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August 2010: What is the message?

Early in August, I was traveling in Japan, and as always on these occasions, I was reading International Herald Tribune in airport lounges and on planes. Within three days, there were four articles in IHT, seemingly unrelated, which made me ask whether we are overlooking a major change in the power distribution of our world. On August 9, 2010, an article titled America's going dark informed us that cities in America try to combat the economic crisis by switching of the street lights to reduce expenditures energy and by turning once paved road back into gravel roads to reduce costs of maintenance. The once leading nation in technology and development is obviously giving up on infrastructure instead of developing new and smart technologies to improve the outdated infrastructure. Instead of stimulating the development of new technologies and sustainable ways of lives, the world leading nation is giving up.

On August 10, 2010, it was reported that Portugal, a country that during my first visit in 1984 to me appeared as still in the dark ages, is taking the lead in Europe and the world in renewable energy: as much as 45% of the energy used in 2010 is coming from renewable sources (see the article Portugal's quest for renewable). An Portugal is first in having set up a nation-wide network for recharging electrical cars, which led the Italian prime minister Berlusconi in his astonishingly stupid way to crack the joke that Italy can build an electrical Ferrari for Portugal. The once most backward country is taking the lead in survival.

On the same day, we could read that China's going green. In a dramatic step pushing factories into a transition to cleaner energy, China had decided to close down 2087 factories using energy-inefficient infrastructure; mainly steel mills, cement works, leather factories and paper mills. Already in October 2009, China had announced that it was going green, and a commentary by Thomas L. Friedman had identified this event as the Sputnik of the 21th Century (read the commentary ..., and/or see my October 2009 Thought of the Months). Now it becomes clear how serious China is about this transition. With the power to enforce such dramatic decisions, China will be able to make a transition to a new energy basis in a time much shorter than any other country. The article also mentioned that China in 2010 for the first time is using more energy than the U.S. but fails to analyze that to a large extent, this energy is used to produce products consumed in Europe, Australia, and, not least, the U.S. Thus, China's increasing energy consumption is exported as virtual energy to those product and consumption-hungry western cultures. Fortunately for the world, China is taking a lead in going green.

And what are we seeing in the U.S.? On August 11, the article Recycling Land for Green Energy Ideas informs us that in California thousands of acres of land had to be removed from agricultural use because decade-long irrigation has turn the land into salty deserts no longer good for any agriculture. The smart idea proposed by several federal and state agencies is now to use this man-made deserts together with other similarly man-made deserts to create large solar power plants. The article does not comment on the fact that man is destroying the land, it seems to hail the great idea of using the land for 'green' energy.

The snapshot of these four articles seems to carry a message: the world's leading nation is running out of steam and instead of taking the challenge, like it took the Sputnik challenge posed by Russia in the 20th century, it is switching of lights, giving up infrastructure, and trying to cover the sins of the past with seemingly 'green' plasters. If this trend continues, it is only a question of time until the brief period of global dominance of the North American culture will be history.


If you have a story, thought, or picture worth to be considered as story, thought or picture of the month, please feel free to inform me about it by sending an e-mail to hpplag@unr.edu.