Mauna Kea

Mahalo A Nui Loa

Soon the Thirty Meter Telescope people will publicly announce that they are exploring the possibility of siting their immense, $750 million Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) on Mauna Kea.

The reason the TMT people are approaching us with such respect – most importantly, they are asking what they can do for our people in exchange for using our excellent astronomical site – is because a lot of people have worked very hard for what they believe in, for years and years, without giving up.

People like Kealoha Pisciotta. Kealoha has spent many years of her life following every detail of every happening on the mountain, attending hearings, speaking up and holding people accountable to the mountain’s Master Plan, and much, much more.

To say that the history of modern day astronomy atop Mauna Kea is full of contention is, of course, to state the obvious. You don’t have to look far at all to find people on the ground with heartfelt distress over what they say are ruined archaeological sites, endangered ecological habitats, desecration of, and blocked access to, religious sites, dangerous spills, damage to the water table and a general lack of respect for the mountain.

In addition, I’ve mentioned before that when I look at, for instance, Keaukaha – a mostly Hawaiian community in Hilo – I see zero benefit to the community from those million dollar telescopes atop Mauna Kea, which is an important and even sacred site in the Hawaiian tradition.

But there is a profound difference in how this TMT project is being proposed for Mauna Kea.

And it is because of Kealoha and some others, and the ones who came before them, that we are where we are today.

• They fought to bring control of the mountain back to the Big Island where it belongs. Now the mountain is managed by the Office of Mauna Kea Management, which is under the control of the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo.

• They fought for the requirement that there be a Comprehensive Management Plan in place before there was any more development on the mountain – and won.

• They fought to make sure that the Comprehensive Management Plan was sensitive to cultural issues. Because of all the opposition, the people managing the mountain have had to look to the Big Island community for solutions. This is a huge change.

• Most of all, Kealoha and all the others have fought for respect. And because of them, we are finally being respected. We all need to acknowledge that.

We are controlling the process now.

This only came about because of Kealoha and others who have fought so long and so hard for what was right.

We, and future generations, owe them a tremendous debt of gratitude, no matter what takes place with this particular project.

Dr. Henry Yang, the new president of TMT who is also the president of UC Santa Barbara, is a “people” person, not a “timeline” person. I am very impressed with him and glad he is in charge. He speaks our language.

But if it weren’t for Kealoha and the others, we would never have gotten to this place where we speak the same language.

Before the TMT begins the process of considering siting their new telescope atop Mauna Kea, I want to take this time to mahalo the people who are responsible for getting us to this point.

Mahalo a nui loa.

Adopt-a-Class, Community

Ripples for Education

It’s a cliché, but it’s true that you really never know what will happen when you drop a tiny pebble into a pond.

Since Richard first heard that Keaukaha Elementary School didn’t have enough money to take its students on field trips, and set up the Adopt-a-Class program to send the students to Hilo’s ‘Imiloa Astronomy Center, the ripples have been getting bigger and bigger.

The community stepped up to that call, and paid for buses and admission fees so that Keaukaha kids got to take some amazing field trips this school year.

Ka‘iu Kimura, Assistant Director of ‘Imiloa, says that the Adopt-a-Class program has taken off beyond just Keaukaha now. “Some of our members at  ‘Imiloa have adopted other classes now,” she says. “It’s the coconut wireless. People have called and asked, ‘How can we sponsor Pa‘auilo School,’ for instance. It’s infectious.”

And then Gordon and Betty Moore got involved. Gordon was co-founder of Intel Corporation, and he and his wife now divide their time between the San Francisco Bay Area and the Big Island.

Kimura says they’d visited ‘Imiloa (“under the radar; they don’t like recognition”) and liked what they saw. One of their people contacted ‘Imiloa and heard about Richard Ha and the Adopt-a-Class program.

He invited ‘Imiloa to submit a proposal to the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to expand the program so that 50 percent of all school students on the Big Island could visit ‘Imiloa.

They did. It was accepted.

