely you are to buy fresh," said Johnson, who blogs about her lifestyle in Marin County, California, at zerowastehome.blogspot.com.
The health benefits of a wrapper-free life are also a major theme for Colin Beavan in New York. He wrote a book, No Impact Man, which was about a year that he and his family spent without electricity and living with as little waste as they could. Although their experiment ended in November 2007, they have committed to staying packaging free.
"Most of the fattening foods, the bad stuff, come heavily wrapped. If you confine yourself to fresh products from the supermarket or farmer's market, your family is going to be a lot healthier," he said.
Beavan buys most of his food at the local farmers market. He returns his egg cartons and milk bottles to the farmers and buys round blocks of cheese that come without packaging.
"I think my family is a lot happier now," he said. "It's not simply about less packaging; it's about changing your whole outlook, about wanting less and getting so much more as a family."
I wondered if I, too, could live without any packaging, except for plastic bags I reuse during trips to the supermarket.
For the past month, every grocery item I've purchased has been without wrapping. I go to the bulk aisle of my local food co-op for pasta, rice, beans, flour, oatmeal, nuts and anything else that I can pour into my own bags, which are then weighed at the checkout counter.
I now have ten reusable bags, including a plastic one I use to buy loose spinach and broccoli. One of the strangest byproducts of this experiment has been my newfound respect for plastic; it is no longer discarded after a one-night stand, but has become more like a long-term relationship.
Apart from saving vast amounts of chemicals and oil that go into making shopping bags and reducing the giant soup of plastic clogging oceans, saying no to packaging has improved my waistline and my wallet.
With no more sad looking, single-serving microwave meals, and my coffee from a paper cup replaced with a drink from my water bottle, I feel more energetic and less stressed. Because I bring broccoli and carrots to work and do not touch additives, my skin is clearer. The sudden arrival of middle age spread has completely disappeared from my waist.
I also find myself cooking less. I have my plastic container of spinach and broccoli at work every day, so I feel less of a need for big meals.
Finding cage-free eggs and dairy products can be a problem, but many local farmers markets will refill your egg boxes and replace your milk bottles. I was almost overcome with joy when I found a supermarket steps from my home that sold chocolate and dried apricots in bulk, so dessert was back on.
Financially, all of this has been a major boost. Carrots and onions unburdened by plastic are a lot cheaper, and making my own shampoo saves money.
The major downside is that I am now a crushing bore. Where once my conversations might have been about sports and cinema, now all my sentences seem to begin with, "Did you know ..." followed by a list of places you can get refills on shampoo, honey or milk, or the best type of reusable bags for buying flour.
Electric car goes 1000km on a single charge
Electric car goes 1000km on a single charge
A Japanese group has managed to travel 1000km in an electric car without recharging.
A group of Japanese electric car enthusiasts has broken its own Guinness world record by driving a modified Daihatsu Mira more than 1000km on a single charge.
Japan's Kyodo News says the Mira was powered by a bank of 8320 Sanyo lithium-ion batteries commonly found in personal computers.
The current Guinness record stands at 555km for a journey between Tokyo and Osaka, but the group has asked record keepers to recognise the new effort, achieved at a race track in the Ibaraki Prefecture.
But the new effort was not without compromises. The team of 17 drivers managed an average speed of just 40km/h and the effort took 27-and-a-half hours.
Range remains one of the biggest barriers to consumer acceptance of electric cars, with most mass-market EVs due on the market in the next couple of years restricted to a range of just 160km.
A Japanese group has managed to travel 1000km in an electric car without recharging.
A group of Japanese electric car enthusiasts has broken its own Guinness world record by driving a modified Daihatsu Mira more than 1000km on a single charge.
Japan's Kyodo News says the Mira was powered by a bank of 8320 Sanyo lithium-ion batteries commonly found in personal computers.
The current Guinness record stands at 555km for a journey between Tokyo and Osaka, but the group has asked record keepers to recognise the new effort, achieved at a race track in the Ibaraki Prefecture.
But the new effort was not without compromises. The team of 17 drivers managed an average speed of just 40km/h and the effort took 27-and-a-half hours.
Range remains one of the biggest barriers to consumer acceptance of electric cars, with most mass-market EVs due on the market in the next couple of years restricted to a range of just 160km.
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