Chapter 24
Tamanna gazed out this African sixth floor window from the end of a Gaweye Hotel hallway. Searching for something of a High Road down there, somewhere, any semblance of home. The sparse morning Niamey traffic sped along the N6 with its slip roads, almost fitting the picture. The scatter of dry trees inside the roundabout, circular not triangular, brought on minute reminders of the Gunnersbury wood.
The choice remained well taken...she needed believe that. Inspired by Nishat overall, by her strength, Tamanna had listened to Minister Jabbar’s view on the Mali engineers. She felt her angry eyes swell, and let out a shuttering sigh. Keith and Sanoo had been HICCC contractors, fully informed of risk—not her fault. She needed remain detached from political implications beyond her control, as Jake put the matter.
Keeping point of mind on her Sahel circuit second tour helped. Starting with a first drop in on Mauritania’s capital Nouakchott, she arrived in that Atlantic city direct from Heathrow. Then came the heart crushing stop at the Bamako hotel in Mali—she straight-face briefed the fresh engineers—Keith and Sanoo’s replacements. Having met the American and African engineers on first tour, with Nishat’s help, she now saw them as heroes in the greater struggle. She classified their families’ pain as sacrifices for her cousins’ children. She was nearly convinced, yet no question, the stakes of the game were up.
Here in this midcontinent city, she’d settled in for some days in this Gaweye Hotel by the river. With a primary task of finding how close the regional release came to the Niger national target, she needed also further face-to-face personality evaluations Nishat desired. With Mali engineers now deceased, importance had increased on Niger personnel. After Niamey she would continue her city to city leap-frogging across the bottom edge of the Sahara, though never getting as far as the Red Sea.
On this tour, project conversations bounced about in her mind, especially those with the Minister from Bangladesh. Nishat lately decried the wealthy carbon emitting OECD countries with extra focus on the G7. All of these seven nation states could be classified as overdeveloped the Minister said depending who was classifying. Some more than others developed above and beyond what was reasonable or to be blunt, carbon fair. Contrasted directly with the High Impact nations, they showed what a discerning eye would term as significant consumption excess, especially when taking into account the limited resources of a finite planet.
Tami had piped up in one talk. A well defined carbon emissions comparison she’d come upon posted measurement of each country. “All countries combined...humanity as a whole crossed the one planet line long ago...in the 1970s,” she told Nishat. That crossover stuck with her, so intuitively important. That measure according to the Planetary Footprint Network.
Nishat paid careful attention.
The growth fetish Nishat called it. When all citizens owned what they needed, she challenged, why carry on? Yet material goods took on the status of religion as symbols of success carrying magical powers, and bringing to the believer what could only be had in dream. People have their value system, Nishat said, and that system has created our carbon problem. Tami nodded, with ever deepening passion as she listened. She pointed out how rocket science need not be consulted to find that growth might not, could not, continue. No matter which economic model selected, having crossed the one planet line, the safest option was to backpedal. People had to date debt financed all planetary resource for decades into the future. The Planetary Footprint Network emphasized that. The people of the planet had mortgaged their atmosphere as a free carbon dump. All signals pointed to this search for phantom planetary resources as a drive directly off the cliff. And what chance did the life-giving Earth have, Nishat asked, when religious obsession caste the planet as but a wayside sacrifice?
Tamanna tuned in when she heard the religious analogy. Her Bangladeshi cousins might attend mosque, but none owned an automobile to drive off a cliff.
Determination to acquire possessions became an unreasoning fixation, Minister Jabbar said, not only a sign of achievement, but a symbol of life itself. The very essence of vitality. This mindset brought a huge contribution to the climate change crisis. Luxury emissions rolled over beltlines as an obese portion of emissions, but again that depended on who decided what was luxurious. The lifestyle of a well-to-do Bangladeshi shop owner, having acquired a personal automobile to drive on weekends, could be put up against the carbon spewing trappings of an everyday developed country middle class citizen. An honest portrait of global society, Nishat said. Tamanna nodded.
Tamanna walked up on the windowpane until she could feel her own warm breath. The roundabout circle below valiantly struggled to take on triangular shape, filled by lush green growth. She shook her head.