And then, ripple ripple, Kimura says that when ‘Imiloa sought bids for buses to transport the students – the biggest expense – they found that “bus companies are so willing to work with us that we think we’re going to be able to expand it from 50 to 100 percent of the students on the Big Island.”

That’s every Big Island student in public, charter and private school having the opportunity to learn about science and astronomy and native Hawaiian culture at ‘Imiloa. All because some people felt bad that students in Keaukaha didn’t have money for field trips and did something about it.

“Basically it means that for the next two years,” explains Kimura, “we will service 15,000 Big Island students in grades K through 12.”

The Moore Foundation grant has a matching requirement for the second year, so ‘Imiloa will be launching a campaign to help fund the second year soon. And ‘Imiloa is bringing in an outside evaluator in hopes of finding a way to expand the school visits beyond the two years, so it can offer them on a perpetual basis.

The Moore Foundation’s grant technician told her they are now considering having the Moore Foundation start funding kids in the San Francisco Bay Area to go to science centers near them, too.

“I just want to mahalo that core group that put together that Keaukaha opportunity,” says Kimura. “Not only the Moore Foundation, but also the local community people who really liked that idea and were willing to support schools in their own area.”

“It’s resonated out from Keaukaha to the whole island to the Bay Area,” she says. “It’s been an exciting thing to see it grow.”

Mauna Kea

HIEDB & the Thirty Meter Telescope

The Hawai‘i Island Economic Development Board, of which I am Vice Chair, has been asked to work with the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) people and help in their efforts to do community outreach as they develop their project.

In this role, we will try to work with all the different stakeholders in a collaborative manner.

Several months ago, I met Dr. Henry Yang, who  is Chancellor of the University of Santa Barbara. He is the incoming President of the TMT and was in town trying to see for himself what was going on.

I liked him immediately. One could tell that he is a people person. I knew that if Hawai‘i was chosen as a site for the TMT, and if Dr. Yang was in charge, the people would be heard.

I was very, very encouraged by this.

Since then, he has been in town on numerous occasions in order to familiarize himself with the situation. That Dr. Yang is not just going to sit in his office on the mainland impresses me very much.

This afternoon I called Kale Gumapac of the Kanaka Council. I told him that I wanted to give them an early “heads up” that we may be working with the TMT people. He was appreciative of being put in the loop. I told him: “You know me. I’m more interested that this project be done in the right way than I am in just trying to sell more tomatoes.”

Bob Saunders, Roberta Chu and I, who make up the Thirty Meter Telescope subcommittee of the Hawai‘i Island Economic Development Board, also met with Sandra Dawson and Mike Bolte of the TMT team. We listened to them explain to us how committed they are to doing the right thing.

They come in a respectful way. Now we can talk about the rest of it.

Tomatoes

Thank You

Sent: Sunday, July 06, 2008 9:32 AM
To: info@hamakuasprings.com
Subject: Vine Ripened Tomatoes

Sunday, July 6, 2008
Product 8 35120-65579 9

Your Cocktail Tomatoes, and regular size Tomatoes, are the very best we have ever tasted!

And we have tasted many different ones.

Thank you,

The Daniels Family,
Kaneohe, Oahu, Hawaii

From: Richard Ha [mailto:richard@hamakuasprings.com]
Sent: Sunday, July 06, 2008 6:20 PM
Subject: RE: Vine Ripened Tomatoes

Aloha, everyone from the Daniels family:

This note made our day. It will be posted where the workers can see what you said. This was very considerate of you.

You may be interested to know that we test our fruit each week for sweetness.

Every year June and I go to the Tomato Festival in Carmel, California to find new and interesting heirloom tomatoes. Here is what we wrote about our last visit on our blog, which we have written to three times a week for two years to give our farm a human face: Tomato Festival.

Here, too, is a post we did when O‘ahu Chef Alan Wong came to meet his adopted class of 6th graders at Keaukaha School, and fed them our tomatoes.

If you read through our blog you’ll see we are also very much interested in sustainability as it applies to our workers, our community and the environment.

Thanks so much for your nice note. We appreciate it very much.

