An Encounter with a Polar Bearer

No, there’s no spelling mistake in the headline and I’m not going to talk about any chance sighting of the great white beautiful resident of Arctic regions. (Given that chance, however, I would talk about it, too.)

This is a post about a man, his childhood dream, his perseverance to realize it and, finally, his global mission to keep one of the world’s biggest and remotest pieces of wilderness, Antarctica, out of the clutches of the wildest and weirdest of species – homo sapiens.

When Robert Swan was 11 years old, he saw a video about Antarctica. From then on, he knew he had to go see it – no matter what. Around the age of 22, he began raising money for his trip ($5 million to be precise), thinking it would take two, maybe three, months to do so. He was quite confident of his abilities of persuasion. And persuade he did, but it took him a little longer than he had imagined – seven full years. During this time, recalls Swan, he even drove a taxi to support himself and often got laughed at for his crazy ideas. But never once did he let go of his childhood dream.

Swan was in Delhi recently to address a motley audience gathered for a talk organized by 9.9 Media. The rather smallish room was bustling with people who had come to listen to Robert Swan. And the big draw? Not that he’s decorated with an OBE (Order of the British Empire) but the fact that he is the first person in history to walk to both the North and South poles.

As Swan began his story with impeccable humor, masterful narration and exemplary humility, the audience was all ears. There was a sense of adventure and achievement in the air, even though listening to the tale about walking the white wilderness in an air-conditioned hall was no match to actually doing it in extreme subzero temperatures while lugging hundreds of pounds of survival supplies.

It was in 1984 that Swan embarked on his first polar expedition, titled ‘In the Footsteps of Scott’, to the South Pole. (The title is in honor of Robert Falcon Scott (1868-1912), a Royal Navy officer and explorer who led two expeditions to the Antarctic regions.) He and two fellow travelers, Roger Mear and Gareth Wood, completed the first ‘unassisted’ 900-mile walk (without any dogs, radios or other means of communication) to the South Pole on January 11, 1986.

Ever since, not only has Swan undertaken several expeditions to both the poles but also managed to evolve his childhood dream into a noble mission – and, in the process, inspire and motivate business folk, corporations, young people and anyone who would care to save what Swan calls ‘the last remaining piece of wilderness that nobody owns,’ the Antarctica.

He knew he just had to do something about the polar regions when, walking to the North pole, the color of his eyes changed and the skin began to peel off his face – thanks to a hole in the Ozone under which Swan and his team happened to walk for several days. Swan learnt of the reason for his condition when he came back, and decided he must spread awareness about ‘climate change’ (his preferred term to ‘global warming’, which he says tends to confuse people).

Initially, Swan talked to people about the effects of climate change but it did not receive the attention he had expected. “People don’t accept or appreciate negativity easily and are often turned off by alarmist talk,” he says. So he started lecturing on team-building, motivation, success and other positive aspects of his journeys. And the results, too, were positive, as more and more people came forward to help his larger goal of saving Antarctica and attracting investment in clean, green technologies.

Toward the end of his talk, Swan flashes a number before the audience: 2041. Besides being the name of his company and the address of his website (www.2041.com), 2041 is the year when the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty expires. As per this treaty, no mining is allowed on Antarctica. But come this year and things could change.

It is the mission of 2041 and Robert Swan that things change for the better and Antarctica remains what it is – pristine, unexploited, unowned, unfought-over-for by corporate or political squatters-spoilers…

I do hope this mission is achieved much before the deadline and, for once at least, ‘our story’ – as Swan calls the whole enterprise – has a happy never-ending.

Did You Switch Off Your Lights Today?

Ever since the year 1972, the world has been 'marking' June 5 as the World Environment Day (as declared by the United Nations). One wonders why it took such a long time to reach a general consensus on the criticality of global warming and environmental degradation - and get the skeptics to at least acknowledge that global warming exists.

