http://www.baja.net/forums/blog.php en Wed, 14 May 2008 00:34:39 GMT vBulletin 60 http://www.baja.net/forums/images/misc/rss.jpg http://www.baja.net/forums/blog.php http://www.baja.net/forums/blog.php?b=8 Wed, 09 Jan 2008 18:18:12 GMT My name is Byron Hocker and I am a photographer from Massachusetts. I have wanted to go to the baja 1000 for several years now but with the birth of... My name is Byron Hocker and I am a photographer from Massachusetts. I have wanted to go to the baja 1000 for several years now but with the birth of my daughter am unable to pay all the expences. I am looking to barter with a team going down next year. I would like to take photos of your team in exchange for a ride there and a place to lay my head. I know this is a long shot but you never know. If there is anything that you can do to help out let me know.
Thanks
Byron Hocker ]]> byronhocker http://www.baja.net/forums/blog.php?b=8 http://www.baja.net/forums/blog.php?b=7 Mon, 07 Jan 2008 04:09:18 GMT Image: http://www.rjmsdonationfund.com/images/Robert1.jpg Image: http://www.rjmsdonationfund.com/images/Robert-in-Hospital.jpg *402X Robert JM...

402X Robert JM Smith Donation Fund

We often forget that tragedy may strike at any time as we attempt to cross the finish line. We ignore the possibility that this very well may be our last ride. Unfortunately, sometimes we endure tragedy.

While pre-running for the 40th annual Baja 1000, our team experienced an extremely tragic incident. After dropping Robert off at race mile 1015, we predicted that he would return at approximately 3:00 pm that afternoon. We waited for Robert at Santa Rita, which would have been the point where the next rider would have taken over. After a short while, we figured he was running behind a few minutes, no big deal. After all, Robert had a few years of experience under his belt, having raced the Baja 1000 five times before. After a couple of hours went by we began to worry. As the sun began to set, our worst fears had begun to come true. Although he was carrying a satellite phone, it was pretty much useless, as he was discovered by the Mexican police unconscious underneath the motorcycle for what appeared to be hours. He was discovered three miles from the point where we initially parted ways.

Although the incident was not fatal, he lies in a coma, with severe brain injuries, and a very unclear future. Although his accident was extremely unfortunate, it was a brutal reminder of how dangerous our beloved sport can be. Our team decided it would be best for us to continue on with the race on Robert’s behalf. We believe that this is what he would have wanted.

We are asking for your help in Robert’s time of need. Any donation, no matter how large or small, would greatly be appreciated as the costs of Robert’s medical bills are increasing dramatically every day.

If you are interested in contributing to Robert’s cause, please visit this website: http://www.rjmsdonationfund.com/and simply click on the PayPal Donation button.

Thank you,

Kathleen (Robert's little sister)
Written by
Steve Downey, Team Leader ]]> khankins http://www.baja.net/forums/blog.php?b=7 http://www.baja.net/forums/blog.php?b=6 Fri, 05 Oct 2007 02:50:49 GMT I know its a little late to mention but I was racing on the 3x honda xr650r in the 06' baja 1000 when my motor blew at race mile 405. A score copter landed and said if I wanted a ride he would take me to my chase truck. I landed on the highway when i saw my chase truck.My partners were scared that they were being pulle dover by mexican police in a bell jet ranger. I got out of the copter and told everyone i left the bike on the course. We went to hopefully get the bike the next morning after race traffic went by and the bike was stolen from the side of the course. It had yellow and blavck graphics that said ironclad gloves abd santa monica honda. Black rims and preprinted 3x backgrounds by zlt. Precision concepts stickers on forks and had a scotts stabilizer. If anyone gets offered this bike down in baja let me know. ]]> adamneuwirth http://www.baja.net/forums/blog.php?b=6 http://www.baja.net/forums/blog.php?b=5 Fri, 14 Sep 2007 16:38:18 GMT Inside Bruce Crower’s Six-Stroke Engine (design captures waste heat) Auto Week ^ | 2/23/2006 | Pete Lyons By PETE LYONS Bruce Crower has lived,... Inside Bruce Crower’s Six-Stroke Engine (design captures waste heat)

Auto Week ^ | 2/23/2006 | Pete Lyons

By PETE LYONS

Bruce Crower has lived, breathed and built hot engines his whole life. Now he’s working on a cool one—one that harnesses normally-wasted heat energy by creating steam inside the combustion chamber, and using it to boost the engine’s power output and also to control its temperature.