Aloha,
Richard and June Ha

Food and Drink

The 11 Best Foods…

4 Comments

Tara Parker-Pope, who writes the New York Times health blog Well, recently posted an article called The 11 Best Foods You Aren’t Eating.

Here’s a peek at the beginning of her post and the first four foods on the list:

Nutritionist and author Jonny Bowden has created several lists of healthful foods people should be eating but aren’t. But some of his favorites, like purslane, guava and goji berries, aren’t always available at regular grocery stores. I asked Dr. Bowden, author of “The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth,” to update his list with some favorite foods that are easy to find but don’t always find their way into our shopping carts. Here’s his advice.

Beets: Think of beets as red spinach, Dr. Bowden said, because they are a rich source of folate as well as natural red pigments that may be cancer fighters.
How to eat: Fresh, raw and grated to make a salad. Heating decreases the antioxidant power.

Cabbage: Loaded with nutrients like sulforaphane, a chemical said to boost cancer-fighting enzymes.
How to eat: Asian-style slaw or as a crunchy topping on burgers and sandwiches.

Swiss chard: A leafy green vegetable packed with carotenoids that protect aging eyes.
How to eat it: Chop and saute in olive oil.

Cinnamon: May help control blood sugar and cholesterol.
How to eat it: Sprinkle on coffee or oatmeal.

Read the rest here.

Did you catch the “bonus” healthful food there in her second sentence? Guava.

I like articles like this for the reminders about other delicious foods, not in my regular rotation, that are good for my health. And apparently many others did, too, because by Thursday night there were 764 comments, some with interesting preparation ideas.

After reading through the whole list, I counted that I have seven of these foods in my house right now. A couple more (beets, swiss chard) intrigued me and went on my shopping list. Or even better, maybe we can grow them.

How about you?

Current Affairs, Government, Renewable Energy Sources

It’s Official: the Renewable Energy Farm Loan Bill

4 Comments

June and I were invited to the Governor’s office yesterday to witness the signing of Bill 2261, a renewable energy Farm Loan Bill which I helped shepherd through the legislature.

In her remarks, Governor Lingle pointed out that the goal for Hawaii is to be 70% fossil fuel free by 2030. She also mentioned working with contacts in Israel to see if there is a way we can take advantage of Israel’s effort to be 100% converted to electric vehicles in three years. These are two huge initiatives. I am glad we are doing this.

There were several bills being signed, and four of us were invited to speak.  David Murdock, President of Dole Corporation, complained that the bill to streamline the process for his 400 MW project on Lana‘i, although helpful, does not go far enough.

He wants the Governor to declare an emergency. He believes that the airlines are on the verge of bankruptcy, that very few people will be flying in the near future and that Hawai‘i’s future will be bleak if we don’t do something now.

I happen to believe he is right. Office of Hawaiian Affairs administrator Clyde Namau‘u writes in the July edition of the OHA newspaper Ka Wai Ola that we are bracing for a rough ride and that “grants to community organizations could also shrink.” The most defenseless among us will be the first to feel the effects of the wrenching downturn in the economy.

There is a heartbreaking letter to the editor in today’s Hawai‘i Tribune-Herald titled “What Is Happening?” Abigail Fojas writes: “I know a few single moms who were laid off, asking me if I know anyone who will hire them because they can’t make the rent next month, and unemployment won’t keep them in their homes. These women have like three kids and no husband. These are driven people who have worked most of their lives.”

But though I believe  Mr. Murdock is right, I just don’t see that people are ready to act, especially since the TV stations and the news media don’t even think the passage of these bills was newsworthy.

I was so busy thinking about my own speech that I did not hear the other two speakers. At the last minute I was mentally changing my speech around. I wanted to describe how this bill came to be, how Dwight Takamine’s dad Yoshito introduced it at the Farm Bureau convention and to talk a little bit about what Hamakua Springs is going to do. Next thing I knew I was up. This is what I said:

Thanks to the Legislature, Senate Ag Committee Chairperson Jill Tokuda and House Ag Committee Chairperson Clift Tsuji, who introduced the bill into their respective chambers and the Ag Committees of both Houses. Special thanks to Sandy Kunimoto, the Director of the Hawaii State Department of Agriculture, and especially the personnel in the Farm Loan Department, Dean Matsukawa and Mark Yamaki in particular. They were the ones who put the bill together.

