Walked about 40 minutes to the centre of the city.  Along the edge of Darling Harbour, beside the water all lovely, asparkle, ashowing off in the clear, gods-given sunny, cloudless day.

Then finally to the top floor of the new renovation of the Museum of Modern Art at Circular Quay, functions only.  Isolated from the things I’d had on the walk, I took a coffee to stand apart, outside on the roof balcony, to see what the city had to offer.  Cars on the Cahill Expressway to the south, like so many beached whales, banked way back, stuck, going nowhere in peak hour traffic.  And to the east, near the Opera House, one of my Sydney favourites, the Oyster Bar, a place of respect for oysters where they’re served with the juice, unwashed, and so many fine margueritas, martinis and silent moments had there – Sydney Harbour at her best.

Back inside, where we sat for the presentations, there were cut outs of engines and design innovations mounted on display modules, like the art downstairs in the museum.

And why was I there?

To hear two folks from the Ford motor company talk about their new energy efficient cars and how they’re seeking to cut the damage their cars do by polluting Earth’s climate.  A presentation to fellow bloggers and media.

Walking puts me in the centre of things from the get go, heightens all my senses.  Messages from my skin, my nose, my eyes, my brain and my body were competing for attention while I listened.

Tell me some greater pleasure than the simple act of walking out into the morning of a sunny day with a song in your heart; what might that be?

To stay focussed I took notes, but mostly that didn’t work.  I could see the cars on the expressway through the glass behind the speakers, still not going anywhere.  Then I remembered the salt of the oysters’ juice mixed with oil and bread.  And here I was in this building, so new, hotly debated, mostly disliked.  What now, the first time I was in it, did I think of it?  Pity was my strongest emotion; the cars were, I bet, more sustainable than it; the air con in the room didn’t work, the lights were soooo inefficient – with good design they wouldn’t have been necessary. It could’ve been done by someone designing in the ‘50s.

On the walk back the memories of traffic jam, failed building and ego-centric, ideology-driven architecture.  With each step, the facts began to fall into some kind of order. I get some of my best thinking done on my feet with my shoe leather on the street.

Firstly:  no paper handout – all the facts were said to be on a USB I’d been given.  Tick.

Great coffee.  Tick.

Big gains in engine efficiency.  Tick.  Ford’s cars burn a lot less petrol than they used to, can be powered by electricity which may be less polluting than oil and gas, use recycled materials like left over denim jeans cloth and soy to make the seats.

And handy statistics: 750 million cars on Earth’s roads now, 2 billion expected in another 20 or so years.  33 water bottles recycled into each car seat. Biofuels made from plants are a key strategy for Ford; plant fuel holds more energy than batteries in electric cars.

Ford accepts climate change is partly due to human activity including the pollution from their cars.  Their goal is to sell cars that will meet the maximum level of carbon which will not cause catastrophic climate change.  That’s 440 parts carbon per million, says the IPCC; ipcc.ch/. … If the IPCC drop that to, say, 350 ppm then Ford is set up to achieve that, too.  The company is also preparing for markets where the rules may change so that, say, only electric cars may be sold.  Ford is doing this anyway because, for every drop of carbon their engines cut they cut an equal drop of petrol consumption, so their energy efficient cars cost their buyers less to run with no loss of power.

I like it when the market drives businesses like Ford to make more sustainable wares. That way lies hope.

I thought back to the weekly blog I read by James Kunstler (www.kunstler.com…), author of The Long Emergency, The Geography of Nowhere, and World Made by Hand.  This week he wrote, “Events are now in the driver’s seat. The long battle against the continuation of suburban sprawl is over, despite the happy-talk noises made by what’s left of the real estate industry. Half a decade of absolutely flat oil production — propaganda to the contrary — guarantees that the suburban project is finished. We’re done building things that way (even if we don’t quite realize it yet)”.

Let’s not talk here about the history of bastardry by the car industry; how they got governments to rip up competing tram and train lines of American cities, got the driving age lowered to 16 years . . . Who cares.  It’s done.  It’ll keep getting done.

Things are serious now. Let’s talk about what matters.

Does it matter if Ford, and every car company, sells more energy efficient cars to cause less pollution?  Does it matter if they don’t?

Truth is, we humans have never had to save a planet before from its own pollution.

This is our first go.  Our first drive.

We don’t know if what we do will work.

We’re a bit like Apollo 11 when the engine failed on the way back to Earth and the captain only had one chance to fire his booster rockets to position the capsule for a safe re-entry to Earth’s atmosphere.

This time the crew is all of us here, and Earth is our rocket.  But we have no captain.  No crew.  Just a mutinous rabble.  People wanting to sell cars, drive cars, make money, pay the mortgage, get elected, take drugs, eat too much, text, tune out . . .

Going to the top of the hill is a good way to see what’s happening below.  On top of the Museum I saw a traffic jam from a new, vastly unsustainable public building, and listened to some folks who want to sell more cars.

But walking on the ground in the sun by the water into and out of the city – I saw and felt things which matter to me most, that I can’t buy.

Which brings me to Genghis Khan, one of Earth’s greatest military strategists, destroyers of cities and anything that got in his way.

