From the shores of Louisiana: What fuels energy change?

by Jon Bowermaster on

Born in the Natal province of South Africa, Ivor van Heerden has been an adopted Louisianan for more than thirty years. During his years here he’s been head of the state’s coastal restoration program, on the staff at LSU, co-director of the state’s hurricane center and a head of Team Louisiana, which investigated the hows and whys of the levee failures during Hurricane Katrina.

Also along the way he’s been branded everything from an expert to a gadfly, an egomaniac to a Cassandra. While he predicted the damage a Katrina-like storm would have on New Orleans several years before it happened – thus his charge to investigate after the hurricane – when he came out very publicly pointing fingers at the Army Corps of Engineers for “shoddy engineering” his job at LSU was suddenly eliminated (“budget cuts” said university officials; he’s still suing to get his job back).

He’s stayed in Louisiana since he was let go from LSU more than a year ago because he’s invested so much time studying its coastline and because he truly loves the state and its wildernesses. Since the Gulf spill he’s been up and down the coastline and in the air above it, consulting with clean-up efforts.

When I find him in his gravel drive in a small town outside Baton Rouge he’s packing his car for Houma, home of one of the spill’s command centers. Despite a reputation as a nature lover he’s no fuzzy romantic and is calmly outspoken on everything from big hurricanes to big oil. He’d spent the day before on two flights over the Chandleur Islands, where oil had just come ashore.

%Gallery-95432%”This is absolutely the last thing we need, being the most important part of the year in Louisiana ecologically. Our wetlands are already in such sad shape and now we’ve got hurricane season approaching. It’s the growing season for the grasses and wetland plants that suck energy out of the surge, which help protect us from storms. And of course this is the time of year when the birds are breeding and the fish larvae are starting to enter the bays and estuaries.”

How bad was the view from the air? “It was truly impressive. Some of the slicks are huge – one we looked at was 10 miles by 2 miles, about a mile off the coast. If something like that came ashore it would be devastating.

“A worst case scenario would be that a tropical storm spins out next week and we have five, six, ten feet of surge and it drives that oil in and totally fouls a huge part of coastal Louisiana. In some ways we’re lucky it’s happening now rather than during the height of hurricane season, which is when we expected such a catastrophe to happen because a drill rig had been knocked over.”

Given his ongoing fight with LSU over his job – his request for a trial was turned down just a week ago, though he is appealing – I wonder if he might temper his outspokenness regarding assigning blame for the spill.

“Obviously BP, or Transocean are at fault since it’s their equipment that failed. Whether it was malfunction of equipment or human error, they are ultimately responsible. But we Americans share a fair amount of the blame. Most of us are in denial about the whole energy situation in this country so it is our fault as much as anyone else’s.

“But BP or Exxon or whoever else is not going to go drill in one-mile deep water if they can’t make money. It costs them billions of dollars to sink just one well. But they can make money because of our energy policy. If we could suddenly change it so that we all had solar panels on our roofs, use solar heating and so on, we would reduce the demand for this oil and it would become uneconomical to go into these deep waters and we could eliminate some of these problems. But I don’t think that’s going to happen, I honestly don’t. I think we’re just going to continue down this road until we have a major energy catastrophe when we are all of a sudden forced to change.”

New UNESCO World Heritage Sites for Ireland?

by Sean McLachlan on

The Republic of Ireland has a well-deserved reputation for beautiful landscapes and ancient monuments, so you might be surprised to learn that it has only two UNESCO World Heritage Sites. They are the Archaeological Ensemble of the Bend of the Boyne, which includes megalithic sites such as Newgrange that boast the world’s largest collection of prehistoric megalithic art, and Skellig Michael, a 7th century monastery on an isolated island.

Impressive sites, both of them, but surely the Emerald Isle has more to offer?

The Irish have decided to remedy this poor showing and have proposed seven sites or groups of sites for the UNESCO tentative list. Here’s a brief rundown:

The Burren: both a geological and a cultural landscape, The Burren on the west coast presents an imposing terrain of exposed limestone carved into weird shapes by the wind and rain. Nowadays it attracts hikers and other outdoorsy types, but in early times it attracted a succession of cultures that grazed their animals there and left more than 2,700 monuments. Still used by locals for their flocks, a large body of myth and folklore has grown up around this unique landscape.