This bill went through the entire process without one dissenting vote. I guess everyone likes to eat.

I was the only person from Hawai‘i who attended the Peak Oil conference in Houston this past October. It was clear that world oil supply was not able to keep up with demand. And it was clear that fuel prices were going to be rising with no end in sight.

Rising energy costs affect farmers very quickly. You can call farming the canary in the coal mine. Fertilizer, chemicals, irrigation, packing, cooling and transportation costs are all petroleum related.

Returning home, it was apparent that since we import most of our food, we need to do something to help farmers grow more food. The question was: “How will we feed Hawai‘i’s people?”

The answer is not complicated. “If the farmer makes money, the farmer will farm.”

This renewable energy farm bill is a Farm Loan Program that will allow Hawai‘i’s farmers to make low-cost loans for projects such as hydroelectric, solar, wind and bio fuels. This will help farmers big and small, on all islands, at all elevations, wet side-dry side, conventional/organic, high elevation and low. All farmers will benefit.

As an example of how this bill can benefit farmers, take our case. Hamakua Springs farms 600 acres of diversified crops, including bananas, and hydroponic vegetables such as tomatoes, Japanese cucumbers, green onions, lettuces as well as others. We are planning to do aquaculture soon. There are 80-something workers, together with three generations of us, who operate Hamakua Springs Country Farms.

Hamakua Springs is located in Pepe‘ekeo, 10 miles north of Hilo. As everyone knows, Hilo rains. One hundred forty inches of rain fall in an average year. We have three streams running through the property, as well as a flume that used to feed the sugar mill.

The renewable energy Farm Loan Bill will allow us to finance the borrowing of water from the flume in an 18-inch pipe, which we run downhill to a turbine that spins and makes electricity. We will then return the water that we are borrowing back to the flume.

Our monthly electric bill has gone from $9,000 a short time ago to $15,000 now. And there is no end in sight. But with this alternate energy farm bill, our monthly payments to make the hydroelectric plant will be less than half of the present electric bill.

After we install the hydroelectric project, we will have excess electricity. We are thinking of allowing our workers to plug their hybrid electric cars as an extra benefit for working for the farm. We are also thinking of using the banana waste to feed fish. We plan to take the ammonia from the fish waste, run it through a biofilter and send the usable fertilizer downstream to hydroponic vegetables. Then, we’ll pump the water back to the top with the excess electricity from our hydroelectric plant.

By temperature control we can fool plants into thinking its summer when it is winter. Chilling the plants in the summer will fool the plants into producing in the winter, when supplies are short. Small berries come to mind.

This is just one example. We could have hundreds of farmers taking advantage of this Farm Loan Program and implementing clever ideas we had no idea can be done.

Farmers are very resourceful and innovative people. This bill will help farmers grow more food. As we said before, “If the farmer can make money, the farmers will farm.

Help Hawai‘i’s farmers and feed Hawaii’s people. Buy local. We can do this!

I think it went over well. The governor said she liked that we’re proactive and many others told me that they liked the remarks as well.

Food Security, Peak Oil

We Are So Fortunate Here on the Big Island

2 Comments

The effects of Peak Oil are real, and they are now! In today’s Boston Herald, Laura Crimaldi wrote this article: People will die this winter because they can’t stay warm.

From her article:

The gas and electric bill crunch is largely caused by the dismal economy, experts say, but oil presents a nightmare all its own.

“This is the first time that I have felt in years that people will die this winter because they can’t stay warm,” said Joe Kennedy, founder of the nonprofit Citizens Energy Corp. “This is by far the most grim and scary set of storm clouds on the horizon that I have seen in 30 years in trying to address the needs of the poor and elderly, in terms of their heating needs that are coming this winter.”

