The Argument for Cheap Energy: Burma

More gold than in the Vaults of London

Ground transportation

We expected lush and were able to find some

Once a verdant forest stood here

Clean and neat

Fire pit in the corner of the plot. Low income housing

Small business owner

To propel a boat: motor, sail, and pole. Whatever works

The climb up the River bank. Sacks of rice half way up

Rickshaw: transportation for people and cargo

Chinese "mule" single cylinder diesel. New cargo box

Longtail go fast river transport

The dust in the air gives Red Sky At Night and Morning

Carrying on head allows for more and heavier burdens.

Family business making clay pots

Mining the River bottom for gravel, off loaded on the heads of women

Children caring for children. Hanging on for dear life

Child daycare for women who work outside of the home

Children just "hanging out" at the temple

Starting from a block of stone

When you buy a Buddha, where does it come from?

OSHA approved work site

Reclining Buddha

Going to the Monastery to become a Novice

Where is your child today? In English of course, the legacy of  the British Empire

Essay and reflections:

Having recently returned from a 3 week tour of Burma (Myanmar) down the Irrawaddy River, where 80% of the 60 million people live on < $1 a day, I can affirm the impact of the harm not having base load electricity generation has upon the daily lives of people.

The obvious impact of no base load electricity generation is cooking, currently the default of biofuels as in charcoal, resulting in deforestation, transforming once timbered regions to savannas. People walk, ride, carry forest derived fuels further and further each year consuming more fossil fuels to retrieve the means to cook a meal.

However odious, literally and figuratively forest derived cooking fuels are, the most dramatic impact of no base load electricity generation is upon communication. It does no good to have a television, radio, computer or cellphone without electricity. There is no way to connect with immediate let alone distant others. There is no way to connect to an outside world other than by walking or using some riding  liquid fossil fuel powered conveyance. Liquid fossil fuels are shipped up River and therefore are limited in amounts and quite costly: $4/liter of diesel.

The people we met and talked to, in the villages along the Irrawaddy River wanted to touch our skin. They had never before seen a white person. When asked about their ages, as they wanted to know how old we were based upon our appearances, they revealed that their 59 years old was very old, roughly in appearance to someone who was 89 years old in our group. We all looked young to them. most of us well over 59. Kathy was described by these women as young, like their 39. I muse to myself that life is hard and takes its toll on the human body early and often.

As Burma is opening to the outside world, almost like their indigenous flowering Morning Gory, there is a need to communicated to learn and understand those around themselves as well as the world in general. Fundamentally, there is no functioning internet as one needs electricity for the internet to be sustained. No internet, no effective communication in this day and age.

Without fossil fuels, especially coal since it is cheap compared to the "renewables" ($4/Kilowatt hour vs $22/ kW hr for renewables), there is no way to produce electricity for any 5 year or 10 year plan of economic and social development. Without liquid fossil fuels there is no way to push or pull the barges that can carry goods up River to the communities along its shores. Shallow water "long tail" boats do much of the hauling and ferrying with diesel outboard engines polluting the people who run the engines and the atmosphere already choking from wood fires, and dust off the deforested induced savannas.

We now hear from the IPCC wise ones that biofuels are not such a good thing:

Addressing corn for ethanol biofuel:

"Its previous assessment on climate change, in 2007, was widely condemned by environmentalists for giving the green light to large-scale biofuel production. The latest report instead puts pressure on world leaders to scrap policies promoting the use of biofuel for transport."

Before long ,so too will others learn that the fossil fuels, especially in comparison to the green renewables, are the wiser choice for the near future.

All we need to do is wait for the message to sink in: there is no such thing as a cheap sustainable green fuel just like there is no such thing as a free lunch.

Nuclear for the future, coal for the present, oil as a reflection of the past.

The Road to Mandalay

The greeting in Burmese is: Min-ga-la-bar. Translated into English: Have you had a meal yet? First things first I guess.

Languishing in a hotel lobby awaiting an international flight home, there is electricity,  I am internet connected for the first time in weeks. Burma, a land of guilted pagodas and 3rd world life. 

You see, for a third world country like Myanmar, Burma really, electricity is a rare commodity. Rangoon apartments cost more for the ground floor as there are no electricity for lifts, elevators. Imagine a six floor walk up in 40 C or 106 F day time temps. 

I seemed to have gotten ahead of myself. In  the middle of the country, the city of Mandalay, on the Irrawaddy River with headwaters in the Himalayan Mountains, our hotel was our boat. Nice accommodations and excellent service. For ten days this boat was our base, our "jumping off point.

The Irrawaddy River is at 

its low point during the dry season. The summer monsoon rains raise the water level another 25 feet from what you see here. Ship beached, tied to shore by lines attached to stakes driven into the River embankment. Our route ashore was a gangplank being assembled here.











On the other hand, as there were no formal docks, we could stop at towns and villages along the way, meet and greet people and see their lives. 

Our guided tour was from one Buddha and Pagoda to another.

Buddha stands, sits, reclines. There are modern and ancient Buddhas. We saw examples of many forms, heights, weights. One Buddha, seated, had 20 centimeter thick worth of gold. As much gold as is in the vaults of London.

The construction of the pagodas are from bricks made from red clay fired by wood from the surrounding forests which are no more.

Gold leaf to be rubbed onto Buddha, pounded into thin thin layers and attached to parchment are then purchased by the faithful and rubbed onto Buddha.
The sounds of pounding are deafening and I am sure these young men are also deaf.











Villages along the Irrawaddy River have five minutes of electricity sometime during the night or day. Solar panel seen atop a bamboo house on stilts with family pig wallowing in the dust below. Mom cooks over an open pit fire in a corner of their plot. The distance is to prevent sparks from burning down their dwelling. The hot dry air has an acrid smell that stings the eyes. Here along the road to Mandalay are close to sixty million people, 80% of whom live on less than a dollar a day, without consistent energy, gather such wood, oxen dung and what biofuel is handy to make a daily meal. 

The Soviets and East Germans with their egalitarian societal influence have long departed after their own financial collapse leaving in their stead, a Communist military elite and now the fourth most corrupt nation in the world behind Somalia, Afghanistan , North Korea. What does Karl Marx's final withering away of the state look like? Come to Burma and see guilted pagodas, picturesque women, hired in gangs at $4 a day to off load 49 kg bags of rice hoisted upon their heads across a 2 x8 gangway from the long tail river boats to make a stack for future carrying up the River embankment and disappearing into the country side on a dust road.

 I guess, during the rainy season, when the Irrawaddy River rises 7 meters, the trek up the embankment is less arduous but more slippery. Don’t get me wrong, there are electric poles and wires with electricity pirating lines going to homes, it’s just that there is no electricity to steal. People await the snapshot of energy from the government or, in the Buddhist tradition, when some rich merchant uses his diesel generator, he shares with the other villagers his liter of power. He gets merits towards Nirvana. The decaying Soviet & East German infrastructure remains, but there is no energy. The ruling elite have contracted with the Chinese to dam the head waters to the Irrawaddy and ship the hydroelectricity to……..China.