CLIMATE CRISIS: GREENING SHIPPING

Source: GREEN CONTAINER SHIPPING

Ships move approximately 80% of the world’s goods. When compared to other forms of transportation, marine shipping is the most energy-efficient way to move large volumes of cargo.'[Source: Clear Seas]

'If you leave out passenger ships and tugboats, there are about 51,000 commercial ships on the ocean, mostly cargo vessels transporting everything from fish fingers and fridges to cars and crude oil. We all depend on this industry. According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) about 80 per cent of the goods we trade go by sea. The dominance is because ships move goods around cheaply, if slowly. Ships also emit less carbon dioxide than other modes of transport. 

[Source: Peril On The Sea by Joshua Howgego New Scientist 27 Jan 2018]

The world’s key ports have committed themselves to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) while continuing their role as transportation and economic centres. This commitment is called the World Ports Sustainability Program (WPSP). The ports do this through influencing the sustainability of supply chains, taking into account local circumstances and varying port management structures. The ports actively seek the cooperation of ships in support of measures to reduce emissions to air from ships.

(Source: WorldPorts Sustainability Program)

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In April 2018, delegates at the International Maritime Organization (IMO), the UN agency that regulates international shipping, agreed on a target of reducing the sector's emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG] by at least 50 per cent by 2050 and pursuing efforts to phase them out entirely..'  

 'In fact, [in March 2018] a report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development found that shipping emissions could be cut 95 per cent by 2035 using existing tech. How? 

The first thing is to change the way ships operate.

Reducing ship speeds could save up to two-thirds on fuel. While this sounds easy, it would reduce owners' annual profits, so they won't do it voluntarily. 

We could also boost fuel efficiency, by building bigger but more slender ships from lighter materials and equipping them with drag-reducing tech already fitted to some vessels. Such measures could reduce fuel use by more than a third. 

The last, and most important, change is to replace the heavy fuel oil used by most ships. Even switching to liquefied natural gas would provide big savings. Better yet would be to completely replace fossil fuels with hydrogen, ammonia, electricity or even nuclear power. Ships could also harness solar and wind power. 

The challenge is to make all this happen, and fast. 

Cutting shipping emissions to near zero will require eventually replacing most of the ships now in service. But ships are expensive to build and remain in use for a long time. The average age of the commercial fleet is 25 years. 

This is one of the reasons why many wanted the IMO to set a much more ambitious target now. If shipping companies don't start designing and building greener ships soon, we will run out of time. And the IMO is not exactly in a rush. It is not due to come up with a final plan for actually achieving the 50 per cent target until 2023. 

The IMO has no direct way to enforce this. The countries ships sail between - the port states -have some powers to enforce what happens in their waters. 

The rules in international waters are meant to be enforced by the countries where ships are registered - the flag states. Most ships are now registered to flag states such as Panama and Liberia rather than in the countries where they operate. This is done to avoid tougher regulations and higher costs elsewhere, so it is far from clear whether the major flag states will be willing and able to enforce emissions targets - especially as some have been fighting to prevent them.

 Ship owners, meanwhile, are not going to want to cut emissions if it costs them money.   A big part of the problem here is that the heavy fuel oil is not taxed, while some alternative energy sources, like electricity, are. So the world urgently needs to impose some form of carbon pricing on shipping - as it does on all fossil fuels.  

 [Source: 'It's time to sail the deep green sea' by Michael Le Page. New Scientist/ 21 April 2018]

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 International Maritime Organization (IMO

According to a pdf  '2020 Sulphur Limit'on the IMO Media Centre website:

• IMO has been working to reduce harmful impacts of shipping on the environment since the 1960s. 

• Annex VI to the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships (MARPOL Convention) was adopted in 1997, to address air pollution from shipping. 

• 'These regulations ... seek to control airborne emissions from ships (sulphur oxides (SOx), nitrogen oxides (NOx), ozone depleting substances (ODS), volatile organic compounds (VOC) and shipboard incineration) and their contribution to local and global air pollution, human health issues and environmental problems

• Annex VI entered into force on 19 May 2005. It was revised, significantly strengthened and then adopted in October 2008. These regulations entered into force on 1 July 2010.

•  'phasing in a progressive reduction in sulphur oxide (SOx) from ships and further reductions in nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions from marine engines.' 

 • The regulations to reduce sulphur oxide emissions introduced a global limit for sulphur content of ships’ fuel oil, with tighter restrictions in designated emission control areas. 

• Since 2010, further amendments to Annex VI were adopted, including  to Emission Control Areas (ECAS)

There are currently four Emission Control Areas (ECAS) where requirements are more stringent than the global limits. They are the Baltic Sea area (SOx only); North Sea area (SOx only); North American area (SOx, NOx and PM); and United States Caribbean Sea area  (SOx, NOx and PM). 

•  Limits for the sulphur content of ships' fuel oil: In the ECAS areas, the sulphur cap is 0.10% m/m (mass/mass).The  global sulphur cap was 3.5% but has been cut to 0.50% from 1 January 2020 

• IMO claims that: 'This will significantly reduce the amount of sulphur oxide emanating from ships and should have major health and environmental benefits for the world, particularly for populations living close to ports and coasts.'

• How can ships meet lower sulphur emission standards? Ships can meet the requirement by using low-sulphur compliant fuel oil. An increasing number of ships are also using gas as a fuel as, when ignited, it leads to negligible sulphur oxide emissions. Another alternative fuel is methanol which is being used on some short sea services.                                                                                                                                    *

IMO 2020 – Lower Sulphur Means Higher Freight Rates

Source: International Shipping News [30th Jan 2020]

According to the business intelligence company CRU the IMO 2020 MARPOL Annex VI policy is likely to raise freight rates by around 10-20%.

According to IMO: 'Ships may also meet the SOx emission requirements by using exhaust gas cleaning systems or “scrubbers”, which “clean” the emissions before they are released into the atmosphere. CRU says that uptake of scrubber systems has been higher than anticipated and their growth will accelerate further.

Capesize ships are the largest dry cargo ships. They are too large to transit the Suez Canal (Suezmax limits) or Panama Canal and so have to pass either the Cape of Good Hope or Cape Horn to traverse between oceans.

Panamax and New Panamax ships are travelling through the Panama Canal. They strictly follow the size regulations set by the Panama Canal Authority, as the entry and exit points of the Canal are narrow.

Handysize are small-sized ships with a capacity ranging between 15,000 and 35,000 Dead Weight Tonnage (DWT). These vessels are ideal for small as well as large ports, and so make up the majority of ocean cargo vessels in the world. They are mainly used in transporting finished petroleum products and for bulk cargo.

[See all Ship Sizes on the Maritime Connector site]

• CRU estimates that 20-25% of the larger Capesize vessels will have scrubbers fitted by end 2020. For the mid-size Panamax vessels, the uptake is lower at 5%. The smaller Handymax vessels are unlikely to install scrubbers at all. 

•  Considering the share of each type of vessel we calculate that in 2020, 10%-15% of total ocean-going freight capacity will employ scrubbers, rising to ~20% by 2025. 

• More Capesize capacity will be fitted with scrubbers because the vessel size and the typical length of voyage mean a larger volume of fuel is burned making the capital investment and the pay-off period much more attractive. In addition, Capesize vessels generally travel on fixed routes between very large ports (e.g. Brazil or Australia to China), where the likelihood of the high sulphur fuel oil (IFO180) being available is greater than that of a small port.