“I’ve been trying to think how to capture radiator losses for over 30 years,” explains the veteran camshaft grinder and race engine builder. “One morning about 18 months ago I woke up, like from a dream, and I knew immediately that I had the answer.”

Hurrying to his comprehensively-equipped home workshop in the rural hills outside San Diego, he began drawing and machining parts, and installing them in a highly modified, single-cylinder industrial powerplant, a 12-hp diesel he converted to use gasoline. He bolted that to a test frame, poured equal amounts of fuel and water into twin tanks, and pulled the starter-rope.

“My first reaction was, ‘Gulp! It runs!’” the 75-year-old inventor remembers. “And then this ‘snow’ started falling on me. I thought, ‘What hath God wrought…’”

The “snow” was flakes of white paint blasted from the ceiling by the powerful pulses of exhaust gas and steam emitted from the open exhaust stack, which pointed straight up.

Over the following year Crower undertook a methodical development program, in particular trying out numerous variations in camshaft profiles and timing as he narrowed the operating parameters of his patented six-stroke cycle.

Recently he’s been trying variations of the double-lobe exhaust cams to delay and even eliminate the opening of the exhaust valve after the first power stroke, to “recompress” the combustion gasses and thus increase the force of the steam-stroke.

The engine has yet to operate against a load on a dyno, but his testing to date encourages Crower to expect that once he gets hard numbers, the engine will show normal levels of power on substantially less fuel, and without overheating.

“It’ll run for an hour and you can literally put your hand on it. It’s warm, yeah, but it’s not scorching hot. Any conventional engine running without a water jacket or fins, you couldn’t do that.”

Indeed, the test unit has no external cooling system—no water jacket, no water pump, no radiator; nothing. It does retain fins because it came with them, but Crower indicates the engine would be more efficient if he took the trouble to grind them off. He has discarded the original cooling fan.

So far he has used only gasoline, but Bruce believes a diesel-fueled test engine he is now constructing—with a hand-made billet head incorporating the one-third-speed camshaft—will realize the true potential of his concept.

Potential…and Questions Crower invites us to imagine a car or truck (he speaks of a Bonneville streamliner, too) free of a radiator and its associated air ducting, fan, plumbing, coolant weight, etc.

“Especially an 18-wheeler, they’ve got that massive radiator that weighs 800, 1000 pounds. Not necessary,” he asserts. “In those big trucks, they look at payload as their bread and butter. If you get 1000 lb. or more off the truck…”

Offsetting that, of course, would be the need to carry large quantities of water, and water is heavier than gasoline or diesel oil. Preliminary estimates suggest a Crower cycle engine will use roughly as many gallons of water as fuel.

And Crower feels the water should be distilled, to prevent deposits inside the system, so a supply infrastructure will have to be created. (He uses rainwater in his testing.) Keeping the water from freezing will be another challenge.

But the inventor sees overriding benefits. “Can you imagine how much fuel goes into radiator losses every day in America? A good spark-ignition engine is about 24 percent efficient; ie., about 24 cents of your gasoline dollar ends up in power. The rest goes out in heat loss through the exhaust or radiator, and in driving the water pump and the fan and other friction losses.

“A good diesel is about 30 percent efficient, a good turbo diesel about 33 percent. But you still have radiators and heavy components, and fan losses are extremely high on a big diesel truck.”

Bottom-line, Bruce estimates his new operating cycle could improve a typical engine’s fuel consumption by 40 percent. He also anticipates that exhaust emissions may be greatly reduced. It’s all thanks to the steam.

“A lot of people don’t know that water expands 1600 times when it goes from liquid into steam. Sixteen hundred! This is why steam power is so good. But it’s dangerous…”

The danger of a boiler explosion has long been a factor in engineering—and in operating—steam powerplants of all kinds, and Crower is properly wary of the miniature boiler he has conjured up inside his test engine. That’s one reason he chose to use one originally manufactured as a diesel, for its inherent strength, though he installed a carburetor and ignition system so it could burn gasoline at first.

The original diesel fuel injector system now supplies the water spray to generate the steam-stroke.

