Las Gaviotas: A Sustainable Community Cut Off From the World Almost 40 Years Ago June 2, 2011

It sounds like something out of a fairy tale or a children’s book, a community deep in the wild jungle of Colombia, cut off from society almost 40 years ago. Then, after the rest of the world turned their back on them, they suddenly take great interest as it turns out this community has found something the rest of the world needs. Energy. And not just a new supply source but something even better. They’ve figured out how to be sustainable without outside influence or resources, reports The New York Times.

In the 1960′s a Colombia developer named Paolo Lugari, while on a road trip through the country, stopped at an abandoned parcel of land and imagined an entire village before his eyes. The land was so poor and the area so remote – “visitors” have to pass Guerrilla check points or fly in to make it there – that no one wanted to live there. Mr. Lugari was in his very early 20′s at the time. He wanted to find one of the hardest places to live and see if he could make it work. This was before the oil crisis of the 70′s, but even then he knew fuel and other resources would be scarce.

Today there are 200 residents and they, “have no guns, no police force, no cars, no mayor, no church, no priest, no cellphones, no television, no Internet. No one who lives in Gaviotas has a job title.” So what do they have? How did this community of 200 people create a society that is now the envy of urban planners, including Amory Lovins, around the world?

When you live in the middle of nowhere, you have to get creative. Initially scientists helped design the buildings, homes, laboratories and factories in the area but don’t come around much these days thanks to all of the violence. Today they have a solar kettle for sterilizing water and solar kitchen, and a 19,800-acre reforestation project with species chosen to produce resins for biofuels, as well as, for creating conditions upon which other native plants can flourish. A children’s seesaw powers the local water pump. Community members feel they are there to “try to lead a quiet life, depending on nothing but our own labor and ingenuity.” Sounds pretty idyllic today.

The reforestation project is one of the most successful in the world, considering that everywhere around it is still a “tropical desert.” To say Las Gaviotas is doing okay for itself is an understatement. People from outside the village trek to Las Gaviotas to earn $500 a month, which is double what they would earn in other rural areas. A mycorrhiz fungus was added almost 20 years ago to help break up and digest the poor soils and in its place other species grew up. They use the resin from the trees to power their motorbikes and tractors and sell the excess. When China dumped cheap resin imports in Colombia, the community was forced to drop their prices by almost 40% to compete.

It might sound like a fairy tale, but Las Gaviotas also has hardships too. Their remote location makes them a likely target for guerillas and organized crime trying to sneak shipments out to other areas, or at least likely that someone trying to hide something will stumble upon them. There are several guerilla and paramilitary groups that are located not too far from Las Gaviotas, but as one resident said, “we don’t take part in this war, and we ask those who enter our village to do so without their rifles. So far, for us at least, this has worked.” Journalists and visitors who have come this year must only stay the day and leave before dark under fear of kidnapping.

Also, the community itself is very small, and with only 12 children in school, many question how long this “experiment” can go on. As many of the residents have said, “we have survived. Maybe, at this time and place in Colombia, that is enough.”

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Turning Used Diapers Into Energy May 10, 2010

Need a clean source of power? Why not turn to disposable diapers?

A machine devised by Japanese firm Super Faiths converts used diapers into pellets that can be burned for energy.

Need a clean source of power? Why not turn to disposable diapers?

Citing not just the abundance of infants but also an increasingly aging society, a Japanese company has developed a technique for transforming used disposable diapers into energy.

The SFD system by oddly named Japanese company Super Faiths moves used diapers (and their contents) through a three-stage process, first pulverizing them before desiccating and sterilizing them, to ultimately create energy pellets that can be burned in special boilers and stoves.

Super Faiths claims that the final, odorless product becomes less than 1/3 the weight and bulk of the original diapers and contains 5,000 kilocalories of heat per kilogram.

CNET’s Crave blog points out that Super Faiths has installed two SFD machines a hospital in western Tokyo’s Machida area. The machines take in a combined 1,400 pounds of used diapers per day. Diapers in plastic bags are dumped into the machines, which produce material for the pellets about a day later.

The company is not alone.

Total Care System of Fukuoka, Japan, has established a way of dissolving diapers in a special solution and turning them into pulp and plastic for use as a construction material and as solid fuel, according to a Japanese newspaper.

And U.K. firm Knowaste has a similar plan for the nappy, though the company concentrates primarily on turning used diapers into recycled products such as building materials. Knowaste announced plans last month to expand via an $18 million facility to recycle diapers — the first in such plant in England.