It's been over 30 years since the setting aside of a day for the environment - but it's only very recently, less than five years, that some serious concerted effort is beginning to happen (energy-saving bulbs, for instance). In all those years we missed, it's possible that we already reached a point-of-no-return from where the ill-effects of greenhouse gas emissions WHILE continuing to pursue a globalized growth model espoused by the US of A (imitating might be a better word here than pursuing) cannot be reversed. Still, we must keep trying...

As a consumer in a developing nation, I try to switch off the lights when possible, avoid polythene bags and do other little tricks to reduce my carbon footprint - but listening to politicians or celebs mouthing green promises without any backing of policy decisions makes me go sick in the stomach. To cite an example, it's one thing to ask people to "say no to polythene carrybags" - and quite another for the politicos to resist the lobby (and quite possibly, palm-greasing) of those who stand to gain from making and selling these toxic things. (Regarding the question of rehabilitating those whose livelihoods depend on the polythene business, it must be the government's responsibility - aided by tax money from you and me - to wean them away to some alternative businesses or work.)

Left to their own devices, consumers will not compromise the convenience that a lazy non-green lifestyle entails.

Rain, Rain, Don't Go Away!

Unlike the poem most of us read in the childhood, in which little Johnny asks Rain to go away because he wants to play, I wish that rain would rather stay a bit longer - and splash us all with cool droplets. At least for the parched denizens of Delhi, that would seem to be a pretty desirable thing in the middle of May. Besides, each time it rains, it reminds me of my daughter Saundhi (the name means 'the sweet smell the earth gives off when touched by the first few drops of rain').

But then, it hardly rains in Delhi now. I remember how 10 or 12 years back (another age?), Delhi used to get a decent drenching every monsoon. But for the past few years, the rainy season is just touch-and-go -- it teases more than it eases (the heat). Fortunately, there was some intermittent rain last summer, which made it more bearable than most years.

How I wish for those long spells of rain, when you could enjoy and appreciate the lush green beauty of the city! Just sitting in the balcony and seeing nature's regenerative wet miracle all around you was so refreshing...made even better by an endless supply of pakoras (spicy fried snacks).

Alas...Who stole our rain?

Nano? Na, No!

More than 2 lakh bookings and counting: Tata Motors’ cheapest car, Nano, which will ‘hit’ Indian roads in July, is being awaited alarmingly eagerly by an ever-increasing and impatient breed of wannabe motorists. As an owner and driver of a Santro car, why should I get worked up?

Simply because, my dear fellow-motorist, with more and more cars fighting for scarcer and scarcer road space, I’ll get to wait longer in my car as I drive around the city (Tip for carmakers: instead of offering free fuel or service, give a few kilometers of unclogged road space to each new buyer). And as I wait longer inside the car, I’ll consume more fuel, cooling myself and warming the planet in the bargain.

But then, it’s better to be inside an AC car than venture outside in this heat. The other day I happened to pass by a largish car and got a shock from the heated fumes emanating from its body. No wonder I cursed under my breath and vowed to return to the cool confines of my own fuel-guzzler!

Sitting inside, I peer out at the fellow car-toons trying to honk their cars ahead in a sea of automobiles (looking at their faces, you can tell how desperately they want their honks to yield an extra inch of road space ahead – especially at toll gates and busy intersections). Some of them frown at me for not sharing their honking traits or urgency tactics.

My thoughts invariably turn to the Metro rail network. When fully operational, will it reduce the number of cars on the road at any time? I doubt it. Rather, it might add more commuters in Delhi – with thousands and thousands more flooding the trains from within the city as well as the neighboring regions. What Metro might do is mitigate the impact of more Nanos on the road – even if only to a nano extent!

As I pointed out in an earlier post, I’m eager to either get rid of my car or use it less frequently (that’s why Nano-like developments get me in knots). But in addition to the Metro, Delhiites would also need a better bus and taxi network to fill the gaps not served by train. The government has already made a mess of BRT (bus rapid transport, in which buses ply in demarcated lanes). With Commonwealth Games fast approaching and the election process in the country over, one can only hope that better sense will prevail – both among the government and the car-owning public.