Materials Man

I don’t read newspapers, I get my news through the radio, I have a great little DAB radio that is first into my suitcase, when travelling. The business programme on Radio Scotland on Sunday got my ears fully tuned in. It was the prosaically named James Smith, Chairman of Shell, Shell UK I guess as I may have missed this point, however the reason I was listening with attention was, he was espousing the same doctrines for planet salvation as Tom Friedman in his book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded. The guy is no dumb red neck Texan, this Brit is fully switched on, he talked about Shell investing in sustainable biofuels, the opposite of what the Bush admin did and world grain prices shot up, increasing poverty and political instability. Shell are investing in the future, in carbon capture, carbon capping and echoing Friedman’s book terms for trade for energy. In other words use the market place and cost the environmental damage of carbon release and let the techies, scientists and capitalists sort it out. He did not actually use the words smart electrons but it was heavily inferred that IT can greatly assist in delivering electricity at the cheapest cost by balancing supply to demand with smart meters etc. I swear he has read, understood and taken on the solutions outlined in Hot, flat, and Crowded. I don’t care how he got there, I am mightily impressed he has.

Gives a person hope, gives the planet hope.

Even those poor inhabitants of Gaza will have realised that change has happened in America. Mainly because their plight is linked to America, but not through being able to watch TVs, with lumpy and restricted electricity, in situations like these the power of the radio becomes the communication media. I have for years listened to the BBC world service. In Oman I had a Nissan Patrol that had a short wave feature on the radio and I could pick up the world service, brilliant. A link to home and the rest of the world. I am not a newspaper fan, I prefer my news less edited and I believe that radio is that medium. It is also the medium of the poor and disenfranchised. I have a DAB radio and listen to the BBC world service when I can, usually by ear phone when sleepless. Being sleepless, by serendipity, I heard all the USA election completion. I have to say Bush was a nightmare, The now president Obama, is a breath of fresh air. I have to say here I don’t like Americans, I once had to apologise, with flowers, to an American girl I tiraded with, she was not a participant in any argument we had, it was my drunken focus (oxymoron) with the latest American beating up of a  country that posed a threat to the USA. The tirade was in St Lucia at the Club Med where we visited on a Friday. The scene at the Club Med was every table had bottles of wine and as diners left and we stayed on we “recycled” the half or partially empty bottles. As I recall there must have been 30 tables, but you could only “score” on those tables near you before the staff were doing what you we were  doing “recycling”. I confess that it being a buffet  as we traversed the dining hall we “clocked” those tables with children etc that were not wine consumers and swooped as they left.

But even sober I still don’t like Americans, the fact they can no longer sell their outrageous vehicles even to themselves, does not surprise me, what was the leading technological society doing (R and D in autos accounts for a huge amount of spend) just keeping on doing the same old thing with more bells and whistles. Like being able to lock your car up with the engine and AC running so when you returned from shopping your car was cool. Come on  Americans look at your consumption! Link yourself to the rest of the world, try

www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice