Song for Jasmine

It’s Christmas again, and already where I live there’s been enough snow to build an army of snowmen. I like snow, but I’ve also spent a few Christmases in the Maldives, where snow is only to be found in the encyclopaedia.

The Maldives is an Islamic state, so the usual religious connotations of Christmas do not feature in the festivities. The resort islands don’t have particularly big shops, so the traditional Christmas shopping isn’t an option either. That doesn’t stop them from getting into the spirit of things and throwing a really good party, people certainly manage to have a good time. You can see how much effort they put into things by the photo at the top of this post, that’s an exquisitely-carved water-melon.

Regular readers of this blog (both of them) will know that I’ve written about the Maldives before, and the uncertain fate that awaits them at the hands of global warming and rising sea-levels. It’s easy to forget such things at this time of year, but that would be a shame. The wrapping and packaging that accompanies much of what we buy these days is a great contributor to the damage we do to our environment, and Christmas gifts are no exception. It would be great to be able to give gifts that didn’t have all that wrapping but still expressed the sentiment of caring and giving that Christmas is supposed to be about.

Gift-vouchers are one way of doing that, but some people prefer to choose the actual gift they give, and a voucher doesn’t fulfill that need. Here’s a suggestion then, how about visiting www.magnatunes.com and buying some music for someone?

You can buy music at many places on the web, of course, but magnatunes.com adds a new dimension to the game. You can listen to all the music they offer, in high quality, for free, and decide what you like before you buy. You can then download the album of your choice in full CD-quality, or in a variety of formats. You decide exactly how much you pay for it, from $5 upwards per album, and the musician gets 50% of whatever you pay. They even encourage you to make copies to give to friends so their music gets more exposure!

This is all legal, they work directly with musicians in a business model that’s very different from the way the big record labels work. They seem to be successful with it too.

So why not take the time to listen to some music for free and choose an album or two to download for someone as a gift? If you present it to them on a re-writeable CD or a USB stick you can give them music you have chosen for them with zero waste, much kinder to the environment. Seismic Anamoly is one of my personal favourites (and yes, that is how he spells it), and I also like Ambient Teknology (yes, that is how he spells it).

A parting shot, why not also put out a little Christmas gift for the birds? I cleared the snow from a section of our garden wall and put out some bird-food a few days ago. This robin has been a regular visitor ever since.

Merry Christmas!

I get free petrol this month. In fact, I expect to get free petrol every December from now on. I didn’t win the lottery, and I don’t have a company car, so how do I manage it?

About a year ago I read some articles on the web about how driving differently can reduce petrol consumption, with all the benefits that entails. I hadn’t thought about it much until then, but I decided to give it a go. Now I find I can travel about 8 or 9% further than before for the same amount of petrol.

That may not sound like a lot, but one month is 8.3% of a year, so as I see it, my petrol is free this month. I think I’ll use some of the money to take Dweezeljazz out to dinner.

There are several pages on the web now that discuss driving economically. There’s one from the BBC which has a graph of CO2 emissions versus speed. It shows that the most fuel-efficient speeds for driving are about 35-50 mph (60-80 kph).

There’s a more detailed BBC article and an an article in French that discuss the same topic. Between them, they make a number of suggestions

• drive smoothly, accelerating and braking gently
• remove the roof-rack and any excess weight
• check your tyre pressure
• change your air filter regularly
• don’t leave the engine idling unnecessarily
• change gear early, maintain constant speeds when possible
• use engine-braking rather than your foot. Modern cars will reduce the petrol injection when engine-braking
• opening the windows or using the air-conditioning will increase consumption
• know your route, to avoid unnecessary use of the car
• avoid unnecessary trips, especially short ones which don’t give the engine time to warm up

Driving economically not only saves petrol, it also reduces wear and tear on the car in general. It reduces your emissions of greenhouse-gasses and other pollutants, and makes the roads safer for pedestrians and other road-users.

Driving economically is one thing, but the last two points in the list above address the issue from a different perspective, consuming less petrol by avoiding use of the car. There are other ways to do that too, such as car-pooling, or sharing a shopping trip with a friend or neighbour. If you work flexible hours you may be able to adopt a schedule that avoids you getting caught in rush-hour traffic.

