About one year ago Jack called me. He is skipper of the Alcazar, a catamaran sailing with individual people, forming a collective.
Jack thoroughly studied the website fossilfreearoundtheworld.org and asked some specific questions. The answers made him decide to convert the Alcazar into a fossil free catamaran. Here Jack shows us the ship in the middle of the conversion process.
This is the Keilehaven, a part of a canal in an old industrial area in Rotterdam. Once the cargo ships were coming in and out for loading and unloading, but the industries went to larger scale places. Now, the trucks do that last bit of transport, driving on the road from where the picture is taken.
There are pavements, but nobody uses them. Well, nobody – in the night you can find hookers who are chased away from the neighourhood. And once a month you can see some workers of County of Rotterdam to ‘clean it up’, by using chemical weed killers.
The ecosystem consists of tiles, grass and water. That’s it.
In the picture above you see that these old harbours are all connected to the Nieuwe Maas, the big river going through Rotterdam, and is connected to the sea. Every day the tide comes in and goes out. This is a great environment to bring nature back here. The water is mostly brackish. Or better: this water will vary in its salination; it will be fresh at the dead ends of the harbours, to near sea water closer to the sea. This great variation can create a very diverse eco system.
So if you would do nothing, you give nature a chance.
The County of Rotterdam set out a tender to get ideas of landscaping this area. The Urbanists (Dutch: Urbanisten) are now developing nature. Or better, they are going to let the ecosystem do its work.
From there they help nature a bit, by making terraces on different heights, creating different depths of water. It brings even more variation in the ecosystem, so a larger diversity of flora and fauna.
By giving it some scale, there is room for paths to walk, and for leisuring. Hence, it will end up in a park, nice to live by. The area will be converted from a creepy shabby place to a park where you want to walk in, and live close to.
In the city of Rotterdam will be not a regular park, but a living one, a tidal park.
Such a specialty, would it be not more expensive than a regular park? No, it is cheaper to maintain.
It will be there, just because nature gets all chances.
We never showed how you could sail sustainable yourself. So here a first introduction on video, in 4.5 minutes only.
Inge, our professional voice over, voiced it in English and in Dutch. Enjoy it!
As of today, you can find the book Duurzaam Varen in the bookstores and online. Sorry, it is in Dutch, so here it is described in English
The book covers a about all actions you can take to prevent and reduce fossil fuel emissions, from diesel, gas and petrol. Every chapter starts with the small things you can do right now. Like tricks to reduce the use of your diesel engine, or your devices in your galley. Step by step it builts up to a complete sailing and living in fossil freedom.
There is also an eye for other aspects, such as the use of water, and how to stop your water pollution. Think of the e.coli bacterias we emit in the water. Think of the ecocides we use in our bottom paints and are spread in our ambient water. With some changes this is unnecessary.
Everything is systematically built up, starting with the question what you can prevent. Prevention is mostly the cheapest. Since the best energy is the energy you don’t use, or not? Second is if one can reduce, then reuse/repair, or if not, recycle. When these options are covered, you use about 70 to 80 % less. The remaining 20-30% of the energy can be taken care of by solar panels, wind and propeller alternators.
Ever seen how a canoe is built? You need the right tree, you need to saw it in the right piece, and from there it is a lot of gouge work.
Of any vessel, anything that floats, even a garbage bin, I think: would it also sail? Indeed, it is fast, see the regatta we did some months ago and the video. But the sailiing capacities? I really wonder.
In Balerup, San Blas archipelago, Panama, Ivin’s brother Pedro introduced us on his sailing canoe for a short ride. Check the movie!
The Netherlands is bubbling with all kinds of sustainable initiatives. For example, in Rotterdam, a group of five enthusiastic volunteers has now filled 5 rooftops in the neighborhood with solar-panels; each rooftop delivers from 38.000 to 71.000 kWh per year. The rooftops were not theirs, they had no money, but they managed.
How?
Well, in the north of Rotterdam there are lots of flat roofs, mainly apartment buildings, schools and some companies. For households, small enterprises and schoolboards it’s usually too big an investment budget to buy the solar-panels, or there are administrative issues etcetera. The volunteers fix those problems by using their head, and by using the power of the collective. They call it ‘Blijstroom’ (happy electricity)
Larger scale, bigger ambitions
‘Blijstroom’ (happy electricity) is now part of ‘Energie van Rotterdam’ (the energy of Rotterdam). In the first few years, together with the other cooperatives, they focus on developing 90 cooperative solar roofs in the city. Each district will have its own solar roof. They should be ready by 2025.