The skyrocketing cost of oil could saddle consumers with winter heating bills as high as $7,000, according to leading advocates. At the end of trading Friday, oil closed at $139.65 a barrel as a shocking new report from economists at CIBC World Markets predicted that gasoline would hit $7 a gallon by 2010.

We, living on the Big Island, are so fortunate. Sometimes we forget just how fortunate we are.

We were really poor growing up at Waiakea Uka Camp 6. I don’t recall ever having an extra blanket in the house. When I was in elementary school and it got really, really cold (like mid- to high-50 degrees) I remember going into the dresser drawer and throwing all the clothes on top of my blanket. No big deal.

I attended the Association for the Study of Peak Oil conference in Houston this past October. We all knew the consequence of rising oil prices on the coldest part of the country, as well as that airlines would be going out of business.

I was dressed in my usual outfit – short pants – and a pullover. I did not have the heart to tell the people I met there that I would be wearing shorts throughout the entire winter, and that we would be able to grow food all year long. I could not tell them that we in Hawai‘i have a geothermal resource we are reluctant to use.

The others were going back to their homes, elsewhere in the United States, facing a very serious and even bleak future, while I was going back to the Big Island where we live in an embarrassment of natural resource richness, but I just could not bring myself to tell them.

Those people in Massachusetts who will be freezing this and every winter from here forward would love to have jobs so they and their families can afford their heating bills.

Here in Hawai‘i, the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for us to make wise decisions and help our future generations. If we bring the new telescope here, we have an excellent opportunity to negotiate educational opportunities for our keiki and create jobs for our families. But we must not compromise and we must make sure everything is pono first!

We can do this if we follow the Hawaiian style of having respect for each other.

Hotels are downsizing in Kona and the streets are less crowded. With the TMT, the streets would still be less crowded but our people would have jobs as we transition to a new economy.

Food prices for food brought here from afar will continue to rise in cost.

Are we in danger of starving to death? The answer is a resounding NO!

If the worse happened and ships visit us only intermittently, which is not likely, we on the Big Island can grow what we need to feed ourselves. Piece of cake. We have knowledgeable people at the universities and other government agencies as well as people knowledgeable in the traditional ways. And the Big Island is sparsely populated with lots of room to grow things.

We also have abundant water resources here on the Big Island. An inch of rain falling on one acre is equivalent to 27,000 gallons of water. The average rainfall at Pepe‘ekeo, where we farm, is 140 inches per year. So in an average year of 140 inches of rainfall, 3,780,000 gallons of water falls on each acre. Which means that two billion two hundred sixty eight million gallons of rain fall on our 600 acres in an average year. Most of that runs to rivers and out to the ocean.

We actually need to think of what we can do to help O‘ahu cope.

Here at Hamakua Springs Country Farms we are leasing parts of our lands to other farmers. Our objective is to get sufficient variety and volume to make interisland barge shipments economical and timely.

We need to open up a dependable transportation line for food going to Oahu. We are already shipping container loads of produce this way. We are now refining the process, so it will be dependable during tough times.

So we are not going to starve, or freeze, or overheat. And, if we choose, we can have clean, low carbon footprint jobs and energy production.

What more do we need?

Mauna Kea, Peak Oil

Moving Forward & The Mountain

1 Comment

“Hawaii’s biggest industry is its tourist industry. It seems likely to me that Hawaii’s tourist industry will largely disappear in the next few years, as oil prices rise.”

Gail Tverberg wrote those words the other day in her post to theoildrum.com.

Her conclusion flows logically from the Peak Oil premise – that world oil supplies will decrease at an increasing rate. Which means that transportation fuel will keep increasing, which means that planes and people will not be able to afford to fly.

But it is very hard to look at those words, let alone process them. There does not seem to be any relief in sight. In fact, we all know it will get a lot worse. Actually, it may never get better.

Hotels are slow, everyone is saying. And some of the reservations we are seeing now were made a long time ago. People expect that new reservations will be even scarcer.

