WWOOF experience

For those who are wondering, WWOOF stands for “Willing Workers On Organic Farms”. It is a system where travelers work at participating organic farms in exchange for lodging and meals. Every year, thousands of young (and not so young) travelers and farmers benefit from this win-win deal.

My first WWOOF location was at Backwater, a beautiful property at Bermagui, NSW.
Backwater is a beautiful piece of property with splendid views of greens and the Cuttagee Lake. There is about an acre of productive organic kiwi orchard, while most of the rest of the 80 acres are devoted for forest conservation and regeneration.

The house has been well designed and built for comfort. One of the many features is plenty of natural sunlight inside the house. The water front view accompanied by singing birds had made my breakfast enjoyable every day I was there.

Colin and Anne Browne are the good couple in their golden eighties. They are probably two of the nicest people I have ever met, with seemingly all the calmness, contentment and patience that one can find.

Their positive energies propagate through their entire farm especially on the animals. The horses and cows are calm and friendly, even to a complete stranger like me.

Of course, I have to mention the 3 dogs.

Mickey is the most playful and he likes to sleep on my bed.

Fred likes to snuggle and enjoys a belly rub.

Lily, Mickey’s mother, is the quiet one and always waits with hopeful eyes under the dinner table whenever we are eating.

Colin and Anne are true believers of sustainable living with minimum carbon footprint. Solar power, wood fire, rain water, grow their own greens and collect mushrooms from the bush are just some of the good examples of how they practice sustainability in their simple and yet healthy and pleasurable life style.
They are in their golden eighties and still reasonably active. Anne rides horses regularly and plays golf and table tennis weekly. I am sure they would easily outrun anyone their age or even 10 or 15 years younger.
This is probably due to their active lifestyle when they were younger.
They had their own sail boat when they were living in Papua New Guinea and used to make island hopping their regular holiday program.

If there is one thing that I have learned from them, it is sustainable lifestyle is both practical and healthy.

Thank you Colin and Anne.

What Human Life worth

In a report - Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), presented at Framework Convention on Climate Change in Berlin (April 1995), intelligent and smart economists from renowned universities in UK and USA made this remarkable claim:
Value of human lives in developed countries is 15 times higher than undeveloped or developing countries, in terms of US dollar value.

In other words, 15 hardworking but (nevertheless) worthless poor farmers in Kenya are worth 1 good junkie drunk in London.

This report was aimed to provide monetary values to every possible damage due to climate change, an effect of 2 fold Carbon Dioxide (CO2 and other green house gases) in the atmosphere would cause.

The conclusion of this ground breaking, enlightening report was: the total cost of damages (include human lives) would be about 2% of the world GDP (again in USD) by then, which would almost equal to the loss in industrial production if all measures were made to avoid this increase on CO2 in the dang atmosphere.

You are forgiven if you feel lost at this. I don’t expect anyone to understand something as stunning produced by great minds to be understood in seconds.

Anyway, in a nutshell, it means:
· If we don’t do anything to check the CO2 increase, we will lose human lives worth about 2% of world GDP; on the other hand, if we do our best to avoid this, we will lose real value worth about 2% of world GDP.
· One life in civilised and developed countries is worth 15 salvages in uncultured poor countries, in monetary terms.

Get it now?

But think about this:
- Who produces most CO2? Let me give you a hint, in terms of cars per 1000 person, Luxembourg top the list at 647, at 16th place, USA 460; China less than 100 cars per 1000 person. (shame on the chinese)
On energy consumption, measured in kg-of-oil-equivalent (kgoe) per person, Iceland top the list at 12,000, USA at about 8,000 (not bad, Yanks), China at 1300 kgoe/person. India? 490 kgoe/person!! (Pathetic isn’t it?)
(Reference: “earthtrends.wri.org”)

- Where is most of the world population? Good, cosy rich countries or stinky, smelly, worthless poor countries? Need another hint?
By 2050, there will be 50% & 20% population in Asia and Africa, respectively. On the other hand, 7% and 4% ARE IN Europe and North America. (reference: http://www.wikipedia.org/)

- Who will suffer most in the event of climate change? Honourable intellectuals in rich temperate countries equipped with reversed cycle AC, or low peasants exposed to the elements in humid, hot poor countries?

The “carbon foot prints” of the highly regarded, civilised countries are much, more bigger than those low lives in 3rd world countries.

Now, do you understand the good reason why the richest countries are dragging their feet to rectify some of the recommendations by real scientists?

They can afford do nothing and retain the 2% GDP while most of the damages will be in poorer countries. Who give a shit about poor harvest in Laos when they can still smoke cigars over brandy under the maple trees?

If the low lives in poorer countries demand equal carbon right and pay per use sort of policies, guess who will have to pay more?
I think this is utterly rubbish and ungrateful. The poor fella has been using all the goodies from developed nations, e.g. IMF supports, world bank, consultation etc. They even generously accept goods from these poor countries for offsetting their debts.

But… but… who put them in debts in the first place? You may want to ask.
That’s a very good question. Hahaha. OK, next question?

Reference
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intergovernmental_Panel_on_Climate_Change
Defending the Value of Life from www.gci.org.uk/vol/vol.html#intro