wind is the new oil

NOTE: this is a guest column written for my dad for a little weekly newspaper in the town where i grew up. dad owned the paper for 35 years before selling it a decade or so ago to the woman who had worked for him for most of those years. he still works there every day and writes a weekly column. this week, he ordered politely asked me to write it for him. i found myself having to write it here in this blogger compose space, in order for the words to flow, so i thought i'd share it with all of you as well. plus, i thought you'd all like to see that i am indeed capable of capital letters...

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earth art from the COP15 meeting in copenhagen

Over the past year, my husband and I began to think about living a more environmentally responsible life. Last December, Copenhagen hosted the COP15 United Nations environment meeting and so for the past year, our newspapers have had an environmental slant to all of the stories. Although the meeting was a disappointment on a political front, we found that it had us thinking about ways we could, as individuals, do our part towards ensuring that the planet we leave to our daughter Sabin isn't a complete disaster.

One of the first things I did was leave a job I'd had for two years in Norway. I was flying to work on a bi-weekly basis from our home in Denmark and that just didn't seem like the most environmentally responsible thing to do, so I decided to get a job in the country where I lived. An opportunity arose for both my husband and I in a renewable energy company that manufactures wind turbines. That seemed to both of us like a good way to take action.

house with a 10-year plan

Taking the new jobs mean that we had to move across the country. Denmark is about the size of Wisconsin, so this move isn't as dramatic as it sounds. At the same time, we decided to follow our dream of getting a farmhouse with a bit of land where we could have a big garden and a few animals and although we have no desire to go completely self-sufficient, to be more self-sufficient than we are today. We found a place with an old and rather falling-down house that was built in 1895 that sits on about 11 acres of land. We have a ten-year plan for restoration of the house, but we are definitely in love with the property, which includes one end of a small lake.

our little corner of the lake

What it all means is that we have room for a big garden, where we can grow all kinds of our own vegetables and put them up, thereby eating a more locovore diet. We're going to have chickens and raise a couple of pigs as well, because it feels much better knowing where the eggs and bacon come from and what they were fed and knowing that they lived a good life. We live much closer to work than we did - only about 8 miles away. That means that my husband can bike and although I drive, it's much better on the environment than flying to work like I did for the past two years.

When we do our renovations, we're looking to use as many recycled materials as we can and to build in ways that make the house as energy-efficient as possible. We're researching having our own little 2-3KW wind turbine, with the intention of eventually going off the grid, or perhaps selling our excess energy back into it. We're finding that even though Denmark is very far ahead on the wind energy front (Vestas, a Danish company, is the world's #1 wind turbine producer (for now)), the legislation is lagging a bit behind as far as the individual consumer is concerned, but even that is changing.

near Charles City, Iowa

It's very encouraging to drive across Iowa and South Dakota and see big wind farms dotting the landscape. I know there's work to be done here on the infrastructure, but it's a good sign that the wind farms are being built. Today, 20% of the energy in Denmark is produced by wind farms, both on- and offshore and they have a goal of being 100% on renewable energy by 2030. It's my impression that in Denmark, there are more small wind installations -- of 2-3 turbines -- and it would be nice to see that coming here as well. A small town could put up 4-5 turbines and surely go a long way to producing the needed power. Of course, power in this area is already renewable hydro-electric power, so it's not as much of an issue here near the river. But we sure do have the wind for it around here.

It's interesting after a number of years in the maritime industry, where I learned quite a lot about the transport of fossil fuels (oil, LNG, LPG and other petroleum products), to come into the wind industry, which feels like there's a new gold rush going on. I keep saying wind is the new oil and there is definitely a cowboy mentality in the industry - a pioneering spirit of trying all sorts of innovative solutions (gearless turbines are a big one, and the sheer size of the turbines is another - our company's largest are 3.6 megawatts with 58-meter (190-foot) blades). There's a heady feeling that must have been there in the early days of the oil business and it's very interesting to be part of it.

if passports could talk

yesterday, in the flickr group, kristine had a shot of her passport and used it to tell the story of how she was soon moving on to her next assignment. i didn't have any idea what i was going to do for my photo, so i did one of those tribute shots, as they're called when you blatantly copy what someone did and give them credit. i located my old passport and my current one and, as can often be the case with these daily photos, took a little trip down memory lane.