What this means is that many, many jobs will be lost. What will happen to those families whose jobs vanish? Kids in tense households, where parents cannot make ends meet, will suffer. And it will get increasingly worse as time passes.

We must do something to help us transition into the next phase. It is no longer about us. Now it’s about the keiki and the generation after that. We must all rise above our agendas and focus on the future generations.

One thing we can all do is work together to bring the Thirty Meter Telescope here.

In brief, this is a new telescope proposed for the summit of Mauna Kea. It’s an enormous project, and there is controversy about it to match.

There have long been issues – very valid issues – with the telescopes on Mauna Kea, mostly focused on poor stewardship of the mountain, a lack of respect toward the Hawaiian culture, and the lack of benefit to our local communities. I acknowledge and recognize these problems one hundred percent.

I have been involved extensively in talks re: the possibility of this Thirty Meter Telescope being built on Mauna Kea. I volunteered for the Thirty Meter Telescope subcommittee nearly three years ago because I was determined that if it is built, it will be done the right way. It’s only because I have seen the very real possibility of things being very different this time that I have stayed involved.

I am not one to be naïve. Now, unlike what has happened in the past, I see very real potential for two important things to happen. In exchange for our practically unsurpassed location for astronomical observations, I see:

• The opportunity to set up a facilitated framework where a group of stakeholders guides the process.

• The possibility for the people of the Big Island – and our keiki – to directly and measurably benefit from this new telescope being located here.

We must make an honest effort to address the very real issues in a positive way, fix what needs to be fixed and move forward.

We need to set guidelines – if this telescope happens, it must be a Big Island initiative (not controlled by people sitting at desks on O‘ahu).

If we are all willing to sit down and work toward a common solution, we can both take care of Mauna Kea and also benefit from locating the Thirty Meter Telescope here.

Siting the Thirty Meter Telescope here can be a catalyst that allows our keiki to get a good education, as I see that educational benefits for our keiki can be negotiated. A good education will help our keiki figure out sustainable solutions to the decline in fossil fuels in this changing world they are inheriting. We must help them acquire the tools they need to become sustainable.

Perhaps some of our keiki will choose to study fields such as agriculture. Maybe one of them will figure out how to make nitrogen fertilizer from excess geothermal energy. It will take something like this to feed all of our people. Let’s give our children the best educations we can.

The Thirty Meter Telescope will take 10 years to build, and many people will be employed in the construction. It is projected to cost $750 million to build. But most of all, that would give us time to transition. We must all work to ensure that our society does not fall apart with desperation because there are no jobs.

These issues are no longer about us. Now they are about our keiki and future generations.

“Not, no can. CAN!” We owe it to them.

Peak Oil

Gail Tverberg on Hawai‘i & Peak Oil

Gail Tverberg, keynote speaker at the recent Hawai‘i Island Energy Forum, posted an interesting article  yesterday about her impressions of Peak Oil as it relates to Hawai‘i.

“Hawaii seems to come up often in the thinking of people aware of peak oil,” she wrote at theoildrum.com, which is a blog with the subtitle: “Discussions About Energy And Our Future.”

She continues:

On one hand, it seems like an ideal place to relocate after peak oil – no need to worry about heating a house; clothing is mostly for protection from the sun; and crops can be grown year around. On the other hand, it produces no fossil fuel itself, and it is at the end of the supply line for both food and fuel. Hawaii’s biggest industry, tourism, is already declining, and with rising fuel costs, can only decline further.

Many of you know that I was recently in Hawaii. After visiting, I thought I might post a few of my thoughts about the situation. Read the article here.

As of last night there were already more than 120 comments, many from Hawai‘i residents.

After the conference, I was very fortunate to spend three days taking Gail, her husband Ben and son Steve sightseeing.  They enjoyed visiting Hamakua Springs Country Farms, Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden at Onomea, the summit of Mauna Kea as well as the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.

Peak Oil and its implications are always top of mind with me. Gail and I slipped in and out of the subject seamlessly, and I gained a lot of valuable insight as we toured around the east side of the Big Island.

