Update

It has been a while since I last wrote.

The first thing I wanted to talk about is the elections. I am not voting, and I am proud of it. One of our "relatives" is running for elections and I do not think that he will bring any good to the country. This election like all the others before it is still based on kinship and tribal ties. And to further complicate the situation, there are not any candidates with a sufficiently liberal and progressive political program. So I am basically boycotting the elections.

In totally unrelated news, I was very happy to learn during my trip to Germany in October that Germany only recently(last 12 months) passed mandatory building codes that require the use of insulating materials, something I talked about in my last blog post.

In further unrelated news, I had the chance to compare Jordanian Medical care with that of Germany, as we went there to do an operation for my mother. It is unfortunate, but private medical care in Jordan is really expensive when you adjust for income levels, things would look even worse if Euro price went down to 1.2 dollars. For certain types of procedures, an operation in Germany might cost a mere 20-40% more than Jordan.

As for the quality of medical care. The main difference that I could find was in the quality of service provided by the nurses, in Germany it was at least four times as good as it was in Jordan. So much so that I almost wanted to sculpt a statue of the nurses at the ICU.
I spoke to the family neurologist regarding this and he told me that private hospitals "claim" that they can not afford to raise the salaries of the nurses. But neither of us believed this and thought that the hospitals were greedy.

One thing that I should mention is the fact that my mother was discharged, without fully paying the medical bills as they were not all ready at the time of her discharge. They will be later on sent by mail. Something that would happen in Jordan in about a 100 years.

One other thing that I noticed during my mother's hospitalization is that fact that doctors in Germany write medical reports in accordance with a WHO standard wherein each diagnosis is assigned a special code and can be easily looked up on the internet. Because the code is the same regardless of language, it would be great if Jordan used the WHO standard as there is no standardization in medical report writing at hospitals. I will probably write a letter to the minister of health to this effect.

Govermnent Is Investigating

Every once in a while, I read the something along the line:

"Government is investigating the use of Nuclear energy"

"Government is studying the feasibility of XYZ"

The main problem with this is that the Government is always investigating this or that, but more often than not, if you fast forward 5years later, you will find out that the investigation leads to no action.

What is even worse is that the government revisits certain issues with a new fully fledged investigation as if no previous investigation(s) took place. I call this reinventing the wheel.

In many instances plugging the new numbers into the old formulas would be sufficient. For example, let us say that wind energy was not a good idea when oil prices were in the teens of dollars, and the payback period was something like 20years. Using the new oil prices in the same old formulas would yield a payback period of say around 7.5 years. Of course, I am oversimplifying here.

But no, we need to waste tax payer's money, so we have to do a completely new study every 5 years.

Ok, I seem to have digressed a bit, so what I want to talk about is the issue of Jordan investigating Nuclear energy. I was very annoyed when I found out that Jordan is serious about this. Yes nuclear energy is nice, is environmentally friendly( if there is no Chernobyl like leakage), and in the long run is cheap to produce. But the question is, is it for Jordan?

Jordan is not the kind of country that can make huge investments in large chunks. For a country of Jordan's financial situation, it makes more sense to make a small investment of say 50-100million every year in renewable energy sources like wind energy.

Three years ago, I had to quote a 1MW wind energy converter. It was for around 380000 Euros. Using the logic from above, the government can choose to buy 1, 2, or even 100 units, in one year, and then maybe zero units in the following year and then maybe 50 in the year following that and so on and so forth.

Due to the relatively small price tag, there is a lot of flexibility in mixing and matching. Add to this the fact that the price of wind energy is going down every year and wind energy converters are becoming more efficient year over year, then you see that you will be getting more bang for your buck as time goes by.

Now with Nuclear energy, it is a one time investment, and no flexibility exists whatsoever. As for getting more bang for your buck over time, this may or may not be true. But in all likelihood the next Nuclear plant for Jordan will be installed 10-20 After the first one.

Two other things come time to mind regarding nuclear energy. It is putting one's single egg in a single basket, which would not come in handy in case Jordan ever needed to go to war. And there is also the fact that Nuclear Energy requires technical knowledge which Jordan currently lacks. I do not know about you, but it has been a while since I heard about a local nuclear scientist. And I do not want my countries' Nuclear plant to be run by some Pakistani nuclear scientist.

Since almost nothing does come out of these government investigations, instead of wasting time and money trying to invest in new energy whether it is wind or nuclear, things can be done in the here and now and with almost no cost to make use of what we currently have; government can change new building codes to require mandatory insulation(that alone saves more than 30% in cooling costs.) The government can issue a ban on incandescent lamps starting 2010. The government can pass a minimum standard for energy efficiency for industrial facilities or office buildings. It can turn itself, or Jordan as a whole green.

Speaking of the latter, two months ago, I read that Dubai was considering going green. So why not us? Why not beat them to the punch? The only thing it takes is legislative effort.
Going green does pay for itself. I can speak about this from first hand experience; my 3 compact florescent lamps and solar water heater already paid for themselves and it does show in my electricity and fuel bills .

World Overpopulation

I was thinking some more about the problem of world overpopulation and it's effects on the environment and that was when it hit me; why not have a Kyoto like agreement with regard to world overpopulation.