Poo power seems to be on the rise.

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UK’s CO2 plan ‘certain to fail’ February 11, 2009

China's economic growth also means growing emissions

BBC

The UK’s plans to cut emissions by 80% by 2050 are fundamentally flawed and almost certain to fail, according to a US academic.

Roger Pielke Jr, a science policy expert, said the UK government had underestimated the magnitude of the task to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

He added that it would be more effective to “decarbonise” economic growth rather than focus on targets.

Professor Pielke made his comments during a speech at Aston University.

Professor Pielke said that a country’s greenhouse gas trajectory was determined by three factors: economic growth; population growth; and changes in technology.

This meant, the academic from the University of Colorado suggested, that if people migrate to the UK and the economy boomed, it would be harder for politicians to achieve emissions cuts based on historic levels.

He calculated that the combined effects of possible population growth and economic growth could oblige the UK to increase energy efficiency and reduce carbon intensity of energy at an unprecedented annual rate of 5.4%.

Conversely, if migrants left the UK and the economy slumped, there would be a downturn in emissions, for which politicians would claim unearned credit.

Burning questions

Professor Pielke suggested that a more effective measure would be to track the emissions produced for every unit of wealth generated by individuals. In other words: CO2 per capita GNP.

How to curb climate change will be the subject of heated debates in 2009

This would focus efforts on delivering the technological change needed to reduce emissions, he believed.

However, Professor Pielke’s approach also raises a number of questions.

First, there is no guarantee that a change in measurement will provoke the scale of change the author believes is required.

Moreover, his alternative system would reward governments that shifted to service-based economies and moved their emissions “offshore”, creating an illusionary cut in emissions.

This difficulty could be overcome with a more complex measure based on CO2 per capita GNP and would include imported “embedded” emissions.

But that has problems too: in modern supply chains: a computer may contain parts from 20 different countries and manufacturers regularly change suppliers, so it will often be impossible to keep an accurate tally of embedded carbon.

It could also be too complex for many people to grasp easily.

Professor Pielke’s position is strongly supported by Gwyn Prins, director of the Mackinder Centre at the London School of Economics.

Professor Prins told BBC News: “Professor Pielke is far from being a so-called ‘sceptic’ on reducing CO2, so this makes his analysis all the more telling.

“To begin to meet the legal targets of the Climate Change Act, the UK will have to achieve and maintain decarbonisation at (unprecedented) rates,” he added.

“The Climate Change Act will have to be revisited by Parliament or simply ignored by policymakers. What are the costs in terms of public cynicism about legislators and the legislative process, of passing aspirational rather than codifying laws?”

Colin Challen MP, chairman of the All Party Parliamentary Climate Change Group, said: “This raises questions which I do not think have been factored into the thinking behind the Climate Change Act.

“The task (of cutting emissions by 80% from 1990 levels by 2050) is already staggeringly huge and, as we have seen, well beyond our current political capacity to deliver.

“Heathrow is a prime example of ducking the responsibility,” the Labour MP for Morley and Rothwell told BBC News.

“It is hard to see any tough choices being made in the current climate. A greater population implies more embedded CO2 emissions in imported goods, but the climate change committee is only empowered to consider domestic emissions.”

‘Hardly news’

Professor Pielke’s intervention was rejected by economist Terry Barker, a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

“Pielke’s analysis does not tell us how fast an economy can de-carbonise, just how much it has done so in the past when there has been a weak carbon price,” he said.

“[His] proposals are diversionary; they fail to emphasise the scale of the no-regrets options available to reduce emissions at net benefit and they do not include potential changes in regulations on vehicles and power stations that could lead to rapid de-carbonisation.”

Professor Tom Burke from Imperial College London added: “These conclusions are a very marginal addition to our knowledge.

“The argument in his paper amounts to saying that getting 80% will be difficult. This is hardly news.

“There is nothing that supports the contention that the Climate Change Act will fail or that there are flaws in its basic conception or that there is an alternative approach which is better.

No-one has said this would be easy.

Debates like this will run throughout the year whilst the world staggers towards a climate change agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol.

The existing EU policy model of capping emissions and allowing firms to trade in carbon permits is criticised for enriching businesses while failing to deliver emissions cuts or setting a long-term carbon price.

Arguments will continue over whether this model can be improved or if any alternative policy structure will be more certain to deliver the emissions cuts the scientific establishment so urgently demands.

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