‘Blijstroom’ uses the Cooperative Energy Generation Subsidy Scheme (SCE), also known as the “postal code rose scheme”.
The most important is that per project a minimum number of participating members:
• must live or be established in the same area (the ‘postal code rose’)
• and receive power via a small-scale consumption connection.
‘Blijstroom’ also generates investments from people who want to invest in sustainability, but for example cannot put panels on their own roof. They can invest in roof panels in their neighbourhood. The minimum is 200 Euros, the maximum is 20.000 euros. Moneywise, the investors get 2,5 % interest on their loan and after 15 years they get the initial sum of money back. Of course, the real profit is in the improvement of the neighborhood. In the future, it no longer has to rely on polluting fossil fuels, which will create a healthy and resilient community!
I am a real carnivore. I grew up with a mother loving the French kitchen, so I do love the sirloins, beefs, livers, casseroles, and many more. I married a wife with great interest in the Mediterranean kitchen, from Turkish köfte to the Greek gyros, the Italian Gnocchi and the Moroccan sheep’s balls, and I ate it all with great taste.
But slowly, and at least during the last decade, I did not like the Dutch meat and milk that much anymore. But why?
Holland may be small, but it is the world’s second largest producer of agro industrial products. Our diary production is even the biggest. So you would say we are the specialists.
Once I tried different milks. But sorry, there was not even the slightest difference.
Let’s have a look at how it is processed. The cows are all the same. The more the same, the better to industrialize. Only the black and white spots differ, because the industry doesnot care.
The lifes are exactly the same. As soon as possible, she delivers a calf. This is taken away straight away, to make the milk production going. To keep this going, she delivers a calf each year.
There is no scientific proof wether a cow would prefer a meadow over a stable, so it depends on the farmer’s way to run his company. It could very well be she only sees the outside world on her way to the abattoir. She will make that walk when she is at the age of six, half way through her life, as her milk production slows down.
Now I understand why I slowly started to find milk more and more boring. Same with yoghurt and buttermilk. Lucky us, an adult doesnot need milk. But a bit of diary and cereals in the morning would be nice. So what I do now, is making my own yoghurt. This tastes differently because you can vary the yoghurt bacteria culture. Extra side effect: the sour of the yoghurt eliminates a part of the sweetness that is added to the cereals.
Still I question if this is the way to process food from animals.
Also the meat always tastes the same. You cannot taste one sirloin from the other, even if you buy it from different supermarket butchers. They all look the same too.
What doesnot help to like meat is the association with the abuse of these animals. That sticks to you, and it sticks to the meat you have on your plate. Especially the mistreatment and violence against pigs has become too systematic, too much integrated in the culture of this large scale industry. This same industry is even subsidized by the government; it is also an abuse of our tax money.
Finally you start to think that you taste this abuse, so in Holland a piece of pork on my plate became an exception. It is mostly beef or goat meat I eat, or vegetarian.
But then I discovered the meat in Colombia!
This was real meat! Wow, I at beef, sirloin, hamburgers, and every time the pieces differed in taste. Yes, sometimes there was a sin or a little tendon in the meat, but I don’t care at all, I put that aside.
This medium fried sirloin is has full taste. Just next to the cut off piece, you can see a little tendonish part in the meat, but I did not care. I could taste wealth of grasses, spices, everything this cow must have eaten in her life. And, by the way, this sirloin costs one third of the price you pay in Europe.
I was discovering a bit the outskirts of the Colombian town I was in. I ended up on a path through the fields, the meadows if you like. I walked between the cows. They are always outside. They have an easy life, just hanging around and eating. I met a women picking spices. She said: “They eat grass and there are about 25 sorts of grass here.” And she continued: “They also eat the spices if they like. So if you don’t mind, I go picking them before they do.”
Wow. Every cow eats to its own wish, taste, belief, I don’t know.
But I do know why every piece of meat is different here and rich of taste.
Just check the pictures here.
The Panamanian Parliament and the President have agreed to a big concession for copper mining to a Canadian miner.
Protests have been starting everywhere, but no response from the government. The ultimate way here in Central America is to make roadblocks. What is the real cause of these massive protests?
