THE CHINESE ARE POLLUTING US 
MORALE 

 

WORLD POLLUTION MAP

model based on how the pollution travels around carried by streams.

So ... after three days spent on the internet did i get an answer ? Is the Swiss liter of milk clean and sustainable ? Clean is clean: pure like spring water in paradise. Being up there in the alps and being washed every day by valley winds Switzerland gets no pollution.

Is it sustainable ? does it give back the energy it take ? Is it worth ?

I miss the numbers to say but something I can say...

life expectancy reduction because of pollution

I am a paraglider pilot, I collect landscapes. Today is a fly day but I am lazy. After watching the others disappearing in the clouds I top land on a green grassy field lost somewhere at the footstep of the Himalayas. I lay in the sun being happy of doing nothing like a cat does in the sun. And than of course I start thinking. There's a mass of fog far down in the Haryana plane, some days is far some days it floods our valley and arrives to the sacred mountains. In that days unhappy pilots sit in the bar chatting about western air masses coming from the Mediterranean, unhappy gods, sfiga, or just bad weather. Others say is pollution. I was skeptical but one day I was sick and I started roaming the internet looking for maps.

People living at the footstep of the Himalayas have 4 years life expectancy reduction because of intense pollution carried from somewhere else, Nepal the same ! my beloved second home ! a country with no economy no industries, nothing, only farmers that live with 3 us per day and one cow for family if they are lucky.

Germany 0.1, France 0,1, USA 0.1, while Switzerland has 0 year reduction in life expectancy.  

From korchon top landing at sunset

 

At the end of the story what happens at sunset ? Me as usual I become nostalgic I take off and go for a beer at landing. The Swiss family tired but happy finally sits down around the table to have a big polenta and to enjoy the liter of milk they produced. The energy they burned produces a scary sunset framed by black and red clouds in Hebey, China. Xiao May young assembly chain employee in a Swiss owned tractor factory walks home asking herself if that cloud is a friendly dragon that will bless her child or not. Somebody In Congo start coughing. And just 100 km away from the Swiss border, in a small village near Milan in the foggy Italian Po valley la Signora Paola start having some trouble to read correctly.

She goes to doctor and doctor say “thyroid, we dunno exactly what is the problem but is becoming pandemic here since a few years” “we suppose is the pollution coming from china”

WAR !!! what can la Signora Giovanna do ? declare war to China of course

Morale

Next time, before starting blaming china have a look at your garage , what's inside ?

THE CHINESE ARE POLLUTING US part 2

This chart is nice ! The map colors become opposite !

energy consumption per capita vs pollution

If i think that the single man is responsible for the world ...

if i think that when i use energy i produce pollution somewhere

if i think that everything is connected, so the pollution that i produce will not necessarily come out from my garden but from somewhere else in the world 

Than i have to use another chart not the weather map

Energy consumption per capita this chart shows a completely different landscape than the weather map

The big predator in this world appears to be a person located in (after trinidad and tobago. what dey do down there ?!! hahaha !! : )) ) of course the United States of America followed by The Emirates, some EU members like Germany and France (Switzerland is somewhere there) . My Italy is in the middle of the list.

But the Big surprise is China. It is further back. They work a lot down there but they use no energy. So... all that black smoke over north china is not because of them (but they breath it).

Lying on the grass under a beauty full summer sky i start laughing. I meet a lot of people at take offs and in my memory the big predator guy is usually the same that complains more about China pollution. The guys i met that had the longest finger to point out other's people mistakes were from: Germany first, Europe First, and the Uncle Sam boys first.

Reading the chart i started feeling a bit guilty about me using more energy than some slim guy eating rice and working in the field somewhere in SE Asia. I got used of being richer than others and i can easily ignore it or justify it but... energy is a limited resource in this world...

And, at sunset, when my thoughts tends to become negatives finally i get mad and cannot not sleep good: Why do this big guys in north America and north Europe has to take all the energy for them ? What a fuck ! that energy is also mine !!

Is this the same feeling that the Se Asia slim guy has when he look at me ? Is not a friendly feeling indeed.

THE CHINESE ARE POLLUTING US

Are there comparative studies that calculate the energy of our daly life processes ? 

This question is becoming obsessive in my life and i find no answers.

How much energy is needed to produce one liter of milk ? And how much energy is needed to produce a liter of milk in Switzerland and how much in China ?

It is a no fly day, the glider is resting in the van. I am in Switzerland the country that I, like many others, consider an environmental friendly paradise, were everything works in the best possible way compared to the rest of the world.

I am lying in the grass in the sun enjoying the landscape of the alps and the marvelous countryside. Everything is clean here, urban development is a fantastic equilibrium between nature and development. I always dream to move to Switzerland.

I enjoy the sun and I observe. There is a farmer family harvesting the grass, it is an enchanting spectacle to see them working. The guy is running a mini tractor to cut the grass. The tractor is fantastic design: it looks like a hybrid between a quad, a snow cat, and a 4wd: amazing piece of technology. And the garage is full of beautiful tools to be applied on it: plows, seeders, manure sprayers, every step of the grass production process is managed by a sophisticated machine. The man drives up and down the field while the family is refining the cut with gasoline bush cutters 4 people 4 cutters.