old on the left, current on the right

my passports are fatter than your usual passport. and that's because both of them have had pages added to them. twice. you'll also notice that my old passport was green. it was my first one and i didn't know that most americans have a blue one. i was "lucky" and got the green one during a very small window when they issued ben franklin commemorative passports. it's actually thanks to benjamin franklin that we all have passports at all, as it was his idea. the unusual green passport caused me no end of grief when i was traveling a lot in the balkans in the late 90s. border guards constantly questioned its authenticity and one guard at the turkish-greek border actually said, "green passport, very bad, very bad," and made a slicing motion across his neck. i was quite alarmed, but the conversation stopped there as that was apparently the extent of his english and my turkish was nonexistent. i've survived to tell the tale, so i guess it wasn't really very bad. and i never did ever meet anyone else with a green one.

as an american, you get stamped everywhere you go and you often need visas. the first passport filled up because the macedonian visa took a whole page every time and i had to have a new one if i popped down to thessaloniki for a weekend or up to belgrade for a coffee. it was early days after macedonia found themselves, rather to their surprise, with their own country, and it took them awhile to realize they could issue multiple-entry visas. i eventually got one of those, but not before they had used up ten pages of my passport.

a number of countries - china and india come to mind - think nothing of taking up an entire page of your passport for the visa. and the visas are elaborately colorful and often feature shiny holograms. i guess they want you to feel you got your money's worth. on the bright side, they're usually good for a least six months, so you don't need a new one should you be sent those places again.  i did use up two whole pages on indian visas, as i had to go there frequently enough that one expired and i needed another. (audible sigh.)

the bulk of my travel occurred during the bush administration and i clearly remember standing in lines at passport control, concealing my passport, as i felt a little sheepish about being american during those years. i happened to be in the philippines when obama was elected and i very clearly remember the sense of relief (tho' bush was still president) when i realized that i no longer had to hide my passport while i stood in line. on that occasion, people in line saw it and several actually smiled and gave me a thumbs up. with the incomprehensible debacle of health care reform (who would seriously not want to limit the influence of insurance companies on their personal health?) going on in the US right now, i'm not sure i wouldn't actually begin to conceal my passport again if i were queuing today.

many of the pages are covered in stamps that say "københavn" because i get stamped every time i come back into the country if it's not from scandinavia or the schengen countries. it tapered off because eventually, i knew all of the guys at passport control and convinced them to not to stamp me every time.

i've loved the travel opportunities i've had through my various jobs. the job i'm starting in april will not have so many travel opportunities, but i've been thinking about it and i'm really ok with that. looking at all of these stamps exhausts me a little bit. when i see the dates for the convoluted trip i took from copenhagen to singapore to heathrow to gatwick to budapest to constanza and back to copenhagen in one crazy week, it makes me tired. i hope companies today are using the possibilities afforded by electronic meeting software, rather than sending someone to give a 30 minute presentation in singapore on monday and the same one in romania on wednesday. i remember thinking it was all very exciting at the time (tho' having to switch from heathrow to gatwick was madness and an example of how bad the travel agent was). but today, i wouldn't even want to do it. and i would probably have the good sense to say no, but in those days (sounds like long ago, but it's not even three years ago), i actually quite liked it and of course, felt i had to do all of the things that were asked of me.

these stamps document for me how far i've come not just literally, but metaphorically as well. i think i've learned to say no to such madness today. and i hope that one good thing to come out of economic crisis is that employees aren't asked to do trips like that these days, because companies think twice before spending 40,000 ($7,300) kroner on such a ticket. i'm going to lose my gold status on both SAS and KLM here in the next couple of months. and tho' there was a time, not so long ago, when that would have panicked me, i'm resting quite easily in the knowledge. the world is changing and times are changing and it's no longer environmentally defensible to pop over to london for lunch or take a private plane back from newcastle like we did in the mid-noughties. i loved those times and am grateful for all the places i've been, but i'm quite ready to stay a bit closer to home for awhile. and besides, taking the train down through europe is quite romantic.

