So long, Sugar
A week or two ago I attended an Economist-hosted debate about the kinds of energy cars will be running on in the future. I drafted a post, made some weak joke about the lifespan of the back-seat snog – cars, especially electric ones, are expected to become smaller in order to meet emissions targets – and then abandoned it. Who really wants to read heavy material about hydrogen, biofuels and batteries in their leisure time anyway? And besides, I wasn’t sure if it was in the remit of this blog, which is supposed to be beautiful and uplifting.
This morning I changed my mind after reading a piece in the Guardian on the soaring price of sugar. You’ll know that, along with palm oil, sugar is a key biofuel, an energy source that at the debate Graham Sweeney, executive-vice president for Future Fuels and CO2 at Shell, maintained could be a major oil-replacement for cars. Countering him somewhat vociferously was Doug Parr, chief scientist and policy director for Greenpeace, who expressed concern about the increased risk of further deforestation in accommodating new palm oil plantations.
All well and good but no-one seemed to mention the weather and the effects of climate change, although I’m sure it was on the minds of many people there. Having grown up in a farming community, I know that it’s a brave person who tries to make a living off the land by gambling with the weather. An extra couple of months of rain or drought can ruin several years’ work and can cost a fortune. And that’s one farmer feeding his cows by drawing upon generations of received wisdom in a climate we understand. How about this, from that piece I read:
There are some solid underlying reasons for the upward lurch in the price of raw sugar. Heavy rain has disrupted milling in the world’s largest producer of sugar, Brazil, where a sizeable portion of sugarcane has been diverted from food use into ethanol fuel. Meanwhile the biggest consumer of sugar, India, has had a dismal monsoon season and has gone from being a net exporter of sugar to an importer.
“The key premise has really come from Brazil and India,” said Sudakshina Unnikrishnan, a commodities analyst at Barclays Capital. “The bulk of the problem lies in inclement weather conditions.”
I’m not an energy expert and perhaps I’ve missed something, but it’s alarming and somewhat unbelievable that an energy company with tremendous muscle is prepared to attach crucial energy production to something as inconstant as farming in a changing climate.
This is quite apart from the issue of food availability: if we can’t distribute it evenly now, what chance have we in the future if energy and food are competing for the same limited arable land?
You can read the full Guardian article here.
Wallflowers
Beautiful wallpaper from Camilla Meijer, a super designer whom I met at 100% Design last week. Camilla aims to bring the outdoors inside, which, in case you were wondering, is not about wearing muddy boots on a thick pile carpet but is rather interiors-speak for introducing natural elements to decorating schemes.
Semantics aside, I love the fact that she draws inspiration from walks through London’s parks and gardens before drawing up her designs by hand.
I am astounded by the way plants and flowers find a way to flourish in such an enormous urban setting like London. London is a wonderfully green city thanks to the parks and other green spaces, but people’s gardens and other unexpected places produce yet more beautiful examples of flora. Everywhere I look I seem to find inspiration. I capture these images I see around me and use them to create my work.
Sky High
When I lived in Durban, South Africa, I was always intrigued by the speed at which plants would take root on buildings. Once I pulled from a roof gutter a fair-sized schefflera that was growing in the leaf litter there; elsewhere figs stealthily wrapped their roots around drains, pipes and brickwork in a process that was at once about decay and renewal.
On the other side of the world in New York, the same thing happened on a railway line last used in the 1980s. Called the High Line, the track was built to transport wholesale goods through Manhattan. It’s distinguishing feature was that it was above ground, elevated so carriages, cars and pedestrians could pass freely beneath it. When trucks superceded trains as the favoured mode of transport and the last cargo – Christmas turkeys – was delivered, the line was all but forgotten.
That is, until some locals began to mutter about it being an eyesore. In the intervening years, 25 in all, wind and small animals such as birds, bats and rodents brought seeds to the abandoned space. Leaves fell. Dust blew in. Water collected. In time plants took root in nooks and crevices between the tracks; they died, decomposed and formed humus which begets soil. More plants grew and in this no-man’s land of concrete and steel a green lung began to flourish on its accord. Some graffiti artists moved in. I expect it provided great habitat for urban wildlife but you can see why the locals didn’t like it.
The area was all set to be pulled down when it was rescued by a group called Friends of the High Line and was redesigned and replanted with species inspired by the self-seeded varieties that had grown there originally.
Piet Oudolf – one of my favourite garden designers and one known for informal, textural planting – was behind part of it. I expect it’s too early for an October Bloom List to have been put up but the September Bloom List , which you can find on the Friends site, is extensive and includes everything from echinacea to something called rattlesnake master to sweet black-eyed Susan.
On Saturday BBC News called the High Line ‘a masterclass in urban renewal, a kind of “strip-prairie” through the heart of the urban jungle’. Parts of it are still under construction but when it’s complete it will be a mile and a half long, running through the Meatpacking District, West Chelsea and Hell’s Kitchen.
Access points will include stairs and lifts – expect you’d need to call them elevators out there – and the plans include plenty of places to sit and watch the world go by. It sounds fabulous and I can’t wait to see it myself one day, although when I do I’ll be sure not to pluck anything out of any gutter.
Pics copyright Clare Hambly.
On Yer Bike
Small diversion from the plants here – an uplifting, if possibly simplistic, video clip from Good about the effect of fair trade and appropriate aid on a Rwandan coffee-growing community. Instead of carrying heavy bags of coffee on their heads, farmers now transport them on specially adapted bicycles.
To Western readers, $120 for a bike might not sound like much but I expect it’s at least several months’ salary for some of those farmers. The CIA World Fact Book says 60 per cent of Rwandans live on less than $1.25 a day. What do we pay for semi-skimmed latte in London or New York? $3?
leave a comment