• Of the vessels fitted and due to be fitted with scrubbers, most have opted for the open loop option (where the exhaust gases are washed with sea water and dischargd into the sea). 

• This comes as a surprise as closed-loop scrubbers initially were considered to be more environmentally friendly as the ‘waste’ was [held on board] and disposed of after treatment at ports. 

• However, since some studies have concluded that there is no notable negative environmental impact to using open loop vessels, many companies fitting scrubbers are willing to take the risk. Open loop scrubbers cut down on installation and running costs, along with the logistics of carrying and disposing of the waste. 

• There are some regions (Singapore and Fujairah) where an open loop scrubber is not allowed to operate, but until we see such controls at major ports such as Rotterdam, Qingdao and Newcastle the movement of bulk vessels will be largely unaffected.

• Fuel blending will be key in achieving compliance with the IMO's regulations

•  Bunker fuel is a residual fuel of the oil refining process, it is cheap, has high sulphur content and has been the standard fuel used by the shipping industry.  By way of explanation: The fuel blending involves adding a proportion of Biofuels or other fuels to achieve a lower proportion of sulphur in the mix. The physical blending on board of bulk liquid products during a sea voyage to create new products is prohibited by the IMO.   

AIR POLLUTION

According to Clear Seas Centre for Responsible Marine Shipping in Vancouver:

• Commercial ships emit several types of air pollution as by-products in the form of smoke. Ship-source pollutants most closely linked to climate change and public health impacts include carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrogen oxides (NOx), sulphur oxides (SOx) and particulate matter. (PM) 

• On a global scale, the marine shipping industry’s share of total emissions from human sources is: CO2 (2.2% per year), NOx (15% per year), SOx (13% per year) 

•  CO2 is an important GHG. When it is absorbed by seawater, the water becomes more acidic and this  has adverse effects on marine life and ecosystems. NOx causes acid rain and medical problems in humans. SOx has similar effects. 

• In addition, the smoke from ships also contains a collection of solid and liquid particles formed during fuel combustion.This “black carbon” is the second largest contributor to climate change after CO2. The particles absorb solar energy in the air before falling to earth. High concentrations of black carbon darken the ice and snow surfaces and significantly reduce the amount of solar energy reflected back into space - known as the albedo effect - which accelerates melting. 

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LNG As Marine Fuel Revealed To Be Worse Than Business As Usual For Climate – Report By MI News Network | In: Shipping News | January 28, 2020

• A new report from the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) has found that the most popular Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) ship engine, particularly for cruise ships, emits between 70% and 82% more life-cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions over the short-term compared to clean distillate fuels. 

• The shocking new report, “The climate implications of using LNG as a marine fuel”, comes as the shipping sector grapples with its enormous climate footprint, and more ship operators are turning to LNG as a purported climate solution.

• The ICCT report examines the lifecycle GHG emissions from marine fuels, including a previously poorly understood source of climate emissions from LNG-powered ships — the unintentional releases of the climate super-pollutant methane from ship engines, known as methane slip.

 Credits: iso.org

• The authors found that using LNG could actually worsen the shipping industry’s climate impacts compared to marine gas oil (MGO) when considering the amount of heat these emissions will trap over a 20-year period. 

•  “This groundbreaking new analysis is a damning climate indictment of LNG as marine fuel. For a sector that is already one of the largest contributors of global greenhouse gas emissions, this report reveals that switching ships to LNG is worse than doing nothing. This should serve as an alarming wake-up call for the International Maritime Organization, which must act now to ensure it includes all greenhouse gas emissions in its emissions reduction strategy,” said Kendra Ulrich, Senior Shipping Campaigner at Stand.earth.

• LNG is being hailed as a climate solution by many in the shipping industry — a sector that is responsible for more global GHG emissions than major climate polluting nations, including Germany, Iran, South Korea, and Canada. If left unchecked in a business-as-usual scenario, international shipping GHG emissions could rise from its current 3% share of emissions to a staggering 17% of global GHG emissions by 2050. If ships were to continue to uptake LNG as a marine fuel, emissions could be even worse. 

• “The report shows the need for adopting policies that can reduce the broader GHG emissions of shipping instead of CO2 only, said Dr. Elizabeth Lindstad, Chief Scientist at SINTEF Ocean, Maritime Transport.

• The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has warned that global GHG emissions must be nearly halved from 2017 levels by 2030 to avert the worst impacts of climate change, and methane emissions from all sources must be cut by at least 35% from 2010 levels by 2050.

• Given this short timeframe to drastically reduce climate-disrupting pollution, the report authors evaluated the climate impacts of marine fuels using 20-year and 100-year global warming potentials. Methane emissions are particularly problematic because methane traps 86 times more heat than the same amount of carbon over a 20-year period. 

• Of the 756 LNG ships currently in use or on order, the most popular engine type, by far, is also the worst offender with the highest rate of methane slip. This engine is especially popular with cruise ships, and the cruise industry promotes these LNG ships as having significant climate benefits. 

• As recently as December, the largest cruise operator in the world, Carnival Corporation, touted its LNG program as an example of its climate leadership in an announcement about joining the “Getting to Zero Coaliton.” This coalition aims to have zero-emission vessels in operation by 2030. 

• “Carnival Corporation’s program to increase the number of LNG ships in its global fleet is like jumping out of the oil pot and into the climate-fueled fire. While most of Carnival’s global fleet still burns one of the dirtiest fossil fuels on earth — heavy fuel oil — LNG is far from a solution to its massive climate pollution problem. We urge Carnival to stop fueling its ships with oil refinery waste and end its investments in climate-disrupting LNG ships. If Carnival wants to be an environmental leader, it must switch to the cleanest fuel available — marine gas oil — and put its investment dollars toward truly zero-emissions technologies,” said Ulrich.

• The International Maritime Organization’s (IMO) Pollution Prevention and Response Subcommittee meets February 17-21 in London, in what is being hailed by the international community as an Arctic Summit. The pollution subcommittee will be asked to send strong recommendations to its parent committee, the Marine Environment Protection Committee, on urgent control measures for black carbon in the Arctic and other marine ecosystems.
• Also on its agenda are banning the use.. of heavy fuel oil in the Arctic, and closing a loophole that allows for the continued use of heavy fuel oil under more stringent fuel sulfur standards if ships install “emissions-cheat” systems called scrubbers.

• The Marine Environment Protection Committee meets March 30-April 3 in London, where, after two years of stalling and delays, its top priority will be its Greenhouse Gas Reduction Strategy and agreeing to short-term measures to begin reducing emissions.

• The report was commissioned by international environmental organization Stand.earth. Read the report: https://www.stand.earth/publication/climate-implications-using-lng-marine-fuel-international-council-clean-transportation

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CRUISE SHIPS

Source: Cruise ships are damaging the world’s seas'

John Gapper/ Financial Times 5th June 2019

This has not been a happy week for cruise operators. On Sunday morning, a large cruise ship collided with a dock in Venice, injuring four people.  On Monday, a judge in Miami approved a $20m settlement with Carnival Corporation, the world's biggest cruise operator, for repeatedly polluting oceans. 

"If you all did not have the environment, you would have nothing to sell," Judge Patricia Seitz observed sharply to Arnold Donald, chief executive of Carnival, in Miami. Carnival pleaded guilty to having dumped waste and oily water into the sea, despite a previous criminal conviction for the same offence. 