COP15 begins today

the COP15 meeting on climate change begins today in copenhagen.  the danish parliament hurried through legislation enabling a big crackdown by the police on protesters. there's a holding area complete with cages for 350 set up in the old brewery not far from the center of copenhagen. and denmark has been granted permission by the european union and the schengen treaty signatories to institute border controls once again should that be necessary. "we're ready," say the police. per larsen, the gentleman in charge of the copenhagen police efforts said in the new york times, "his officers would have low tolerance for behavior that deviates from "Danish society as we prefer it to be." that could get interesting.

so there you have it. we're ready. the world's top leaders are coming (not all of them for the right bit of the meeting, ahem, mr. obama), but the meeting is expected to fizzle out and not achieve any legally binding agreement. the best anyone is hoping for is political agreement, but even that looks like a bit of a longshot.

the climate skeptics have given voice again in recent weeks in the lead-up. but i see signs of climate change all around. yes, the rose in my garden had frost on it last week, but the fact is that it's december and it's still blooming and we're not talking not only one rose, but several of them (tho' i only photographed the one). on the weekend, i saw forsythia blooming down the street, tho' ours isn't (our yard is north-facing and cooler and shadier). there was a canola field near sabin's riding school with many of those characteristic yellow flowers beginning to show. the climate is changing. and if there's a chance that there's something we can do about it, we should do so, immediately. at the very least, fossil fuels are limited and we've got to come up with alternative energy sources if we're going to continue in the lifestyle to which we've been accustomed (if that's even a good idea).

i've said it before (tho' cannot find the post for the life of me), i fear that it will take losing a major european country, like the netherlands, which will be severely affected by rising sea levels, before the world really wakes up. places like the seychelles and bangladesh are in danger too, but sadly, i believe the impact of losing them wouldn't be the same as it would losing the netherlands.

if i'm honest, i can see the upside in climate change for us living here in denmark. we're already increasingly able to grow grapes and that means we can make wine (pretty good if you've got an eye on self-sufficiency and a taste for the grape elixir). farmers are able to have two crops per year from their fields. in the decade i've been here, denmark has begun to grow corn. it's not as tall and robust as what you see in iowa, but corn nonetheless. and we could use more warm, sunny days.

i'm going to go in to the city to soak in the atmosphere with my camera and we've got couchsurfers galore coming (hotel rooms are scarce) in the coming days, so it will be interesting to see how it all unfolds. stay tuned, i'm sure i'll be returning to this subject.

an organized mess

the newspapers in denmark are full of environment-related stories in the lead-up to the COP15 climate meeting here in copenhagen in december, so living a more green life is at the forefront of all of our thoughts. but in all honesty, denmark is pretty far ahead on that front. it is, after all, the home of modern wind technology (think vestas). but for me, one of the most tangible signs of denmark's commitment to the environment is how organized our dumps are.

when we went last sunday, i snapped a few pictures to show you.

husband and mig unload stuff from the ancient toyota

ancient toyota might need to be recycled itself.

maybe in the large metal container?

one for newspapers, telephone books, etc.

and another for bottles and jars

put your old carpets here.

small burnables.

keep it under 1 meter, please.

large burnables (tho' this one was closed - there was another one).

small metal things.

it's here that husband found the fabulous sewing machine.

appliances

clothing donations
and yes, that was a bag of old linens in front of that one.
and maybe i did appropriate a couple of choice patterns.

mattresses and other feathery furniture.

separate containers for ceramics and tiles, cement, marble, stone, bricks

and i didn't even get pictures of the whole area where you can put old paint cans and batteries and electrical appliances and tires and garden debris and insulation. it's amazingly organized and there are little guys in orange suits patrolling and just waiting for you to accidentally put a ceramic flowerpot in with the glass, so they can yell at you. and odin forbid you try to put something longer than a meter in the small burnables.

but it makes me feel better to go there and to separate things and know that they're being recycled (tho' to be honest, i don't really know where they go). in the spring, you can go get rich compost for your garden, as much as you can carry away for free. it's the result of the trash they collect from our houses, where we separate into green and non-green trash. and i know that the burnables are burned in a big central place where they then capture the heat and use it to heat water for the fjernvarm system that heats much of copenhagen.

i like that the environment is the central topic around here at the moment and i like feeling that i'm doing my part by separating our trash and taking it to the organized dump.