The Historic City of Dublin: Ireland’s capital has a well-preserved historic center full of Georgian-era buildings. These eighteenth and early nineteenth century buildings are some of the finest of their type. Add to this generations of writers (Swift, Sheridan, Wilde, Stoker, Yeats, Beckett, etc.) and the fact that it’s the setting for James Joyce’s Ulysses, and you have one of the cultural capitals of the world. Dublin is full of atmospheric views, like the one caught here by user patrodz from Gadling’s flickr pool. You can even go on a literary pub crawl of Dublin.

The Céide Fields and North West Mayo Boglands: It’s strange to think that an entire Neolithic landscape, complete with boundary walls, farm fields, and monuments could survive intact for almost 6,000 years, but that’s exactly what’s happened here. Much of the landscape is buried under a thick layer of peat that preserves organic materials such as pollen, leather, wooden tools, even human bodies. It’s been the playground of archaeologists for generations, and every year new discoveries are made.

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Western Stone Forts: a network of Early Medieval (700-1000 AD) ringforts, circular stone walls that defended the homes of the petty rulers whose lands made up a patchwork of kingdoms on the island. These were dangerous times of constant raiding and brigandage, and regular folk made ringforts too. These Western Stone Forts are on a more grandiose scale than those of the commoners and are often better preserved, such as the impressive stone fort at Dún Aonghasa.

The Monastic City of Clonmacnoise and its Cultural Landscape: This monastic city in central Ireland has yet to be swallowed by the juggernaut of modern “development.” Founded in 545, it became a major center of arts and learning and a royal burial site. There are many churches and a castle still standing.

Early Medieval Monastic Sites: Ireland is famous for its early medieval monasteries that helped keep the lamp of learning lit after the fall of the Roman Empire. While books such as Cahill’s How the Irish Saved Civilization exaggerate the Irish role (the Byzantines and Arabs helped preserve and enhance Classical learning too) there’s no doubt that Irish monks were one of the bastions of culture during a low period in European history. Six monasteries have been chosen for the tentative list owing to their historical importance and degree of preservation.

The Royal Sites of Ireland: Ireland spent much of its medieval history as a group of small kingdoms whose borders constantly fluctuated due to the fortunes of war. The competing royal families gave rise to a rich body of literature and folklore. Five royal sites have been chosen for the tentative list. They are Cashel, Dún Ailinne, Hill of Uisneach, Rathcroghan Complex, and the Tara Complex. Each was a royal center for one of the great royal houses of medieval Ireland.

An impressive list. Here’s hoping UNESCO recognizes their global cultural value. There’s a downside to this, however, as was recently pointed out in the latest issue of Northern Earth magazine. which advised, “Go now–if they get listed, they will enter the tourism industry and become subject to inflation and packaging!”

No guidebook required: the joys of ditching an itinerary

by Laurel Miller on

Itineraries and guidebooks can be both a blessing and a curse, when it comes to travel. If you’re the free-spirited, adventurous sort, it sucks to lug a book around, but it’s a good idea-especially if you’re a woman-so you don’t have to leave accommodations to chance should you arrive late at night in a strange town.

I once ended up sleeping in a spider-infested trailer, after spontaneously arriving in a downpour in a Tuscan hill town devoid of rooms for rent. After politely declining the hostal owner’s offer of sharing a bed, I paid ten euros for the trailer, and spent a long, twitchy night imagining things (including the owner) crawling up my legs. Now, I book ahead if I think I may end up stranded.

If you’re a little on the Type-A side, or traveling with someone, a planned itinerary can be helpful, if not relationship-saving. But what happens when you decide to just wing it? Journalist Catherine Price, a contributor to O, the Oprah magazine, recently found out, on a four-day impulse trip to Tokyo. Price decided to let strangers plan every detail of the trip for her, starting with taking the suggestion of a random woman in a San Francisco book store to visit Tokyo. The resulting trip enabled former micro-manager Price to “experience the joy of letting go.” Read more about her fascinating experience.

[Via CNN]
[Photo credit: Flickr user Jaymis]

Ancient Egyptian tombs discovered

by Sean McLachlan on

Two painted tombs have been discovered at the ancient Egyptian necropolis of Saqqara, twenty miles south of Cairo.

The rock-hewn tombs belong to a royal official named Shendwa and his son Khonsu. Both men lived in the Sixth Dynasty (2345-2181 BC) of the Old Kingdom. The pharaohs of this dynasty are buried at or near Saqqara. The pyramid of Pepi II is shown here, although it isn’t in the best of condition.