There’s another way to save petrol with the car, that’s to not drive it all the way to where you’re going. Instead of driving to my office, I now park my car over a kilometre away and walk the rest of the distance. It adds 15 minutes to my journey, but I get a lot of good exercise in the process. Getting that exercise by other means would undoubtedly take more time than that out of my day. Instead of just walking along the road, I have a route from the car to the office which avoids traffic, so I’m not breathing so much vehicle pollution. It’s not flat either, so I get even more exercise from the steps I climb up and down every day.

It’s actually a very pleasant walk, I get to see many interesting things on the way. All the photographs in this post were taken on that walk at one time or another. I get to see things like this daily, but I wouldn’t see them at all if I simply drove all the way to my office.

According to the BBC, driving economically can reduce petrol consumption by 10-15%. Apparently, Ford themselves believe people could reduce their consumption by up to 25%. I know I could try harder, and maybe, if I do, I will have free petrol earlier next year.

I’d like that, Dweezeljazz and I know a number of good restaurants nearby.

This is Mirihi Island, in the Maldives. It’s a small island in Ari atoll. The Maldives are a chain of coral islands in the Indian Ocean, near the southern tip of India.

I’ve been to the Maldives a few times, and I learned to dive there. Having watched Jacques Cousteau bubbling his way across the screen as a kid, I actually got to do some of it myself.

I went from beginner to PADI divemaster in one year, got myself an underwater housing for my digital camera, and went for it. You can see some of the results here, the sharks at Anga Faru in Baa Atoll, a Giant Moray with a cleaner shrimp, and a nudibranch (Tambja Olivaria).

The Maldives are well-known for many reasons. The word atoll comes from Divehi, the native language. Its use in English was popularised by none other than Charles Darwin, whose theories of reef-formation are one of the lesser-known results of his travels.

Another claim to fame for the Maldives, until recently, was that they had the longest-serving leader in Asia. Maumoon Abdul Gayoom held power for 30 years. He was succeeded recently in democratic elections by Mohamed Nasheed.

Perhaps they are most famous as a holiday destination, but they also hit the headlines as one of the many nations to fall victim of the tsunami of December 26th 2004.

A more worrying claim to fame is that they are one of the island nations that is almost certainly doomed to disappear in the coming century as a result of global warming. The sea-level in the Maldives is projected to rise 50cm or more, by the end of the 21st century. Given that the Maldives is little more than one or two metres above sea-level at best, this is already a lot. But the Maldives will run into trouble long before the sea actually covers it completely.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change discusses island nations explicitly in its fourth assessment report. It has a few predictions common to all such small island nations in the report of Working Group II (“Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability“).

Flooding, from storms, will intensify. Coastal erosion will accelerate. Coral reefs and fisheries will be affected, and fresh water will become scarce. Agriculture and infrastructure will suffer as a result. Even the tourist industry, a major part of the Maldivian economy, is expected to suffer significantly as the Maldives become less attractive to tourists. These are all predictions of which the IPCC is “highly confident”.

The Maldivian government is not ignorant of these threats, and the IPCC note that their Ministry of Home Affairs has considered ways to help them address the matter. Chapter 16 of Working Group II has a list.

• Population consolidation i.e., reduction in number of inhabited islands
• Ban on coral mining
• Protection of international airport, upgrading existing airports
• Increase elevation in the future
• Reduction of human impacts on coral reefs
• Assigning protection status for more reefs
• Coastal protection of resort islands
• Reduce dependency on diving as a primary resort focus
• Economy diversification
• Explore alternate methods of growing fruits, vegetables and other foods
• Crop production using hydroponic systems
• Protection of groundwater
• Increasing rainwater harvesting and storage capacity
• Use of solar distillation
• Management of storm water
• Allocation of groundwater recharge areas in the islands
• Human resource development
• Institutional strengthening
• Research and systematic observation
• Public awareness and education

That’s not enough for the new Maldivian President, who is under no illusions about the future of his country. He clearly realises that all the Maldivians can do where they are will only buy them a little time. So, as the BBC reported recently, he is actually planning to buy a new homeland for the Maldivian people.

The photo at the top of this article was taken 4 days after the tsunami of 2004. Mirihi escaped practically unscathed on that occasion, but its future does not look good. Within my lifetime, this island, and much of the Maldives, could well be gone.