The Reason We Came Here....

I flew to the Arabian peninsula on a gas-guzzling jet plane to study marine and environmental issues in the Gulf. It’s true! For six weeks I drank bottled water, lots of it, and stayed in hotels with big fluffy comforters where it was oftentimes impossible to lower the air-con or even open the windows to breathe in the fresh night air. I ran on treadmills powered by oil and gas after gorging myself on vegetables and fruits and breads bloated with food miles, flown in from Malaysia, China, India, and Belgium. I ate baklava, lots of it, some of it wrapped in Styrofoam and plastic. Based on the contents of my suitcase, I confess that “I took more than photographs and left way more than footprints” as I retreated from the Gulf last Saturday, wavy jet contrails in our wake. I am a hypocrite. But I promise you, dear readers, that I’ve been bicycle bound ever since my arrival home in the Mile High state, but yes, I'm still part of the problem. And with that caveat…

On one of my last bitter-sweet nights in the Gulf, we strolled past the Hard Rock Café Kuwait and down the plagette toward the Scientific Center, which houses an aquarium and an Imax theater and a snack bar and a very large gift shop with big stuffed camels. We needed a restroom, and while passing the obligatory dinosaur replica, I saw them immediately: a sea of 8.5 X 11 pencil and crayon sketches fastened to poster board, and with a decidedly environmental theme. Jackpot! We clapped hands and thanked our puny bladders, for it was their weakness that allowed us to marvel at these snapshots of a hypothetical Arabia from the vantage of youth. The images were as varied as the breakfast buffet at the Doha Sheraton. Some renderings reflected a pristine Kuwait with chirpy birds and verdant date palms, while others revealed toxic sludge, water bottles strewn streamside, and a messy, bleak future peppered with oil fields and contorted fish. Worry. Fear. Promise. Hope. Quadruple jackpot! The youth speak.

You have to understand. A few of us had spent nearly six exhaustive weeks respectfully asking questions about the environment in an attempt to tease out similarities between the USA and the Gulf. Masdar City, the celebrated carbon neutral waste city and headquarters for the Center for International Renewable Energy (CIRA), had been a huge disappointment for me.

Here, we were pummeled with Power Point slides, questions were left unanswered, and I left feeling more impressed by my local farmer’s market in Colorado than the Masdar Concept. Masdar, to be fair, incorporates some great passive building techniques with its skinny streets and traditional cooling techniques, but the general design seemed over-engineered and failed to incorporate grassroots ideas like bio-gas. I was reminded of the book, the Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, and how technology transfer works both ways, just like any relationship.

We also met with several oil executives, some of whom spoke candidly about the “olden days” in the Gulf, before progress ratcheted up the skyscrapers alongside the standard of living in a region once dominated by pearl divers. We welcomed suggestions on what we might do back in our nation to clean up the BP oil gusher, but were met with stony silence or nervous laughter. Or, alternatively, we were given lavish gift bags, with cool oil filled paper- weights! This is how Kiwi must feel on one of her many walks; a human palm reaches out near her right ear, and she gobbles the deliciously salty string cheese instead of beheading the squirrel.

I’ll leave you with some sketches and allow you to interpret some of these visions on your own. Salam Aleikum!