In addition to producing extra power, the injected water cools the piston and exhaust valve, which suggests to Crower that he could raise the compression ratio. “I’ve done this many times on regular engines: 15-to-1 on gasoline for the first five seconds works pretty good until you get some chamber heat and then suddenly it gets into pinging. But with the chamber being chilled, I bet 12-, 13-to-1 will be no problem on cheap fuel.

“So what we can maybe do is have fuels that aren’t quite as good…It’ll save a nickel a gallon not having to keep three grades going.”

As for his hope of lowering emissions, Bruce speculates the steam might purge “cling-on hydrocarbons” out of the combustion chamber. “This thing may turn out to be so clean that you won’t have to have a catalytic converter.

But he admits that’s unknown, saying “there’s a lot of experimenting still to be done.” Which prospect makes him smile. He thrives on this kind of challenge.

Bruce’s Background “You’ve kinda got to be in the cam business and know the dynamics of engines,” Bruce Crower says about how the idea occurred to him. And he certainly has that background.

He was building and racing hot rods (and hot bikes), manufacturing speed equipment and operating his own speed shop in his home town of Phoenix when he was still a teen.

After moving to San Diego in the 1950s, among other exploits he dropped a Hemi into a Hudson and drove it to a 157-mph speed record at Bonneville.

Inevitably, the inventive and inexhaustible Crower built up a major equipment business in superchargers, intake manifolds, clutches and, especially, camshafts. He’s also credited with first suggesting a rear wing to Don Garlits—in 1963, three years before Jim Hall’s winged Chaparral. Bruce Crower is now in Florida’s Drag Racing Hall of Fame.

Crower actually had introduced a wing two years earlier, during practice on Jim Rathmann's 1961 Indianapolis car—five years before Jim Hall’s winged Chaparral. Bruce had been crewing at the Speedway since 1954 (Jimmy Bryan, second place), and had been part of Rathmann's 1960 victory effort. He was likewise on the winning teams in 1966 (Graham Hill) and 1967 (AJ Foyt). Three decades later, in 1998, Eddie Cheever won with Crower cams.

Bruce even produced his own complete Indy engine, a flat-8 that didn’t quite make the field in 1977 and then was rendered obsolete (due to its width) by the advent of ground-effect tunnels. But the Crower 8 and its automatic clutch did win an SAE award for innovation.

Today, Crower Cams and Equipment Company employs about 160 people in five facilities, and manufactures not only cams but crankshafts and connecting rods—including titanium rods for (unnamed) Formula One customers.

Bruce Crower can’t be called retired now, but he’s happy to let the company he founded “roll along” while he “plays with cars.” That’s how he looks at the intensive R&D work he carries out in the privacy of his 13-acre horse property near the rural community of Jamul.

One of several projects is building up Honda S2000 engines for the Midget raced by his granddaughter, Ashley Swanson. (“I think she’s on par with Danica Patrick,” says the proud grampa.)

But his prime focus is proving his six-stroke engine is as revolutionary as he believes it is. “I’ve been trying to find something wrong with the whole basic idea for almost a year,” he says, “but I think we’re going to have a very marketable item.”

Then he adds philosophically, “If it turns out to be great, fine. If it doesn’t, it’s just another year out of my life that I’ve had a lot of fun doing something.” ]]> PJC http://www.baja.net/forums/blog.php?b=5 http://www.baja.net/forums/blog.php?b=4 Tue, 11 Sep 2007 22:35:52 GMT Why Iraq? I found this on the net by poster by BoBoso . Well said. ---- From the UN perspective: Why Iraq?



I found this on the net by poster by BoBoso . Well said.

----

From the UN perspective:

We had information from the British Intelligence, the Russian Intelligence, and our own intelligence all saying Iraq did have WMDs. Hussein had been ignoring all sanctions imposed on Iraq for a long while and he did have ties to terrorist groups in the past. There was enough justification as Saddam was more resistant -- if the UN had no resolve to enforce it's resolutions, there is no point to the UN then. We found out later that the 3 opponents (France, Russia, and Germany) all had deals in Iraq and they wanted to collect. (i.e. they were doing business with a known mass murderer). The coalition assembled to go into Iraq was larger than the one assembled in 1991.

From the war on terror perspective:

Yes, it was the Saudis that hit us on 9/11. More broadly speaking, it was the Islamofacists that has repeatedly tried to hit us before and on 9/11 and in other countries. There is an absolute hatred of the Jews and the west that has festered for centuries. We used to have the oceans to protect us, but these days it isn't enough (as proven). Yes, we did cause some of this hatred by getting involved in the middle east in the past. No conflict is one-sided.