Cruise operators need to clean up their act. They face protests at the most popular spots such as Venice, Dubrovnik and the Norwegian fjords for sailing behemoths there — the Opera looks big but is only half the size of MSC Cruises' latest vessels, which can take 5,000 passengers. 
Now they are under scrutiny for their emissions and the waste they generate. 

It is unfair in some ways. Cruising is a growing form of tourism but still tiny compared with the industry as a whole: 28m people took cruises last year out of about 1.4bn tourist arrivals in foreign countries. It suffers the curse of the visible — cruise ships, with what the Miami court settlement monitor called "all the myriad needs of a small free-floating city", are hard to ignore. 

"The more people cruise the world, the more the world becomes a better place," Carnival claims in its 2017 sustainability report. There is something to that. McKinsey & Co estimates that travel and tourism generated $7.9tn, or 10 per cent of global gross domestic product, in 2017, and more than 1,000 crew can be employed on a cruise ship. But it is not unalloyed gain.

One problem is emissions. Cruise ships use heavy oil for fuel, like other commercial ships, and the shipping industry is estimated to create 13 per cent of sulphur dioxide emissions, causing 400,000 cases of premature death globally a year. There are sulphur control areas along coasts, yet one Carnival ship was found to have burnt oil inside Iceland's protection zone. 

Operators including Carnival use filters to curb emissions and some are turning to liquefied natural gas as a fuel — Carnival's AIDAnova, a liner powered by LNG that can carry 6,600 passengers, went into service last year. But the sector as a whole remains a polluter. 

A second problem is waste disposal. Carnival was originally fined $40m in 2017 after a whistleblower on a ship operated by Princess Cruise Lines, one of its subsidiaries, disclosed that its crew had secretly dumped oil-contaminated bilge water into the sea through a "magic pipe" since 2005. 

Cruise ships also collect a lot of "grey water" from showers and "black water" sewage. 
No cruise ship is allowed to dump untreated waste into the sea, even beyond the 12-mile coastal zone imposed by maritime law, and modern ships have extensive treatment facilities. 
The Cruise Lines International Association estimates that ships recycle 60 per cent more waste per person than on land, but the Carnival case shows that breaches are common. 

Compared with tourism as a whole, the cruise industry is a limited cause of ecological concern. But it is growing beyond the baby-boomer market in Germany and the UK, where the average passenger is 57. Virgin is launching a cruise ship next year aimed at a younger crowd, promising a "sailor experience that balances the duality of enjoying the earth and caring for it".

This growth, and the fact that cruise ships are contained environments that could become leaders in sustainable tourism, make it vital to avoid repetitions of the Venice crash and the Carnival case. Taking them out of the Giudecca Canal, where they overshadow Venice, is a start, but other ports need to ask themselves how much they need sail-by visits from the giants. Most of the environmental responsibility lies with the operators themselves, which have raised their standards but need to do more. It is tempting to behave badly at sea, when no one is watching, but it is ugly. 

CLIMATE CRISIS: GREENING AVIATION v1

Source: AERO

The current public debate about the carbon footprint of flying is simplistic and largely ill-informed. The single best article The Generalist has so far come across was written by Chris Finch and published in the December 2019 issue of Geographical magazine. The following facts and quotes are drawn from this lengthy and detailed piece.

Source: eco-aviation.org

THE PROBLEM

• On any single day there will be at least 200,000 planes in the air around the world.
• 64 million tonnes of cargo are transported annually by aircraft.
• Worldwide aviation released 905 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in 2018. according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), the trade group for nearly 300 airlines. 
• This is only 2%  of the 42 billion tonnes emitted annually from human-made sources but the real problem is that the number of people flying is increasing rapidly. 
• Worldwide there were 4.3 billion passengers travelling along some 22,000 routes in 2018.This was double the number at the turn of the millennium. 
• IATA figures predict this will expand to 8.2 billion annually over the next 20 years which will result in a dramatic rise in carbon emissions from around 500 million tonnes in 2015, to nearly 2,000 tonnes by 2050 in a worst-case scenario. 
• In other sectors, progress is being made towards decarbonising but technological improvements in aviation are being offset by the huge increase in demand for flights, Even the most modern planes still consume tens of thousands of litres of jet fuel as they have done in the past.

Source: EARTH TIMES

SOLUTIONS

• Offsetting is used by airline s and many corporations to cancel their carbon footprint by environmental activities like planting trees, capturing methane from landfills, installing renewable energy.
• Roger Tyers, a research fellow in environmental sociology at the University of Southampton , believes that offsetting is more robust than it was 10 years ago and that some schemes do have measurable benefits but says: '

'The idea that you can fly neutral - that it's a scientific, robust means of cancelling out your emissions - I think that's highly questionable. Very few people offset their flights, probably less than 5% and that’s being generous. In growth markets such as China you probably won't see offsetting at all. So if it remains voluntary then it's not going to go anywhere close to making flying sustainable under the status quo. It would need to be something on a mandatory level, but then I would still argue that the whole concept of carbon offsetting is maybe not the path we should go down.’ 

• Instead of looking at consumers to solve the problem it has been suggested that national legislation could be used to force the airline industry to reduce its emissions. But according to Alice Larkin, professor of climate scienece and energy policy at Manchester University:

‘Governments are nervous about being too heavy-handed with regulation to actually remove some of the very high carbon choices from people. Also they are protecting an industry where there are lots of prospects for employment, particularly in country such as the UK where we lost a lot of our manufacturing.’

Source:reddccadgiz.org

  

THE PARIS AGREEMENT 

I an early draft of the Paris Agreement there was some text about aviation and shipping but this removed. This was because the assumption was made that domestic flights - which produce 1/3rd of global aviation emissions - would be covered by the commitments made by individual countries.

The remaining 2/3rds was pased onto two UN agenencies: the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and International Maritime Organization (IMO). The latter has set a 50% reduction target.

The ICAO has set up the Carbon Offsettting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA). This plans to do offsetting on an immense scale in order to keep carbon emissions from international civil aviation at 2020 levels, which they claim will save 2.5 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide between 2021 and 2035.  According to Roger Tyers:

`What concerns me most about CORSIA is that passengers will assume that, because there's this scheme at a global level, it's fixed. That the industry has got this under control and therefore nobody needs to worry about it anymore. That kind of moral licence to carry on flying - maybe fly more - and just keep growing the industry is a big concern.’

The plan will not be mandatory until 2027. China and India, the world's two most populous countries, are not currently among the signatories.

TECHNOLOGICAL SOLUTIONS: ELECTRIC AIRCRAFT

E-Fan X

The car industry has moved swiftly towards battery-driven electric vehicles but such a shift is more difficult for the aviation industry.

• A battery capable of powering transcontinental flight would, with today's technology, be a hundred times heavier than its equivalent weight in jet fuel. Short-haul flights might be more realistic in the medium term.
• 
  
• Airbus are working with Rolls-Royce and Siemens to build E-Fan X a hybrid electric aircraft with a proposed launch date of 2030
• Boeing is working on a similar project with start-up Zunum Aero
•  The Pipistrel Alpha Electro G2 two-seater being built in Slovenia is designed as a precurosor for short haul commercial flights
• The  Israeli firm Eviation is aiming to produce its nine-seater Alice electric aircraft ready for use by 2022. 
• easyJet is in partnership with Wright Electric with the intention of making its most popular route all-electric within the next 10-20 years.