There would be a quota for each country specifying the allowed population growth. And in the same way that Kyoto deals with green house gases, countries would be allowed to have more population growth if they are below their quota and would have to pay dearly if they exceed their quota or make it up in the next cycle.

Additionally, industrial countries with low population growth rates would give some sort of incentives to countries that have a high one. This incentive would be an award based on meeting the targets which would be set for every 10yrs and would be reexamined every 5yrs to make sure they make sense.

Yes, industrial counties are to benefit more in the short run. But in the long run every one would win. Third world countries are in a way like smoking addicts, they know they need to stop their population explosion but do not know how.

The industrial countries probably did not care in the past. But with global warming and the earth's eco system going bankrupt, they should.

Of course, unlike Kyoto, this should be binding and be enforced through the UN.

An Inconvenient Truth

Last week, I went to a free screening of "An Inconvenient Truth," here in Amman and it scared the shit out of me (as it was supposed to.)

I have been an environmentally responsible person for the last 12yrs, and I never bought arguments from such books as " The state of fear." regarding Global warming not being a threat. Heck, I can experience global warming first hand;. Summers have become unbearably hot and annual snow has become a thing of the past. Hell, we would be lucky if it snowed once every 3-5 yrs.

I think a lot of people in America will wake up and start doing something about it. But as far as China and the rest of the third world, I still think that they need something to wake them up from their slumber.

In my own view Kyoto was not stringent enough on countries like India and China, who sort of have a cart blanch until around 2015.

Jordan, is not better either. And despite the fact that it is a rather small country with per capita pollution slightly less than the world average, I still think that Jordan should take global warming very seriously and set an example in the region.

To the best of my knowledge there is no fuel economy or car emissions standards. I remember, 11 years ago, when I renewed my car registration in the US, they used to stick a device inside the car's muffler/exhaust to test for emissions. Alas, no such thing happens here. I am even willing to speculate that the people in the ministry of environment never hear of such a thing.

Another thing, many people will watch the movie and maybe not pay attention to the part regarding the world population growth. According to the movie, it took 10000 generations to get the world population from 0(2) to 2 billion, but it will take less than 50 yrs to reach 9 billion.

This is a very scary state of affairs. And in it lies one part of the solution. Personally I think that producing children in an overpopulated world is a crime. I know that in all likelihood that I will commit such a crime either once or twice. I know that it is selfish on my part, but I think I will not be able to help it.

I really think population control is a major key for this; I really think that the industrial world should threaten countries with high population growth rates with sanctions.

When I posted my Jordan overpopulation blog, one of the comments was about Jordan not having an over population problem. Considering what I have seen in the movie and other sources that I have found on the internet. Overpopulation is a big problem, not only for Jordan but for the planet in general.

While experts estimate that the earth can only support around 1.2-4 billion people. My own estimates are around 1-2 billions. At this level all of them would have a very decent living standard and none would have to suffer from poverty. They would have lots of riches to share and they would not need to fight over resources.

If we want a good world for our kids, we can not afford to be nice when the world is less than 50 yrs away from total destruction; it is time to educate the vast majority of our population about pollution control, and population control(contraception, etc.)

I still meet people who say that they ended up producing 9 children because they could not help it or because it was God's will. If it was up to me, these people would be in jail by now.

If you want a to help prevent global warming, have less kids. Also visit any or all of the following website:

http://www.climatecrisis.net/takeaction/

http://www.stopglobalwarming.org/

http://www.algore.com/cards.html

http://www.overpopulation.org/

Some of the energy saving tips will also save you money.

Anti 4 x 4

I stumbled on a UK based anti Urban 4x4 website. It got me thinking, we need to be "anti" urban 4x4 too. Hell, we need to be "anti" any car that has an engine bigger than 2.0 ltrs.

Why? Because these cars are great polluters and guzzle up fuel like there is no tomorrow. They produce twice the emissions of the regular 1.4-2.0 ltr cars and therefore harm the environment twice as much.

So why doesn't the government do something about it? Why does doesn't the government have any fuel consumption, or EU like emissions requirements for new cars? Come to think about why doesn't the government have any regulations of value when it come to cars?

Previously, I talked about the child seat issue. We have no regulations for that. Car safety is not an issue for the government, so we have no regulations to deal with mandatory air bags, promotion of dry air/nitrogen tire filling, or a minimum safety when it comes to car crash tests. I am not sure what the representatives in the lower house are busy with, but I have no doubt in my mind that whatever new law they are working on, it will not add much value to the lives of us "average" citizens.

Where Are the Scooters?

6 months after the government allowed scooters back on the market; I still do not see many around. After almost a 20yrs ban, the government decided to allow them back on the streets, supposedly, to save on fuel consumption. I should not complain and should be very happy about this. Though, I must say that the timing for such a decision is off by at least 10yrs.

Considering the fact that they were banned due to accidents and what not, I hope that the government this time made it mandatory by law that people wear helmets and other protective gear. I also hope that they have a minimum safety standard for the scooters. Also considering how much we care about the environment (actually we do not,) maybe the government should have the scooters comply with certain emissions standards.