I gave the introductory comments at the Hawai‘i Island Energy Forum earlier this month:

The world is changing in ways we have not seen and can only imagine. Oil jumped back to $134 today. The future price of oil had always been cheaper than the present price. But a few weeks ago, future oil price was no longer cheaper than the present. That is unnerving. We must challenge all of our fundamental assumptions. Prepare for the worse and hope for the best. The status quo is not safe any more. Actually the status quo is a very risky bet.

One hundred fifty years ago, 700 whaling ships were calling at Hawai’i ports. If we had a forum then, perhaps some would be calling for increased production of harpoons. But the 800-pound gorilla in that room would have been that oil had just been discovered in Pennsylvania and the world was about to change.

Fast forward to today. The world is changing again. This time the 800-pound gorilla in this room is the fact that we have come to rely on oil for our lifestyle. But the supply of that oil cannot keep up with demand.

The world is changing in ways we don’t even want to imagine. But with great adversity comes great opportunity. This is a scary time. But it is also an exciting time. Betting on our people and their ability to innovate is a safe bet. Betting on making more harpoons is a very risky bet.

Not, no can. CAN!! We can do this. And that is what this forum is all about.

Food Security, Renewable Energy Sources

Foreign Oil, Domestic Hope

1 Comment

M. Steven Grant, a friend who is the president of Junior Achievement on O‘ahu, sent me a bloomberg.com article yesterday. I found this very interesting:

Global food prices have spiked 60 percent since the beginning of 2007, sparking riots in more than 30 countries that depend on imported food, including Cameroon and Egypt. The surge in prices threatens to push the number of malnourished people in the world from 860 million to almost 1 billion, according to the World Food Programme in Rome.

Leaders of developing nations including the Philippines, Gambia and El Salvador now say the only way to nourish their people is to grow more food themselves rather than rely on cheap imports. The backlash may sink global trade talks, reduce the almost $1 trillion in annual food trade and lead to the return of high agricultural tariffs and subsidies around the world.

“Trade as the route to food security, that idea is on the ropes,” said Arvind Subramanian, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. “If the guy who is selling it doesn’t want to sell it overseas, then the guy at the other end is terribly exposed.”

The main point of this article is that free trade, as it applies to food, does not work for many poor nations.  Some who have depended heavily on free trade are now finding that their people cannot afford to buy food. They are coming to the conclusion that they need to take care of themselves and grow their own food.

Is it imaginable that one day we may not be able to afford oil? If the oil supply becomes short enough, won’t oil-producing countries cut off exports and take care of their own people first?

Wouldn’t we, if we were in their shoes?

Back in January, China had a big freeze. They stopped exporting coal in order to take care of their own people. Isn’t it safe to assume that oil-producing countries would do the same if they needed to?

It is starting to become very clear that we cannot depend on foreign sources of oil for security.

We are fortunate that there is so much going on today that aims to make us energy self-sufficient. Many of these innovations will be demonstrated at our E Malama ‘Aina Festival. Yesterday, Roland Torres of Kama‘aina Backroads, who is working/partnering with us on the festival, sent me this note:

Aloha Richard,
I’m running into Pahoa to meet the guy behind this.  I’m FASCINATED. http://greenpower-hawaii.com

Evidently, these generators come from India and are old technology from the days of Rudolf Diesel. The person selling them says that the small generator can power three houses and the large can do six. He says that in India, people use palm oil to run these generators and that one acre of nuts can power six houses.

Recently I heard of a person using a coil of 2-inch black plastic pipe and plumbing it in for hot water. Sounds really simple and effective.

On the 26th, Roland and I will go to Hakalau to see how hydrogen is made from electricity that is generated from water from a stream. Guy Toyama and the folks from H-2 Technologies actually have a scooter there that runs on hydrogen.

There are several wind options, as well. One spins like a top and it too is meant for small-scale power generation.

There are people doing things that are very hopeful and exciting. Not, no can. Can!!

We CAN free ourselves from foreign oil.