Here's the bottom line: the terrorists have started a war on our soil and they're working as hard as they can to come again. The hatred that is entrenched and taught to their 3 yr. olds is never going away. The question is: do we fight them in Boston or in Baghdad? Sadly, war is necessary and a sacrifice is needed. In this case, the Iraqi people are the lambs. The terrorists clearly don't care about their welfare (of the Iraqis) and we've picked a fight in their backyard.

I think the thought process was this: 1. We need to fight on their soil and keep our economy going. 2. Saddam is a known mass murderer and nearly everyone wants him out of power. 3. Saddam is already ignoring UN sanctions. 4. Let's fight them in Iraq. If Iraq is freed, they become an ally to the war on terror and we'll have a stronghold in the middle east. If we lose, we will at least have crippled the terrorists for a few years and we can regroup.

Contrary to the media, we're winning. We've managed to cripple the terrorist networks and have got them focused in Baghdad. Yes, we've lost 3000 soldiers, but in terms of the last few wars, this is a bloody nose. The biggest proof of success is that we've not been hit again yet.

We can all agree this is an awful solution as all life is valuable. Nobody reasonable wants war. If 9/11 never happened, we wouldn't be there and Saddam would still be producing mass graves. Sadly, nobody really cares about the everyday people just like us in Iraq. The US was ok with the middle east killing each other so long as it didn't export here. Well, it did and so it goes.

I'm a true conservative and don't necessarily agree with everything President Bush has done. However, I think this was really the only solution that would work in the long term. The terrorists are not going to stop -- the bombing in Spain, the bus in London, the attempt at Heathrow, the latest attempt in JFK. These are the ones we know about.... all it takes is one dirty bomb and someone to commit suicide.

The terrorists have proven their resolve -- do we have the will to break them permanently? I sure hope so, or we're going to see some really tough times here. Realistically, we're going to get hit again as it only takes 1 try out of a million. ]]> PJC http://www.baja.net/forums/blog.php?b=4 http://www.baja.net/forums/blog.php?b=3 Thu, 06 Sep 2007 20:42:10 GMT http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewPolitics.asp?PageBy Kevin Mooney CNSNews.com Staff Writer September 06, 2007 Attachment 2... http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewPolitics.asp?PageBy

Kevin Mooney
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
September 06, 2007



(CNSNews.com) - Free market advocates in search of a champion who will take a firm stand against draconian global warming laws, might have one in former Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.), who announced his run for the presidency Wednesday on NBC's "Tonight Show with Jay Leno."

This vote of confidence comes from a Senate colleague, James Inhofe (R-Okla.), who believes the weight of scientific evidence has shifted decisively against the notion of human-induced global warming in recent years.

Unfortunately, many Republican and Democratic leaders, as well as leading presidential contenders continue to push for legislation that would "shut down America" in the name of "misguided alarmism," Inhofe told Cybercast News Service.

"The Republicans will need a nominee for president who is willing to tell the truth, and so far the one out there with the most courage is Fred Thompson," said Inhofe. "He is aware of all the issues I've raised on global warming, and right now he's the only one I see who is willing to take this on."

Unlike many of his fellow Republicans, Thompson has demonstrated a willingness to confront elite opinion, Inhofe said. While Thompson is sure to antagonize the news media with his stand on global warming, Inhofe thinks he will find a receptive audience among average Americans.

"Far-left environmentalists," "Hollywood elitists," and "the mainstream media" continue to peddle anthropocentric (man-made) global warming theories, but there is no scientific consensus on these matters, said Inhofe.

In fact, a substantial number of scientists who had previously embraced positions supporting a link between human emissions and the current warming cycle, he said, have now reversed their position.

For instance, 60 scientists wrote to the Canadian prime minister last year to express their misgivings. "If, back in the mid-1990s, we knew what we know today about climate," the Kyoto Protocol to combat climate change "would almost certainly not exist, because we would have concluded it was not necessary," the scientists wrote.

Moreover, numerous peer-reviewed studies released in recent months show that natural variability, as opposed to human carbon dioxide (Co2) emissions, are primarily responsible for altering the earth's climate.