According to Scott Cohen, Professor of tourism and transport at the University of Surrey:

'Technological optimism leads to inertia among policy makers. They don't have to act now, because they buy into the idea that a technological solution is on the horizon. Unfortunately, such optimism clashes with the need for imminent decarbonisation in an industry that works on manufacturing timetables of a decade or more into the future.  

'Say you switch to hydrogen. You're not going to roll that out globally overnight. Maybe you then need 20 to 30 years until you bring everyone globally on to that kind of same page in terms of your infrastructure. So there's a certain lock-in and path dependency that we're not going to break out of in time. By the time the fix is there, the world's on fire.’ 

The aviation industry is trying to avoid a serious cut in emissions by banking on untested negative emissions technology  which may be capable of pulling carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Alice Larkin argues

'We don't know that negative emssion technologies are going to be operation at scale and in a time frame that is compatible with the Paris Agreement. Even if it turns out that all of that becomes incredibly easy...it's not a very wise approach to just continue to plan for airports and aviation expansion knowing you haven't got the technology to mitigate their emissions...We're making too many optimistic assumptions that aren't backed up by evidence.’ 

BIOFUELS:

STOP PRESS: Jan 2020: Sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) is made available for aircraft at Zurich Airport carrying delegates leaving Davos. The journal Market Watch comments: 'Aviation biofuels exist, i.e., fuel made from plants or waste biomass that has a much lower carbon footprint, and is generally blended in with regular jet fuel. The big obstacle is making enough without competing with food production, at a low enough price.At the moment, sustainable aviation fuels (SAF), as the industry calls them, are about three times more expensive than commercial fossil-fuel derived jet fuel.' Source: elektrek.co 

• In recent years the aviation industry has been experimenting with various sustainable aviation fuels (SAF), from recycled waste to mustard seeds to alcohol. Over the last 10 years over 180,000 flights have been conducted using a blend of SAF. Some10 million litres of SAF are now being consumed every year. This is  less than 0.01 %  of total consumed jet fuel. 
• According to Christopher Paling, researcher at the Centre for Aviation, Transport and the Environment at Manchester Metropolitan University.  He points out that the  certification process required to get new biofuels to market is 'lengthy and costly'. 

'One is ensuring they do not compete for land with food crops which will increase the price of foods globally. Another challenge is making fuels comparable in cost to current fossil fuel-derived kerosene. This single issue of cost is restricting alternative fuels to being "demonstration" projects’ 

•   You can see a live feed of the small number of flights -mainly from Canada and Sweden - powered in part by SAF here: planefinder.net/custom/icao-fuel

FREQUENT FLIERS/PRIVATE JETS

Source: www.thestreet.com

According to Scott Cohen: 'Only two or three per cent of the global population travelled by plane in 2017. But even within that two or three per cent you have this incredible skew towards frequent flyers, in which you have a small handful of people that consume an incredible amount of the distances flown.'

• There has been a substantial rise in the number of private jets. Two-thirds of the world's private jets are owned by the ultra-rich based in North America. Ownership is encouraged by tax breaks. These jets are 10 times more carbon intensive than an equivalent commercial flight.

• Chris Fitch writes:  'A recent report calculated that a single private jet travelling between London and New York released the same emissions as a car driving non-stop for four and a half years. Until the one per cent begin flight shaming, the movement may be doomed to irrelevance.'

ALTERNATIVE TRAVEL

Source: pcma

In Sweden in 2018, a record 32 million chose to shun flying in favour of taking a train. 

Greta Thunberg has become a figurehead for the 'no-fly movement' in Sweden. Flygskam (flight shaming) and smygflyga, (flying in secret) are popular buzzwords. Thousands of people in many countries including the UK, Germany and  the US are pledging to be `flight free' in 2020. 

•  An average diesel locomotive will release between a half and a third the emissions of a plane. Modern high-speed trains emit only a fraction. Eurostar promotes its service as having 90 per cent less emissions than the equivalent budget flight. 

• In China, a study of 642 routes by researchers at Beijing Jiaotong University and the Shaanxi Polytechnic Institute found that overall the introduction of high-speed rail to a route led to a drop in air travel of more than half over the following two years. The nation's  three major national airlines - Air China, China Southern Airlines, China Eastern Airlines - consider rail as a major competitor. 

•  China is still expected to be the primary driver of global aviation growth, contributing an extra one billion passengers over the next 20 years.  

• In 2007, when Taiwan opened a high-speed rail line from the north to the south of the country in competition with a popular air route, air passengers halved almost overnight. The last direct flight on the route was discontinued in 2012. 

•  In countries which do not have a huge rail network, rail may not be the lowest carbon option, as building a network requires a lot of steel which is carbon intensive.

CONCLUSIONS

•  `I think we need aviation’ argues Paul Williams. ‘It's good for people to travel. It broadens peoples' minds, it internationalises people, it brings a host of economic benefits. I wouldn't want to shut down the aviation sector. But I do want it to become a lot more sustainable’.
•  'I've never been a proponent of the idea that we stop flying entirely’ says Scott Cohen, 'but there needs to be some level of moderation within it.’
• Chris Fitch writes: 'Unfortunately, we have boxed ourselves in with an incredibly short time frame in which to develop and install the necessary technology required to continue the scale of aviation currently underway without it busting the carbon budget... If one of humanity's greatest achievements is to avoid becoming a relic of a bygone era, a time when humanity could take to the skies with abandon, the aviation industry may need to simultaneously make great strides with all these potential solutions to combat the harsh realities of climate change, 

TURBULENCE and CONTRAILS

•  'Climate change is going to double or triple the amount of severe clear air turbulence in the atmosphere at aircraft cruising altitudes,' explains Paul Williams, of the University of Reading. 'That's because of the way the jet stream is responding to climate change.' 

• Changes in the climate will significantly affect aviation in the future. It is already creating faster eastbound transatlantic flights and slower westbound flights as the jet stream speeds up. Other potential impacts include difficulty with planes taking off - more of a challenge in warmer air - as well as increasingly volatile weather, lightning strikes and flooding of low-lying airports. 

• Contrails are the name of the white lines planes leave behind them in the sky. These are actually soot-filled ice clouds that block ont-going thermal radiation, which adds to the warming of the atmosphere. A study by Lisa Block and Ulrike Burkhardt at the DLR German Aerospace Center claims that the contrail effect is accelerating and they estimate that the effect of contrails will be three times larger in 2050 than in 2006.

 .

INSIDE DOPE: MICHAEL HOLLINGSHEAD LSD'S COSMIC COURIER

Over recent years there has been a string of titles that add a new richness and new narratives to both the histories of 1960s/70s culture and psychedelics. Several of these have been published by Strange Attractor and have been reviewed on this blog. This latest title is an intriguing addition.

'Divine Rascal: On the Trail of LSD's Cosmic Courier, Michael Hollingshead'  by Andy Roberts is a valuable follow-on to his excellent 'Albion Dreaming: A Popular History of LSD in Britain' which The Generalist reviewed in October 2008.

Up until this book, Michael Hollingshead had been a mysterious enigma who was known mainly as the man who had a glass jar of fresh LSD mixed with icing sugar which he spoonfed to leading figures in the US and UK counterculture and many others. Only Stanley Owsley, The Dead's favourite chemist, creator of Orange Sunshine, ranks as a similar high-level name check.