When they finish cutting the man applies an automatic rake to the tractor and start driving up and down the field again to collect the grass. At the same time the rest of the family goes in the garage and comes out with high pressure gasoline air blowers, one per person, and start walking up and down the field driving the grass in the air. They are happy in the sun and enjoy the power of the air, i'd like to join them. The blond children play with old wooden rakes dressed up in white revival edelweiss mode. They do a lot of noise indeed, but they enjoy a lot the open air and take photos. Finally They stop for tea. Nice ! Fo me they reached a perfect balance between tradition and modernism farming age and industrial comfort. It is a perfect post-modern / neo-romantic picturesque scene.

After tea, for the second round, another machine comes out from the box. After having installed the grass packing machine the tractor start running up and down the field again. Mama helps by hand, children helps by hand. Tractor has proximity sensors for safety, they are not in danger.

After packing the tractor gets a fork to carry the grass packs to the storage and starts running up and down the field. At the storage there is an electric crane (i should say this the first electric device i see in the day) that moves the grass into the box, this is a small box but the crane is amazing: it is yellow. Built like a harbor container crane it can deliver the packed grass exactly in the desired spot of the storage. While I enjoy the sun lying in the grass and watching the Swiss clouds i start dreaming if it the storage and the crane are computer managed.

I get nostalgic at sunset and as the day fades doubts and thoughts start roaming in my mind untill, at the end of the day the the old question takes the lead again: Is this one liter of pure Swiss milk really sustainable as I imagine when i go to buy the swiss chocolate ? Is it really healthy after all this job and energy are spent to make it ?

How much energy to design this machines how many employee, (how many consumers) worked on it ? how many design company ? how many computers, how many steel factories, how many machinery factories... distributors, marketing company, computers, chemicals, gasoline ecc... ecc.... how much work to build the machines ?

And is not finished: the cow stable is masterpiece of high tech wood/concrete architecture where solar panels and every kind of “sustainable” hi-technology are integrated. It looks like a brand new design studio loft but in-fact is just a cow shelter, how much did it cost in terms of energy ? will it pay it back ?

And what do the cow eats ? Is the chemical industry involved sometime ? There are other production chains that would have to be investigated to answer how much energy is used to rise the crops to grow the cows, take the milk out send it to depuration station, packaging delivery ecc... eccc...

Finally how much energy is needed to produce the liter of milk ? And: does my body gets back the spent energy when i drink the milk ? Is it worth in therms of the whole world energy balance ?

Here is so clean Man ! but this machines are mainly made in China and in china they need energy to produce them. In August a Swiss farmer family harvest the grass in a sunny day up there in paradise and suddenly a big black smoke grows up somewhere in China and start covering the sky of a industrial city. Driven back by the trade winds the carbon cloud pollutes all of us. The swiss farmers, Me in the Italian Po valley, or a guy in the German Ruhr. I think that this is called Gaia effect. Everything on our old mother earth is connected.

Many times, In no fly days in China, i slept in the sun like i do here in switzerland. The Chinese farmer are happy like the Swiss ones. Still they use no machine, everything in the field is done by hand, in silence. I can hear them chatting and joking from far away. The cow eats the grass from the field roaming around with pigs and chickens, it has no shelter. Lying in the grass, looking up at the Yunnan skies full of white cumulus i argue that the liter of milk made here uses more or less 0 “industrial” energy.

But at sunset, when i get nostalgic, i start thinking about what would happen if all this Chinese farmers would start dreaming to collect the grass with a high pressure gasoline air blower, buy farming machines and dream to have, one day in life, maybe before retirement, a computer operated storage system for the grass ? At that point we would be all really FUCKED UP.

Swiss bank UBS is a main market mover in this world. Is one of the big ones that move the big games in the world... I recently read a report from Them: They suggest to invest in the development of industrialized agriculture development in China.

I think THAT is the end of the game. Any investment bank in the west wants a piece of that market and every western bank in this world is investing on “developing nations people getting fat”... ice creams, food chemicals, and finally medicines to cure them when they will get sick because too fat. I talk about Switzerland only because a Swiss post on facebook helped me to connect different ideas that were roaming around in disorder in my brain. Nothing against Switzerland because what i say as to be intended for all of Us: Me (consumer and private investor), Europe and the “West” all.

Blaming China is just a political game. Useless propaganda to avoid taking responsibility. Is a way of thinking that leads to self destruction. My idea is that somebody somewhere has to stop the system. And the only one that can do that is Me, in my everyday life. Others possibly will follow. Chinese are loyal brothers to me. They admire me in everything I do. I am their dreams factory, their lifestyle model. I am also the old brother that made most of the mistakes. They see the mistakes and they are working hard on sustainability. We know very little about. Like them are many of the developing nations. It is my responsibility to invent really sustainable solutions and build examples. But I am am not doing it AT ALL. The links between actions across the world and the energy balance involved in the processes has to be taken into account for decision making in everyday life. But I am totally ignorant about this, I don't have this tools and I miss Them.