Some of Thompson's recent commentaries have picked up on these latest findings and indicate he will not submit to false notions of a "scientific consensus," said Inhofe. Thompson does, however, seem intrigued by new discoveries that suggest there is a strong correlation between solar activity and warming cycles.

Some scientists, such as Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of the St. Petersburg's Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in Russia, have surmised that the current warming cycle on earth also affects neighboring planets, such as Mars.

He points to data gathered in 2005 from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor and Odyssey missions as evidence for this claim. The data make it clear the carbon dioxide "ice caps" near Mars' South Pole have been diminishing for three consecutive summers, according to Abdussamatov.

This view is gaining currency among other climate scientists who now dismiss man-made global warming theories. "Solar activity can explain a large part of 20th -century global warming," Nir Shaviv, an astrophysicist in Israel declared earlier this year.

Meanwhile, Ian Wilson, a former operations astronomer at the Hubble Space Telescope Institute in Baltimore, Md. - in response to some of the new studies - has now concluded that under the Kyoto Protocol, the world economy is being forced to spend "trillions of dollars" that will only result in a negligible environmental impact.

Wilson, in his written correspondence to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said he was particularly impressed by the findings of a new report in the Journal of Geophysical Research that shows that even a substantial increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide would not impact temperatures in a catastrophic manner.

Inhofe, now the ranking minority member of that committee, said the political class continues to press ahead with policy prescriptions modeled after Kyoto despite the evidence that undermines man-made global warming theories.

While the U.S. government has not officially signed on to the Kyoto Protocol, state and local officials have been calling for caps on carbon dioxide emissions. In July, New Jersey became the first state to mandate significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

With the U.S. Supreme Court officially declaring carbon dioxide a pollutant, Inhofe sees more opportunities for mischief among politicians eager to seize control of the private sector. A strong presidential candidate, who is not cowed by adverse press coverage, will be needed to help reverse this trend, and Thompson could do that, said Inhofe.

A Nexis search of news articles that describe Inhofe as being either a "skeptic," "denier," or "contrarian" on the issue of global warming produced 256 results so far for 2007. A similar search under Thompson's name yielded 10 results, with global warming mentioned within a mix of other issues.

Nevertheless, it is evident the Tennessee Republican's broadsides against "elite opinion" are beginning to attract attention. "Thompson seems to have taken particular pleasure in mocking global warming," a July 27 Washington Post story asserted.

Back in March, during a radio broadcast, Thompson took issue with those who claim there is a scientific consensus in favor of human-induced global warming.

"Some people think that our planet is suffering from a fever," he said. "Now scientists are telling us that Mars is experiencing its own planetary warming. It seems scientists have noticed recently that quite a few planets in our solar system seem to be heating up a bit, including Pluto."

Thompson also invoked the name of Galileo, the Italian astronomer who was criticized when he used his telescope in 1610 to argue that the earth and other planets orbit around the sun. His ideas were considered heretical at the time. What passes for conventional wisdom, often collapses in light of new evidence, said Thompson.=/Politics/archive/200709/POL20070906d.html ]]> PJC http://www.baja.net/forums/blog.php?b=3 http://www.baja.net/forums/blog.php?b=2 Thu, 06 Sep 2007 20:30:22 GMT http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/3788/ Is carbon-offsetting just eco-enslavement? In offsetting his flights by sponsoring... http://www.spiked-online.com/index.p.../article/3788/

Is carbon-offsetting just eco-enslavement?
In offsetting his flights by sponsoring ‘eco-friendly’ hard labour in India, David Cameron has exposed the essence of environmentalism.
Brendan O’Neill

If you thought that the era of British bigwigs keeping Indians as personal servants came to an end with the fall of the Raj in 1947, then you must have had a rude awakening last week.

In a feature about carbon offsetting in The Times (London), it was revealed that the leader of the UK Conservative Party, David Cameron, offsets his carbon emissions by effectively keeping brown people in a state of bondage. Whenever he takes a flight to some foreign destination, Cameron donates to a carbon-offsetting company that encourages people in the developing world to ditch modern methods of farming in favour of using their more eco-friendly manpower to plough the land. So Cameron can fly around the world with a guilt-free conscience on the basis that, thousands of miles away, Indian villagers, bent over double, are working by hand rather than using machines that emit carbon.

Welcome to the era of eco-enslavement.