Hollingshead wrote his own autobiography  'The Man Who Turned On The World' which is highly unreliable but entertaining. Here's a short extract:

 Eagerly I unwrapped the package. The acid was in a small dark jar marked 'Lot Number H-00047', and in appearance looked a bit like malted milk powder. My problem was how to convert the loose powder into a more manageable form. One gram would make 5000 individual doses and I was obviously going to need to measure it out in some way. I decided to randomise it by mixing it into a stiff paste made from icing sugar.
    I cleared the kitchen table and set to work. First I poured some distilled water into a bowl, and then mixed in the LSD. When all the acid had dissolved I added confectioner's sugar until the mixture was a thick paste. I then transferred my 'divine confection', spoon by laborious spoon, into a sixteen-ounce mayonnaise jar, and, by what magical alchemic process, the stuff measured exactly 5000 spoonfuls ! In other words, one teaspoon of the stuff ought to contain 200 gamma (millionths of a gram), which would be sufficient for an eight-to ten-hour session, and a pretty intense one at that.

Andy Roberts' biography is the first attempt to bring together the scattered letters, the remembrances of family and friends with existing print and photographic evidence. Unable to stay in one place for too long, MH flew frequently in search of the next adventure, Roberts' intro summarises these journeys and different stages of his strange life in this extract from his Introduction:

Michael Hollingshead wasn't even his real name. So, who was Michael Hollingshead? This lack of information, and the mystery which accompanied it, piqued my curiosity about his life before and after his fateful meeting with Tim Leary.

As I dug deeper into the arcane reaches of psychedelic history, I found references to Hollingshead everywhere, Zelig-like, stalking the landscapes of western psychedelic culture's most iconic events.

Look back to 1961 and there he is in Boston, Massachusetts, an enthusiastic catalyst for Leary's lysergic initiation and ascension to fame and guru-status. 

In 1962 you'll find him assisting with the legendary Harvard-Concord prison and Marsh Chapel psilocybin experiments, and in 1963 heavily involved with the little known but highly influential Agora Scientific Trust.

In 1964, Hollingshead is trying to stage an LSD exhibition at the World's Fair in New York while simultaneously debating the founding of Sigma with beat poet and author Alex Trocchi, before collaborating with Leary again in LSD fuelled mischief at the infamous Millbrook mansion.

 In 1965 Hollingshead returned to Britain, roaming swinging London like a sinister Austin Powers; making everything psychedelic baby by turning on the hip, the rich and the famous, whether they wanted it or not. 

If you were in prison during the 1966 and '67 Summers of Love, you might have heard Hollingshead tell how he gave LSD to a Russian spy or how trepanation was the new method of consciousness change. 

In 1968 you'd find Hollingshead hanging out with the fabled Brotherhood of Eternal Love in the mountains and beaches of California, before flying to Kathmandu in 1969 to cause ripples on the hippie trail and start a psychedelic poetry magazine.

Fast forward eighteen months and he's back in Britain, founding a hippie commune on a Scottish island with the aid of Franciscan monks before in 1972 creating the world's first multi-media predictive art installation in Edinburgh. 

Hollingshead later enjoyed daring psychedelic escapades in Tonga, Scandinavia and Europe before dying in mysterious circumstances in Bolivia.'

If this doesn't arouse your curiosity what will one wonders. Enjoy the trip! 

Buy from Strange Attractor Press

Vanessa Hollingshead, Michael's daughter, is a great stand-up artist. Check her out.

Vanessa Hollingshead talks about her father

You can read Michael Hollingshead's autobiography on-line at the Psychedelic Library.

 A comic by Ethan Persoff and Scott Marshall based on reminisces of underground journalist John Wilcock.As featured in Boing Boing.

MUSIC BOOKS; THE ART OF THE BLUES /ALLIGATOR RECORDS/ MUSIC PRESS/MUSIC FROM BIG PINK

THE GENERALIST ARCHIVE has a substantial collection of music books and magazines, clippings, tickets, photos, programmes, posters and vinyl. Happy to add these new titles to the library.

'The Art of the Blues: A Visual Treasury of Black Music's Golden Age' actually came out in 2016 so its only taken me three years to get round to writing about it! Better late than never. Its a stunner. The text is deeply researched and fluently written by Bill Dahl a freelance music journalist, a prolific liner note writer and author of 'Motown: The Golden Years'.




Invaluable knowedge and advice was provided by Chris James, an award-winning recording artist and music historian. His music featured prominently in the Martin Scorsese's PBS doc The Blues'. His collection of blues artwork and ephemera has provided a large chunk of the rare material showcased in the book. Hats off also to Paul Palmer-Edwards of Grade Design who has done a real fine job throughout with classy layouts that show off the material to best advantage.

The book sequentially presents Sheet Music, Prewar Race Records and Record Catalogs, Prewar 78 labels, Music and Movie Posters, Postwar Blues 78 labels, Album Covers, Photograph Gallery and Publications and Promotions material.

In his introduction, Dahl describes the book as a tribute to the visual side of Blues golden age 'when rare and beautiful images abounded that perfectly complemented the epochal music' He writes: 'Although scholars have stringently established boundaries between blues and jazz, there was a time when artificial seperations between African-American musical genres did not exist'  and black music was universally stereotyped under the umbrella of "race music". This gumbo stew hybridised different musical strands and incorporated a wide number of regional styles. The visual presentations of the music similarly passed through different phases which makes this landmark book a valuable historical reference work and educational tool as well as being a stimulating and joyful book to browse.

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ALLIGATOR RECORDS

Also from Chicago UP comes a straight forward entertaining blow-by-blow account of the first 40+ years of what is widely regarded as the numero uno indie blues label in the world. Bruce Iglauer founded the label with his first release by Hound Dog Taylor & The HouseRockers in 1971. In his liner notes to the Alligator Records 45th Anniversary Collection he wrote:

'Alligator was a leap of faith, an underfinanced one-man operation run out of an efficiency apartment. It was launched with an album by a band virtually unknown outside of the South and West Side Chicago neighborhood blues clubs where they played. The band had no national reputation, no booking agent or manager and they were not creating music that sounded much like anything getting played on any form of commercial radio. Yet their unbridled energy, unfettered joy and the raw soulfulness and glorious racket of their music somehow communicated to people all over the world, making them blues legends and making their debut recording a classic that continues to be discovered by legions of new fans.'

'Forty-five years later, Alligator Records, now with a catalog of almost 300 albums, continues to be guided by the same philosophy that led to that first recording—the belief that direct, unvarnished, straight-from-the-soul blues and blues-rooted music, the music we call “Genuine Houserockin’ Music,” speaks to some primal, necessary place in people’s consciousness.'

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Writing about music is an art form. These titles illustrate aspects of what is a very broad church. By and large, music critics and music writers are male (with notable exceptions). There's a geekish schoolboy contingent and increasingly an academic diaspora. In my experience, music is best discussed at the bar. We all have some favourite music writers. Many of mine were/are mates from my time at the underground newspaper Frendz and/or the New Musical Express.

'A Hidden Landscape Once A Week' 
The Unruly Curiosity of the UK music press in the 1960s-80s, in the words of those who were there'. 