She felt so on the same page as the Minister in so many ways. Yet still, Nishat refused to confide in everything. She was explicit on what Tami could reveal too. Only so much to the engineering teams. They could only know of certain vague references to the Sahara regional option...that was theoretical to them. And they must know nothing...nothing at all about each other. As far as each team knew they were the solitary experimental team.
“Tell me more on these Niamey engineers,” Nishat added. “Take them to me as a vicarious visit to their heart.”
When they discussed decades back COP Copenhagen, they agreed the G8 finally settled on that 2 degree target then. “But how near have we come to that target today?” Nishat asked bluntly. However important a political agreement was, she told Tamanna, the primary concern remained that of achieving that target. In measured terms.
At times Tami felt she knew the Minister as her auntie. Even often. She once shared with Nishat a childhood scientific observation on people, and how they think. Many spoke as if the only viable lifestyle options were binary: the mansion or the cave. She’d asked her laughing mother how many people lived in each cave. How ridiculous this thinking was, yet how common. Paleo-peasants, she later gave a name at least to Europeans. Those with ingrained memories of times lived in the medieval hovel, where folklore and fairy tales imagined life in the kings’ court. A life relieved of poverty inside that distant fairy-dream castle.
Her voice broke when she spoke of a realization. Her personal effort was meaninglessness or of any other individual, come to that. Living by choice in a net nil housing unit, with the latest British legislated feed in tariff applied amounted to nil. Of what consequence was this personal action when others spit out carbon everywhere else about the planet? Offsetting any carbon measure contained by the more responsible. Such a high need existed for global regulation, where global included each and every global citizen. Tamanna spoke of her own philosophical passion: we can have rich lives, not lives of riches. Nishat murmured concurrence. Strong truth was evident of rich countries’ need to live differently, but really, how useless was this to say? They touched on children and maturity. A mature conversation spoke of mortality, and how knowledge of the limits to a human lifespan brought about mature conversation. The older holding more wisdom. Yet climate change would just so take a toll on the longevity of even the richest citizen.
When they spoke of Bangladesh, they truly connected. Their canary-in-common, seeking out a louder voice. Dhaka, the capital at now over 30 million, Nishat said, though no one really knew by how much. A true mega city. The city was nothing like that when Tamanna’s mother left making Tami question the population dynamics. Nishat told her of the drop from seven children per woman down to under three over recent decades. The urban citizen count expanded due to severe weather events, much more so recently, with near a million arriving in Dhaka each year. The city birthrate was replaced by a refugee rate. Half of the people in Bangladeshi cities were now climate refugees, officially recognized as such or not. Cyclone Sidr hit, and then cyclone after cyclone, with millions moving away from flooding, and then many or most staying where they moved. The twin super cyclones of mid-decade had been a miraculous near miss; the first making but partial landfall along the Bay of Be
ngal. Bangladesh had been lucky as the second cyclone raged past, but catastrophic for Manila—the storm struck the Philippines with a fury.
Tami’s tone reminder disturbed her review—her meeting would be in ten minutes.
She mentioned Jevon’s paradox to Nishat. People with more efficient cars tend to drive more...in fact people consume all they have in one way or another. Depends then on what, and how much they have. While global auto traffic dumped tons of carbon, in Dhaka the bicycle rickshaw was the standard transportation method. Nishat often rode rickshaw to get around her city.
“Perhaps, my child, we can present to the Jevon people the rickshaw as the most fuel efficient.” Nishat laughed lightly.
“Yes!” Tami said. “To assist people with their exercises.”
Tamanna confided in Nishat the story of the day her grandmother died and how her family grieved. Conversation turned to the Bangladeshi traditional outlook on family-first values. “If OECD family values could only be expanded...” Nishat said.
“...to include all of humanity, the whole global family.” Tami finished the sentence.
The final two minute tone sounded, and Tamanna backed away from the hallway window. “I have to go.” The sound of her own voice brought her back totally to the present. She pulled her gaze back in, redirecting thoughts to the meeting with this North American project team. Just the engineers would be there this time. She picked up her device case, and walked down the hall to find the lift.