The details of this carbon-offsetting scheme are disturbing. Cameron offsets his flights by donating to Climate Care. The latest wheeze of this carbon-offsetting company is to provide ‘treadle pumps’ to poor rural families in India so that they can get water on to their land without having to use polluting diesel power. Made from bamboo, plastic and steel, the treadle pumps work like ‘step machines in a gym’, according to some reports, where poor family members step on the pedals for hours in order to draw up groundwater which is used to irrigate farmland (1). These pumps were abolished in British prisons a century ago. It seems that what was considered an unacceptable form of punishment for British criminals in the past is looked upon as a positive eco-alternative to machinery for Indian peasants today.

What might once have been referred to as ‘back-breaking labour’ is now spun as ‘human energy’. According to Climate Care, the use of labour-intensive treadle pumps, rather than labour-saving diesel-powered pumps, saves 0.65 tonnes of carbon a year per farming family. And well-off Westerners - including Cameron, and Prince Charles, Land Rover and the Cooperative Bank, who are also clients of Climate Care - can purchase this saved carbon in order to continue living the high life without becoming consumed by eco-guilt. They effectively salve their moral consciences by paying poor people to live the harsh simple life on their behalf.

Climate Care celebrates the fact that it encourages the Indian poor to use their own bodies rather than machines to irrigate the land. Its website declares: ‘Sometimes the best source of renewable energy is the human body itself. With some lateral thinking, and some simple materials, energy solutions can often be found which replace fossil fuels with muscle-power.’ (2) To show that muscle power is preferable to machine power, the Climate Care website features a cartoon illustration of smiling naked villagers pedalling on a treadle pump next to a small house that has an energy-efficient light bulb and a stove made from ‘local materials at minimal cost’. Climate Care points out that even children can use treadle pumps: ‘One person - man, woman or even child - can operate the pump by manipulating his/her body weight on two treadles and by holding a bamboo or wooden frame for support.’ (3)

Feeling guilty about your two-week break in Barbados, when you flew thousands of miles and lived it up with cocktails on sunlit beaches? Well, offset that guilt by sponsoring eco-friendly child labour in the developing world! Let an eight-year-old peasant pedal away your eco-remorse…

Climate Care has other carbon-offsetting schemes. One involves encouraging poor people who live near the Ranthambhore National Park, a tiger reserve in Rajasthan, India, to stop using firewood for their stoves, and instead to collect cowpats and water and put them into something called a ‘biogas digester’, which creates a renewable form of fuel that can be used for cooking and the provision of heat. One of the aims of this scheme is to protect the trees of the national park, as tigers are reliant on the trees. It seems that in the carbon-offsetting world, beast comes before man.

In these various scandalous schemes, we can glimpse the iron fist that lurks within environmentalism’s green velvet glove. ‘Cutting back carbon emissions’ is the goal to which virtually every Western politician, celebrity and youthful activist has committed himself. Yet for the poorest people around the world, ‘reducing carbon output’ means saying no to machinery and instead getting your family to do hard physical labour, or it involves collecting cow dung and burning it in an eco-stove in order to keep yourself warm. It is not only Climate Care that pushes through such patronising initiatives. Other carbon-offsetting companies have encouraged Kenyans to use dung-powered generators and Indians to replace kerosene lamps with solar-powered lamps, while carbon-offsetting tree-planting projects in Guatemala, Ecuador and Uganda have reportedly disrupted local communities’ water supplies, led to the eviction of thousands of villagers from their land, and cheated local people of their promised income for the upkeep of these Western conscience-salving trees (4).

The criticism of these carbon-offsetting schemes has been limited indeed. Since The Times revealed the treadle pump story last week, many have criticised carbon offsetting on the rather blinkered basis that it doesn’t do enough to rein in mankind’s overall emissions of carbon. Some talk about ‘carbon offsetting cowboys’, as if carbon offsetting itself is fine and it’s only those carbon-offsetting companies who go too far in their exploitation of people in the developing world who are a problem. In truth, it is the relationships that are codified by the whole idea of carbon offsetting - whereby the needs and desires of people in the developing world are subordinated to the narcissistic eco-worries of rich Westerners - that are the real, grotesque problem here.