The Start of It All 

In May 2015 Mark Sinker convened a conference at Birkbeck, University of London, in Bloomsbury. 'Underground-Overground: The Changing Politics of UK Music-Writing 1968-85' brought together writers, editors and readers of the underground and trade music presses of the 1960s-80s with academics and other media commentators, to discuss the emergence and evolution of the countercultural voice in the UK, as inflected through the rock papers and music press in those decades. Funded by a successful Kickstarter in July 2016, this anthology includes edited select transcripts of some of the Birkbeck panels, plus essays and memoirs from and interviews with participants and others, to expand the story and dig further into some of the issues.

'For almost three decades, the UK music press was the forging ground for a new critical culture, where readers could encounter anything from comics and cult films to new musical forms and radical underground politics. It created an off-mainstream collective cultural commons improvised through a networked subculture of rival weeklies, monthlies and fanzines, including such titles as NME, Melody Maker, Sounds, Record Mirror, Black Echoes, Black Music, Let It Rock, Street Life, ZigZag and Smash Hits.

'Edited by Mark Sinker, this anthology of conversations, essays, memories and commentary explores how this hitherto under-charted space first came about, who put it together, what it achieved, and where it went. Along the way, it unearths the many surprising worlds explored by this network of young anarchists, dreamers and agitators, who dared to take pop culture seriously, and considers what remains of their critical legacy. '

There is much to enjoy here and students of popular culture will find info and quotes for a wide variety of theses. As someone who was there at the time, this feels like perhaps a final hurrah. It was a long time ago. Its good that the effect the underground press had on the music press has been recognised. It's a book to dip into and ponder. Music writing now is rarely exciting.

Pick Up The Pieces: Excursions in Seventies Music
According to Wikipedia, John Corbett (b.1963) is an American writer, musician, radio host, teacher, record producer, concert promoter, and gallery owner based in Chicago, Illinois. He is best known among musicians and music fans as a champion of free jazz and free improvisation. A staff writer for Down Beat magazine, he curates live gigs, was artistic director of the Berlin Jazz Festival (2002) produces the Unheard Music Series for Atavistic Records and much more.

With three books in the hopper including 'Vinyl Freak: Love Letters to a Dying Medium', this new substantial volume is made up of 78 essays of various lengths which document his varied listening highlights through the 1970s and his life experiences, from 7 to 17, attached to them.

Corbett writes: 'This...is a look at the sound of the seventies as I made sense of it at the time, from the sublime to the pathetic, and also as I pieced it together after the fact, from later points in life, when I uncovered compelling music I had missed and parsed things about my music that I'd failed to grasp.'

The approach and concept has the benefit of being fresh and interesting but not all the essays hit the spot. Some tested my patience and appeared to be over-the-line pretentious or too freeform. Others were informative and interesting. There always has been a difference between UK and US music writing, although Lester Bangs was a founding influence on both Corbett and Nick Kent. The writer becomes as important as the music he or she's reviewing. A book like this is hard to pull off as journalism students will discover if they try and emulate his approach.

Lengthy interview/conversation  with John Corbett by the American novelist Rick Moody about this book on the Rumpus website.

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In 2003, Bloomsbury Books launched a new series of titles entitled 33 1/3. There are currently 135 titles with more to come according to the series website. They have also published this book by Rick Moody.

According to an essay in Pitchfork by Stephen M. Duesner [29 June 2015), which celebrates the first 100+ titles and chooses what he thinks are the 33 best, he writes:'When the series started assigning one album to one author back in 2003—right around the time the album was rumored to be cooling on a slab in the pop culture morgue, ready to be opened up and autopsied—there was no template for this kind of publication, no prescribed notions to fill. The books could take the shape of an essay, or a work of fiction, or even some odd hybrid of both. But whatever the format, these paperbacks are aggressively accessible: short, pocketsize, easily consumed during a few commutes. Perhaps more crucially, potentially anyone can write a 33 1/3 book: critics, academics, journalists, musicians, poets, assorted armchair commentators.'

'Music From Big Pink' by Scottish novelist John Niven was republished in this series in 2018. Niven was born in 1968 when the album first came out. He cleverly combines fact and fiction through the eyes and ears of the main character Greg Keltner, a musician and drug dealer, who manages to inveigle himself into the Woodstock scene with Dylan and The Band, becoming one of their main suppliers. Music writer Barney Hoskins, whose studied and completed his own non-fiction book on this scene, writes in an intro of his 'mesmerised disbelief that a thirtysomething Scotsman could, with such uncanny accuracy, catch the heady geist of that late 1960s zeit'. The book is a compact 160pp tale that both rings true and captures the magic of those times. A great read.






[This post was inadvertantly deleted after I first published it. Happily the press people at Chicago University Press had copied it out and I am most grateful to them for rescuing it]

VOYAGING OUT: HISTORY OF BRITISH WOMEN ARTISTS by CAROLYN TRANT

In September two years ago THE GENERALIST published four posts under the banner THE FUTURE IS FEMALE, profiling women artists and reviewing a clutch of marvellous books on them. 

   Carolyn Trant's new book 'Voyaging Out' [just published by Thames & Hudson] is an important and welcome addition to the literature. It is also an excellent complement to Whitney Chadwick's 'Women, Art and Society' [also published by T&H/6th Edition] which takes a broader overview in time and space.

This beautiful and important history of  'British Women Artists from the Suffrage to the Sixties' is a remarkable piece of work by an art practitioner (not a critic or an academic) whose work combines art and crafts. In addition, her wide-ranging activities include teaching, creating artist's books, community printmaking and much more.

As this book demonstrates, Carolyn is a fine writer, an extremely thorough researcher and someone who has acquired all this knowledge not by rehashing existing research but by interviewing and intermingling with the living relatives of so many of the women featured in her narratives.

The book consist of  18 chunky chapters that lead us, largely chronologically, through some 50 years and introduces us to what must be 100 or more female artists and craft workers most of which one has not come across before. The many biographical portraits are set in their context and carefully stitched together to provide a broader tapestry of the network of artistic groups and movements. Chapters investigate women as war artists, as political activists, as surrealists, as muses. She investigates artists' partnerships, the plus and minuses of working from studios or domestic settings, women artists as teachers, and women who played the art world successfully and had an influence. In summary, she provides us with a totally alternative view of art history that changes one's perception and enriches one understanding of the period.

The book itself is a fine object, with readable typography set on a cream paper stock which provides a perfect backdrop for the colourful illustrative content which must amount to some 150 paintings, portraits and illustrations - a feast for the eye. 

The cover features a painting called 'Dorset' painted by Evelyn Dunbar, the only salaried woman war artist in the Second World War which 'seems an image of relief after the trauma of war  - the land has survived.' 

There is so much in this book to take on board that repeated readings will be required to fully grasp this new narrative. A banquet of richness best digested slowly. I have no doubt it will be widely and wildly appreciated by female artists of today who will draw fresh inspiration from Carolyn Trant's valuable work.

CAROLYN TRANT is widely respected in Lewes for her creative ideas and the important contribution she has made to stimulating the art heart of the town through decades of determined effort.  My photos below show a recent evening organised and presented by Mark Hewitt in which Carolyn talked about her long and varied artlife in a fascinating manner, illustrated by an impressive slideshow of work.