what we've apparently forgotten along the way

i've been rereading laura ingalls wilder's little house books (thanks bee for the idea) and i realize that we don't know how to do anything anymore (except google stuff). i'm so struck by how much ma and pa could do. everything from process maple syrup from tree to a usable sugar supply for the winter, to tanning hides, to butchering a hog, to building a sod house to sowing and harvesting crops. we have become so distant from the food chain that the coming climate change is downright frightening.

all of this is on my mind thanks to the lifestyle change that husband and i are contemplating and blogging about here (after all, the blog is the medium of choice for thinking things through). regardless of what happens with the COP15 meeting here in copenhagen in december, we are all going to have to change the way we relate to the world. we're simply going to have to use less energy and what we consume will have to come from much closer to our local area. the life we know now is simply not sustainable. it's more and more indefensible that we treat the planet the way we do (she says as she's packing her bag to go to singapore next week, so she does realize she has a ways to go in transforming her thinking and her lifestyle).

so, in thinking about how to live in a more responsible way towards the earth, we're thinking about getting a large farm house that would be a property big enough to share with at least a couple of other families. farms houses here tend to be one big main house with often three barns/outbuildings forming a square courtyard. most of the places we're looking at have barns of solid construction that could be easily converted to living space (especially if you know an awesome polish guy who can help you with that). the idea isn't to go amish, but to have space to raise more of our own food and to share some of the things--like a kitchen and a car--that today we all think we need our own of--all while keeping your regular job. obviously that's the short version, but you can read more about how our ideas are evolving over on the livet på landet (life on the land) blog.

but i feel a little overwhelmed, reading the little house books. there's just so much i have to learn. so i guess i'm off to google a few things...

seasonal eating

Gonna read the paper, looking for the news about food supply - what a really bad news!

There are hard times in front of us, I think. Battles because of water, food, energy. We get too much people for this little planet.

I hope to go a good part of my way in this life, I´m not keen on being reborn...

my friend Gabi wrote me the words above this morning. coincidental (or perhaps not? but that's a whole 'nother post) because these were the exact thoughts on my mind as i went to sleep last evening and i was just mulling them over as i sat down at the computer this morning. these thoughts are on my mind thanks to reading barbara kingsolver's animal, vegetable, miracle.

i've been thinking about this whole "food miles" issue for awhile now. last winter, i ordered from my organic veggie box people (årstiderne) the "dogme kassen," which includes only produce from Danish farmers, so at least i know it hasn't come from halfway across the globe (Denmark is, after all, only about the size of Wisconsin). i'll admit it got a little boring with the root vegetables week after week and so i broke down after a couple of months and changed our weekly box to "kuk kassen," which might have the occasional spanish tomato or italian fennel.

aside: i'm a little disappointed to look at it right now and see that this week there will be a hokkaido squash from argentina!! not sustainable! i must change back to the "dogme kasse," which will no doubt start to have more exciting things in it now that spring is here. and it does--new potatoes, rhubarb, oyster mushrooms. yum. next week, that's what we'll get.

i'm only at the beginning of barbara's book. in the book, they're anxiously awaiting the first quivering spears of asparagus. it's that season here as well and i too am awaiting them (perhaps i should weed my asparagus bed). we don't have the space for a garden large enough to sustain our family through the summer, so i can't actually wholeheartedly embrace the project of growing our own food, but we will plant tomatoes and cucumbers in the greenhouse. i might even give it a go with aubergine and peppers. i can already imagine how heavenly it will be to step into the leafy greenery of the warm greenhouse and breathe in the smells of tomatoes ripening on the vine.

we can make wiser choices in the grocery store as well, not eating things when they're not in season (especially tomatoes and strawberries). during the two weeks that the danish strawberries are in season, they are heavenly and no doubt we appreciate them that much more because they're not always there. there is an enormous difference between them and the rubbery ones that are picked before they're ripe and trucked up here from spain. i vow that we will only eat things like that when they are in season.

as gabi pointed out this morning, the battle has only begun, so we must begin to think of ways of living that are more environmentally sustainable. i sometimes shudder to think of the world sabin will inherit. however, as TheElementary pointed out in a previous comment this week, human beings are amazingly adaptable. so, at the same time as i fear that life as we know it is changing, i also can't wait to see what lies ahead. the very near future surely holds some asparagus...