More radical eco-activists argue that carbon offsetting is a distraction from the need for us simply to stop flying and producing and consuming. They claim that carbon-offsetting gives people in Western societies the false impression that it’s okay to emit carbon so long as you pay someone else to clean it up for you. They would rather that we all lived like those treadle-pumping, shit-burning peasants. A group of young deep greens protested at the Oxford offices of Climate Care dressed as red herrings (on the basis that carbon offsetting is a ‘red herring’), arguing that: ‘Climate Care is misleading the public, making them believe that offsetting does some good.’ (5) The protest provided a striking snapshot of the warped, misanthropic priorities of green youthful activism today: instead of criticising Climate Care, and others, for encouraging poor Indians to stop using machinery and to burn cow dung, the protesters slated it for giving a green light to Westerners to continue living comfortable lives.

Carbon offsetting is not some cowboy activity, or an aberration, or a distraction from ‘true environmentalist goals’ - rather it expresses the very essence of environmentalism. In its project of transforming vast swathes of the developing world into guilt-massaging zones for comfortable Westerners, where trees are planted or farmers’ work is made tougher and more time-consuming in order to offset the activities of Americans and Europeans, carbon offsetting perfectly captures both the narcissistic and anti-development underpinnings of the politics of environmentalism. Where traditional imperialism conquered poor nations in order to exploit their labour and resources, today’s global environmentalist consensus is increasingly using the Third World as a place in which to work out the West’s moral hang-ups.

The rise of the carbon-offsetting industry shows that a key driving force behind environmentalism is self-indulgent Western guilt. It is Western consumers’ own discomfort with their sometimes lavish lifestyles - with all those holidays, big homes, fast cars and cheap nutritious foods - that nurtures today’s green outlook, in which consumption has come to be seen as destructive and a new morality of eco-ethics and offsetting (formerly known as penance) has emerged to deal with it (6). It is no accident that the wealthiest people are frequently the most eco-conscious. British environmental campaign groups and publications are peppered with the sons and daughters of the aristocracy, while in America ridiculously super-rich celebrities (Al Gore, Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt) lead the charge for more eco-aware forms of consumption and play. The very nature of carbon offsetting - where the emphasis is on paying money to offset one’s own lifestyle, in much the same way that wealthy people in the Middle Ages would pay for ‘Indulgences’ that forgave them their sins - highlights the individuated and self-regarding streak in the Politics of Being Green.

Carbon-offsetting also shines a light on the dangerously anti-development sentiment in environmentalism. As the British journalist Ross Clark has argued, the success of carbon-offsetting relies on the continuing failure of Third World communities to develop. Clark writes: ‘Carbon-offset schemes…only work if the recipients [in the Third World] continue to live in very basic conditions. Once they aspire to Western, fossil fuel-powered lifestyles, then the scheme is undone.’ Delegates to the G8 meeting in Gleneagles, Scotland in 2005 offset the carbon cost of their flights by donating to a charity that replaced the tin roofs of huts in a shantytown in Cape Town with a more insulating material, thus reducing the level of heat that escapes and protecting the environment. It sounds good, but as Clark points out: ‘The carbon emitted by delegates’ flights will only continue to be offset for as long as the occupants of the huts carry on living in shantytown conditions.’ If they were to improve their lives, and replace their insulated shacks with ‘much more power-hungry bungalows’, then the carbon-offsetting scheme will have failed, says Clark. The shantytown-dwellers will have reneged on their side of the bargain, which is to remain poor and humble so that wealthy Western leaders can fly around the world in peace of mind (7).

Again, this is not ‘cowboyism’ - it is mainstream environmentalism in action. From the increasingly hysterical attacks on China for daring to develop, to the emphasis on ‘fair trade’ and ‘sustainable development’ in the work of the myriad NGOs that are swarming around the Third World, the green message is this: poor people simply cannot have what we in the West have, because if they did the planet would burn. The treadle-pump scandal revealed in The Times only shows in a more direct form the way in which today’s environmentalist agenda forces the poor of the developing world to adapt to poverty, accommodate to hardship, and effectively remain enslaved for the benefit of morally-tortured Westerners.

It is time to end this eco-enslavement, and put forward arguments for progress and equality across the globe. I would never pick up shit and use it to warm my home, or spend hours on a treadmill in order to raise water. Would you? Then why should we expect anyone else to do such things, especially in the name of making some rich snots feel better about themselves?

Brendan O’Neill is editor of spiked. Visit his website here ]]> PJC http://www.baja.net/forums/blog.php?b=2