                      

CHARLIE MANSON: TOM O'NEILL INVESTIGATES

Some 20 years ago, journalist Tom O'Neill was commissioned by Premier magazine to write a piece about Manson's effect on Hollywood. Its taken that long to complete 'Chaos', a lengthy and exhaustive investigation into the little-known background of the Manson murders, just published on the 50th anniversary of an event that symbolically marked the end of the '60s, coinciding with the release of the new Tarantino movie. with its own take on the Manson story.. of which more anon.

When O'Neill first started asking questions, nobody in Hollywood wanted to talk about it and he wondered why. Soon enough he got hooked and ended up digging deeper and deeper. Pictures of the inside of his house reveal acres of files and a whiteboard - almost de riguer in police and crime movies today - with a bewildering maze of lines connecting a huge cast of dodgy ne'er do wells.

He soon discovers that there are gaping holes in the official narratives and that the Manson family set-up with drugs, under-age girls and weaponry seemed immune from prosecution, despite repeated arrests, suggesting that some arm of the law enforcement appartus wanted to keep out them and manson in particular on the loose. there.Competing police forces took four months to arrest Manson and his killer brood yet the authorities knew it was Manson much earlier.

The Generalist Archive

                                                                                 The Polanski/Sharon Tate mansion had a reputation for occult and orgy parties but it seems that Manson knew none of the occupants. He was seeking vengeance on Terry Melcher, Doris Day's son, an influential record producer who had lived in the same house for a while.

Manson met Beach Boy drummer Dennis Wilson and through him got Melcher to come to the Farm and listen to his songs. Melcher promised a deal but never came through. Seeking vengeance, Manson sent his killing squad out to slaughter who ever they could find in the house. The years that have gone by have not lessened the shock of their savage gory attacks on  Sharon Tate, pregnant at the time, and six other innocents. Two days later, another another two people were stabbed to death on Manson's orders. It is believed that there were other murders that have still not been investigated.

O'Neill races around uncovering many witnesses and important figures that had never spoken to before. Many die before he can reach them. Archives disappear. Promising leads die out. He's refused access to important police files. Despite the difficulties he perseveres.

Until now the standard narrative of the Manson story has been 'Helter Skelter' by Vincent Bugliosi the prosecuting council in the case, now deceased. O'Neill has successfully put the lie to much of Bugliosi's work inside and outside the courtroom. It's a grand and important piece of investigative work which reveals connections to the secret police black ops operations CHAOS and COINTELPRO which were empowered to disrupt not only students fighting against the Vietnam War but also the Black Panthers. There are also connections with the 125 undercover projects funded by the CIA operation named MK-ULTRA  which was about brainwashing using LSD as part of plan to train assassins.

International Times
The Generalist aArchive

Manson was convicted and died in jail in 2007 but the story of his messianic blood-soaked rampages- enacted by young women out of their heads on LSD - has left a scar in the culture. Manson was much more deeply connected to Hollywood stars and others in the film and music business of the time than was previously believed. O'Neill's delving reveals much that we didn't know but makes it clear that we may never know the full truth. One finishes the book with mixed feelings. 

I like the New York Times reviewer's comment that it's ' less a definitive account of the murders than a kaleidoscope swirl of weird discoveries and mind-bending hypotheticals that reads like Raymond Chandler after a tab of windowpane.'


For more reviews, YouTube author interviews etc see O'Neill's personal site: 

GLOBAL REVOLUTION: SUNRISE MOVEMENT + THE GREEN NEW DEAL USA

We're building an army of young people to make climate change an urgent priority across America, end the corrupting influence of fossil fuel executives on our politics, and elect leaders who stand up for the health and wellbeing of all people.

We are ordinary young people who are scared about what the climate crisis means for the people and places we love. We are gathering in classrooms, living rooms, and worship halls across the country. Everyone has a role to play. Public opinion is already with us - if we unite by the millions we can turn this into political power and reclaim our democracy.

We are not looking to the right or left. We look forward. Together, we will change this country and this world, sure as the sun rises each morning.

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OUR ROAD TO VICTORY ON A GREEN NEW DEAL

We need a Green New Deal to fight the climate crisis at the scale that scientists say is necessary. It’s a plan that would transform our economy and society at the scale needed to stop the climate crisis. It’s our fighting chance to actually stop this crisis - for some of us, the first we’ve seen in our whole lives.

Here is how we win:

1. Launch the “Road to a Green New Deal Tour” to reach tens of thousands people around the country, and give them to tools to get their politicians signed on.
2. Turn up the heat on every Presidential and Congressional candidate to back the Green New Deal.
3. Build our movement in every corner of the country so we can reach the millions of young people who are scared about climate and keep building support for a Green New Deal.
4. Join with other movements for change to elect a President and a Congress that will stand up to fossil fuel CEOs and pass a Green New Deal to transform our economy within the coming decade and offer a job to every single American who wants one — no matter the color of our skin, where we live or where our parents are from.

Taking action and raising your voice is how we achieve this.

www.sunrisemovement.org

  we pulled off our biggest action yet on Monday December 10th 2018. 1,000-strong, we united in Washington DC to demand House Democratic Leadership sign on to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's resolution for a Select Committee on a Green New Deal. 

HTTPS://YOUTU.BE/-0PGO7AACSU

STEVE SAWYER: RAINBOW WARRIOR / SAIL ON, SAIL ON, SAILOR

Steve Sawyer was a force to be reckoned with. He was tough, physically very strong, until the last days of his life when an agressive cancer finally stopped him trying to help the world and save the planet. No doubt Kelly, his lifelong partner will continue the battle as she always has. Their son and daughter will also ensure that parent's legacy is honoured. They've all travelled the world extensively and no doubt Steve's spirit is out there now expoloring new dimensions.

Steve was a grand sailor they tell me. I avoid stepping on boats if at all possible. I used to advise people not to play basketball with him. His speed, strength and attitude were overwhelming. My son and I played the blues with him in the cellar of the family house in Amsterdam. He could really play that guitar, generally with the VOLUME TURNED UP to max.. He was good with technology too. If I was going on any sort of expedition, which is unlikely but not impossible, I would want to be in Steve's tent. Hurricane or bear attack, you had the best chance of surviving if you were on his team. 

Steve was doggone damned determined and that's what made him a great head of Greenpeace International [ he did 30 years at the mast in total] and then the 10-year s as top man at the global wind association, speaking about global warming early and doing something about it. Wind energy is rapidly expanding thanks to China. Steve deserves credit for making a huge contribution  in both those organisations.There were others who did a lot and they too should be celebrated.

Steve: I have combed the worldwide internet for pictures of you. There are a few. You didn't seek the limelight. Happily I know you are captured plenty in the family snapshot archive.

As is usual in these situations, I wonder why I didn't keep in touch Steve. I thought of you often and often thought of contacting you. I followed your movemnts in the world of wind admiringly.

I expect you'll meet up with David McTaggart sometime soon. Those two in one room could be thermonuclear or joyous or both.

I wanted to pay tribute to you in some way and I hope you will approve. It is the article I wrote for Time Out magazine that they published in early October 1985. That was the first time met. You were still jangled by it all. I remember it being intense. That was your birthday party on the Rainbow Warrior that night in July and you might all have died when the bombs went off except you'd all taken the party elsewhere, They killed photographer Fernando Pereira. Now we know it was the French state. The last act in the battle to stop atmospheric nuclear testing in the Pacific. They stopped.