The find comes just a month after the tomb of a royal scribe was discovered at Saqqara and brings further attention to an important archaeological site many tourists miss. Saqqara is home to the oldest pyramid built of dressed stone–the Step Pyramid of Djoser constructed from 2667 to 2648 BC. Earlier pyramids made of brick are known from Mesopotamia and can now be found in modern Iraq and Syria.


Image courtesy Jon Bodsworth via Egypt Archive. Check out the site for some amazing photos of some of Saqqara’s painted tombs.

From the shores of Louisiana — A conversation with Paul Templet

by Jon Bowermaster on

Baton Rouge, Louisiana – Standing in the heart of the bucolic, green LSU campus, where Paul Templet taught environmental science for more than twenty years, it’s hard to imagine that the worst ecologic disaster perhaps ever is ongoing just a couple hours away. It’s from this landmark that he took a leave of absence in the 1980s to run, for four years, the state’s Department of Environmental Quality, during the reign of “the last good governor we had” (Buddy Roemer), he remembers.

He is pointed in his accusations that those years may have been the last time that real rules and regulations were forced on the oil industry. “Today they write most of them,” he says.

Retired from the university but still living in the town in which he was born and consulting on environmental and coastal concerns, Templet has nearly used up any optimism he might have once had regarding his state and environmental controls. He organized the first Earth Day event near where we are talking, forty years ago.

“Certainly I’ve lost hope that the Louisiana state government will ever change. The oil companies run this state, without question. They control most of the agencies, own most of the legislators and run the governor’s office.” His only hope is that the Deepwater spill will affect change inside the federal government agencies that have a hand in overseeing oil production and environmental protection in the Gulf. “When you’ve got such loose oversight by the Mineral Management Service and the Department of Interior, combined with endemic corruption in the state, I guess none of us are surprised by the spill.”

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Corruption and Louisiana are like oil and oil. Templet suggests that the federal government has been looking the other direction for a number of years too. “Thanks largely to the Bush-Cheney administration. Remember those secret meetings Cheney had early in the administration with oil company executives that he’d never release information about? It was during those meetings where things were decided that would help save the oil industry money. Including not requiring things like backup spill preventers.”

His biggest concerns about the spill are that while it may now seem like the worst ever, it may not be the last and that it won’t affect real change.

“The oil industry is massive in this state. I fought them for years when I was head of the DEQ and we won some battles on what they could dump and where, even radioactive waste they were just dumping into pits in the ground and covering up. But they hate rules and regulations and have ways of getting back at you.” When he returned to his professorship – which, knowing that in his job as chief environmentalists he’d make some powerful enemies, he made university officials guarantee would be waiting for him – his punishment was a pay cut.

While he loves his home state and has no plans of leaving (though he does keep an apartment in Taos) he’s saddened when he looks around at the state of his home state. “We have the biggest gas and oil industry in the lower 48 yet Louisiana ranks among the lowest in most categories. Our roads are awful, so are our schools. Our poverty level is 2nd only to Mississippi.

“The reality is we don’t get much tax money out of the oil industry anymore and most of the drilling is more than three miles offshore, thus in federal waters, so any royalties go to the fed. And the subsidies the state gives the oil industry guarantees we get very little in return for all that they take.”

He remembers from his teaching days that he and his colleagues agreed that it took at least 20 years to see true change. “Maybe in the next twenty years we’ll see a tightening up of regulations on the oil industry. But the thing we have to do is move away from oil and gas because even if we continue to find it, and burn it, we’re just making climate change worse.”

Though it’s hard to believe as oil continues to rush out of the wellhead a mile below sea level at a still-unknown rate, rising sea levels may be an even bigger concern for southern Louisiana than future oil spills. Once the coast line is erased, which many think will happen in the next thirty to forty years, pollution will mean something completely different.

“I saw a map yesterday that showed by 2050 that New Orleans would be gone (meaning about thirty miles of marsh and wetlands would be flooded),” says Templet. This in a state that loses a football field of wetlands every day due to erosion, or about 25 square miles a year.

“I’ve also heard that you can’t get a loan to build a house south of Houma because the banks don’t believe that in the thirty years it will take you to pay off your loan that the house will still be above water.”