Just at this time some fellow sailors had to go from the harbour to Panama City. A ride of 300 kilometers. How did that work?
Maggie and Peter left early in the morning and tried it. For more than an hour it was going fine. But suddenly, after some 100 kilometers, you could see a thin string of smoke over the forest. Getting closer, there was a roadblock. Some burning tyres on the road with a piece of timber, some people next to it sitting laid back on some chairs, and on the road a line of cars waiting. Just waiting.
As a backpacker, you simply step out the car and pass the roadblock by foot. But, when the police or army is there, the atmosphere gets aggressive. Then you can be robbed, beaten, whatever.
Also protesters need sleep. So you can try to get through in the night and hope to get to your final destianation. There are some risks.
First, gangs could take over control and they will ask a bribe, a ‘passage fee’. You recognize them because they wear masks. They want a dollar, could be five or ten. If they are drunk or drugged, it gets tricky.
The further you go, the better. But, suppose you have to go back and new roadblocks have appeared? Then you get trapped between roadblocks and that is the worst thing to happen.
We saw a pickup truck with fruit and vegetables passing a roadblock. Perhaps there has been passing a small bribes here to the protesters in the form of fresh fruit?
In the Western papers you could read the cause of the Panamanian protests was about biodiversity. Is it?
Peter interviewed some Panamanians. A protester, a taxi driver and an employee of the Copa (Colombia-Panama) Airlines. The main question: what is the cause?
In general, it has hardly to do about the concession that the Government gave to this Canadian mining industry. For the people that appeared only to be the straw that breaks the camels’ back. The drop that made the bucket overflow.
The interviewees voted different, but they all agreed that these roadblocks are necessary and they all hope the number will expand.
Here some shared answers to the questions.
So is it about corruption
“Man, believe me, they are all corrupt. So yes and no.”
But the former president (Mr. Martinelli) has just been sentenced for 12 years behind bars, because of corruption.
“Man, that is just politics, to get him away, because he is a threat. Believe me, all parties are corrupt. The mining company buys politicians as much as it is necessary to get that concession.”
So It is more subtle
“Former president Martinelli was corrupt just as anyone, but the difference is, he also did good for the country. The economy got better, there became more jobs, and he started setting up a pension law. So that was OK. But under the new president we see nothing going our way and he doesnot get that message. ”h?
So the anti-corruption regulations of the new president is nothing worth?
“In one way it is even worse. It fights the small corruption, the bribes of small people, who have problems paying the school tuition for their children. This hurts, because the big companies and the government can still do what they want. Like now with this concession to the Canadian copper miner.”
Our Western papers mention the motive of the protest that the mining concession gives damage to the biodiversity.
“Bio- what??”
What happens if you put a economic scientist, a financial specialist and an cartographical artist together?
In a 20 minutes animated video you find out how or money system works. It unravels our -often over complex- financial system, the different functions and mechanisms, and the power and the politics enforcing and maintaining it.
The question is if our money system works pro or contra a sustainable development of our world. Does this system sustain, or does it compromise the environment and possibilities of our future generations? What would be your answer to that question?
Check this video and form your opinion.
Interested? Check the website Waterworks of money for the backgrounds.
From European perspective, the Panamanian attention for waste is limited to Panama City. In every other area, city or village one just puts everything together and that’s it. And that is the best option, because treating your bag of that costs money, so many people just drop there stuff. That is why you see so many plastic bottles in the water and on land.
In most villages, a public garbage can is rarity. Today I walked through Porto Belo, a town in the East of Panama, I bought me a nice snack on a wooden stick and ate it, but I walked with that stick one mile through the centre of the town to finde a carbage can. There was nonen. I ended up at the shop where I bought it and they had a carbage bag of their own.
We entered Panamarina, a harbour with moorings and with a boatyard and all services. Including a sailmaker, a restaurant, et cetera.
Most amazing is the service of the waste station. I interviewed Silvie, who keeps office at the marina.
Let the pictures tell about it.
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For me as an environmentalist, it is a great relief to see Panamarina being serious about waste. Also the Panamananiam personel seems to be more aware and keep everything clean here. What is so nice, the yard itself is cleaner than most yards.
Panamarina shows the example that it is possible to change. To create the awareness that we can all separate and treat waste, and most of all, create less waste. Mother Earth for all of us, also for the future generations.