I may think of more things to add.  I''ll put some links in. I certainly didn't expect to write this note in the way it's come out. Best not to speculate about the future. I'm missing you already but I know you're out there somewhere, That's you in the picture. As the Beach Boys sing it: Sail On, Sail On Sailor. I'm listerning to it now.

https://www.greenpeace.org/international/story/23499/steve-sawyer-1956-2019/

RAINBOW'S END

TIME OUT OCTOBER 3-9 1985 

Greenpeace's Steve Sawyer was in Auckland when the French bombed the Rainbow Warrior. John May talks to him about the fateful events of the night of July 10 and Greenpeace's current plans to confront the French navy off Mururoa. 

Rainbow Warrior had arrived in Auckland three days before the bombing to an enthusiastic reception from friends and well-wishers in a flotilla of small craft. The first days in port were packed with social engage-ments and the boat was crowded with politicians, campaigners and the crews of the other peace vessels. They were given a civic reception complete with an official Maori welcome. Wednesday, July 10 was the first day anyone had to get any proper work done. 

Time Out spoke to Steve Sawyer, co-ordinator of Greenpeace's Mururoa campaign, about the events of that night and the following days. It had become a familiar story to him, but this didn't make it any easier for him to tell it. The strain, the tension and the tired-ness have not relented since. His voice was flat and tight-lipped. 

'Wednesday evening I went out with representatives from our other national organisations in the West who were there for a regional meeting scheduled to start the next day.

 'Eight o'clock I arrived back at the ship for our so-called skipper's meeting. It was my birthday so they had a cake and ice cream and all that business. Which is when we noticed this French character. 

'He gave his name as Francois Verlon. He arrived on the boar the night of the bombing about 7 o'clock and left about 8.30. A crewperson was with him the entire time. 

'Basically he was on our side, or so he professed. My only contact with him was that he wished me "Happy birthday" and then said "Good luck on the campaign" as he walked out the door.

 'He was young, slender. I thought he was a student. Short. Very light blonde hair. Very clean shaven or else he didn't have a beard yet.

 'He had left his name with people and told them he was going to Tahiti that night on an airplane. So when the police asked us, about four or five in the morning, if we had seen anything suspicious, everybody's eyes lit up and we said, "Oh my God, this French guy was on board!" 

'So we gave them all the information we had. They supposedly tracked him down through Interpol and got the police in Tahiti to question him. It was reported that he had expressed shock and horror at what had happened, had agreed to come back to New Zealand if he could be of any help and all the rest of it. At which point people lost interest in him. 

'My understanding from second-hand reports is that subsequently the New Zealand police were interested in re-establishing contact with him but he had disappeared.' 

Verlon hasn't been seen since. 

Sawyer returned to his account of the evening of July 10: 'Shortly before eleven we came back up above and then myself and the other political pe-ple in the organisation left to go to another meeting on the other side of the isthmus. We got over there just around the time the bomb went off.' 

The double detonations, less than 500 metres from Auckland's main thoroughfare, Queen Street, rocked nearby buildings and were heard several kilometres away. 

MV Explorer, a gulf cruiser moored next to Rainbow Warrior, was lifted against the wharf piles by the force of the blast. Its captain, Warren Sinclair, sent a radio mayday call and dashed over to the Warrior only to hear the second explosion. Several people on board were flung or jumped into the harbour as the 40-metre vessel keeled over. Sinclair said: 'It was just utter chaos —some people swimming, some climbing the wharf.' It was later discovered that at least 20 kilograms of explosives were used. 

Sawyer said: 'We got a phone call at one o'clock, at which point we hopped in the car and zoomed back. The crew were in the police station across the road from the dock, the boat was on the bottom and Fernando (Pereira) was missing.' 

He pieced together his colleagues' accounts of what had happened. 'On board the boat there had been about nine people sitting in the mess room, drinking beer, listening to music and hanging out. The skipper was asleep in his cabin. A relief cook was in her berth down below. The radio operator was asleep in his cabin on the bridge deck. 

'When the first bomb went off, all the lights went out. The people in the mess jumped up, of course. The chief engineer made it to the engine room door in what he estimated to be eight seconds and opened it. He saw the water coming up the steps already in that time — the engine room is 15,000 cubic feet and, from what he said, it was considerably more than half full in eight seconds! 

'So he slammed the door, at which point the skipper came out of his cabin and the order to abandon ship was given. Meanwhile three people from the mess had gone down to the lower accommodation. The first one was a ship's doctor, Andy Biederman. He hauled Margaret, the relief cook, out of her berth and dragged her upstairs and off the boat. 

'Secondly Martin Gotje, first mate, went down to check in the starboard aft cabin for one of the engineers, Hanne Sorenson. She wasn't there so he got back up. Fernando Pereira had followed him down and we'll never know whether he went to check for his cameras or whether he went to check for another fellow who would have been sleeping in that cabin.

 'Martin was most of the way up the steps when the second explosion went off and the aft accommodation crumbled. He was bunged out the side there and the boat was functionally sunk. 

'Of course I was worried sick that it was something we had done, a mistake on our part which had caused the boat to blow up. I sat down with the chief engineer and skipper and discussed it. Basically there was absolutely no way there could have been anything that could have caused explosions like that on board. Diesel fuel does not blow up like that. 

'We were very careful not to speculate in the press until we had some evidence and our first concern, of course, was Fernando. They found his body about 4.30am and Peter Wilcox, the skipper, had to go down and identify him but there wasn't much chance of a mistake at that stage.

 'So we all got kicked out of the police station about six, went back to the office and started a 72-hour period I would prefer to repeat never again. The whole universe was trying to call the Greenpeace office. I mean we were all blown away by it. The crew was an absolute fucking wreck. They were just shattered emotionally, 'cept Wilcox held it together pretty good.

 'For 72 hours I didn't sleep, I was on the phone constantly. TV crews were all over the place, pushing their way into the office, wanting to get pictures of people crying. So I had the onerous job of telling them to fuck off. I was not in a very good state emotionally but I personally didn't have time to deal with grief and shit like that cos I had to deal with the situation.' 

The story has not ended; in fact we are at the opening of a new act. Pete Wilcox is now skippering the Vega heading for Mururoa where she will rendevous with the new mother ship, the Greenpeace (formerly Gondwanaland one and a half times the size of the Warrior), and a trio of smaller peace boats — the Breeze, Alliance and Varangian — which are now underway.

 A month ago a French defence writer was predicting confrontation between the French navy and Greenpeace and said there was talk of ramming the Vega or even opening fire on it. He said the French navy had a special kind of shell which can stop ships but cause a minimum amount of damage. They were used in 1984 against a Spanish fishing boat, and in the process took a leg off one of the crewmen. 

Pete Wilcox told the press he was concerned about what the French press is calling 'the new war in the Pacific' and about 'the very violent talk coming from Paris'.

 Time Out asked Steve Sawyer whether sending another boat down there so soon was not a direct confrontational move. 

'Confrontational move? Hum. Well, confrontational in the sense that we're not going to be cowed by the fact that they blew up the boat and killed one of our people. If we all of a sudden said, "OK, we're not going to do anything," then on some level, whoever gave the order to blow up the boat would have achieved what they set out to do. And we can't let them do that. We can't let them have that satisfaction or that feeling that they can beat us by violence.

 'We've had violence offered before. We've never had anybody get killed or our boat blown up and sunk but we've been rammed and beaten up. 'If you let that deter you then that certainly calls into question the value of non-violent direct action and the value of non-violent protest.'