May I invite you to walk an hour into and out of your city centre, wherever you may be?  To walk those minutes beside cars a whizzing or crawling by, and, if you’re lucky, to also walk beside the brilliant, sparkling waters of a river or harbour or ocean?  Discover what your senses tell you.

Then to ask yourself this.

Is the car our Genghis Khan?

New lanes being added and footpath narrowed for new 3,300 car park, Broadway

(Apology for pedestrian giving the works the finger in the artwork.)

Frasers will slow city traffic with their new project, and we’re looking at more minutes added to the journey for buses and cars going to and from the city.

The 30,000 students at UTS and Sydney Institute  and the 40,000 + students at Sydney uni and the thousands of citizens who walk the pavement will have their pavement reduced by 1.5 m.  This will increase congestion, aggression and violence in the already jam-packed student throngs and late night crowds there.  Remember when the city widened its pavements to reduce late night violence and the success that followed?

Frasers are putting a right hand turn lane from Broadway to their new project to invite cars to get in and out of their new 3,300 space car park.

To accommodate Frasers’ profit-taking from their site the median strip is being deleted and the footpaths narrowed.

A gift to us from the state government and Frasers.

The new car park will generate over 6,000 new car movements a day.

Thank goodness the Frasers project is ‘sustainable’.  How can it be ‘sustainable’ you may ask when it’s adding several thousand car movements, several thousand tonnes of air pollution, reducing the attractiveness of walking and cycling, and the trees there have been cut down, and the urban heat island increased by a few degrees?

That’s a silly and aggressive question if you did ask it.  Have you no faith?

The developer says the project will be ‘sustainable’; surely you don’t doubt that?

Me, I just enjoy the entertainment and play with words here and I think that’s the real gift of the project; laughter.

Speaking of laughter; if Piers Ackerman from The Daily Telegraph is right, and I think he is, Frasers may end up swimming in its own greed and the city trips may become shorter and the air cleaner;  have a look at this and ask, where will Frasers be if Piers is right:

www.dailytelegraph.com…

May the doubts and the laughs be with you,

M

Jessica Mobbs will give the cyclists two short tours of the house, one from 1130 to 1200, the second from 1210 to 1240.

The cyclists will pause in Peace Park and make smoothies with a bike.

Paul and Bob will show the cyclists the road gardens, including the vertical garden in Pine Street.

The cyclists are running a stall at Everleigh Markets for the next three Saturdays, and Bob and Paul will be demonstrating their vertical gardens there and offering them for sale, too.  Cyclists may book the tour at Everleigh, and there’s more info about bookings here:

yfmsydney.wordpress.com…

Sounds like a beaut day,

Michael

A friend of mine Paul Younan runs a company called Rubbish Taxi, they come and clean up and remove any rubbish you want removed.  They are stong believers in recycling what other people throw away.  They recycle as much as they can before heading to land fill and at the end of most months sell what can be re-used back to people who believe they can re-use what was thrown out.

rubbishtaxi.com…

Sounds good to me; let me know if anyone’s tried or tries it, please.

Thanks,

Michael

www.theaustralian.com…

There’s an interesting one about planning, here:
www.theaustralian.com…

I’ve written one about the future of roads, here:

www.theaustralian.com…

Enjoy,

Michael

“• The fracking fluid is a secret proprietary cocktail formula amounting to 5 percent of the liquid injected into the earth. It’s composed of: sand; a jelling agent to suspend the sand because water is not “thick” enough; biocides to kill bacteria that thrive in jelling agent; “breakers” to thin out jell-thickened water after fracking to get the fluid out of the way of released gas and improve “flowback;” fluid-loss additives to decrease “leak-off” of fracking fluid into rock; anti-corrosives to protect metal in wells; and friction reducers to promote high pressures and high flow rates. Of the 5.5 million gallons of fluid injected into each well, 27,500 gallons is the chemical cocktail.

• Mr. McClendon said on 60 Minutes that it couldn’t possibly harm the public’s water supply because they were drilling so far below the 1000-foot-deep maximum of most water wells. He left out the fact that they have to drill through those drinking water layers to get down to the shale gas, and pump the fracking fluid through it, and then get the gas up through it. He also left out the fact that the concrete casings of drill holes sometimes crack and leak at any depth.

• The fracking fluid cannot be re-used. You have to mix new cocktail fluid for each injection.

• “Flowback” fluid inevitably comes back up with the gas, sometimes spilling over the ground. In any case, the stuff that does come back up is stored on the surface in lagoons. Often it contains heavy metals, salts, and radioactive material from drilling through strata of radon-bearing granite and other layers. Liners of flowback fluid lagoons have been known to fail.

• Gas well failures in Pennsylvania, where production was ramped up quickest in recent years, have ended up polluting well water to the degree that residents can no longer use their wells.

• Little is known about the migration of fracking fluids underground.”

kunstler.com…

And there’s a new documentary about fracking doing the rounds of town halls, community groups and places where mining is underway or proposed, called, Gaslands, directed by Josh Fox.

May the fracking not be with you,

Michael

• is reducing city traffic, increasing public transport
• making the car a guest on many roads
• cutting transport related pollution

and much more.

To visit it on the web:
ABC iView E2 Transport: Ep5 Portland: A sense of place

Enjoy,

Michael