Radical Avenue

Zimbabweans have no time for Christmas this year. The kids are too busy scrounging for a meal of crickets and beetles. Parents need to find bottled water because all of the wells are contaminated. Conditions deteriorate every day. Surviving the holidays really means something in this part of the world.

Cholera
According to the Red Cross, nearly 1,200 have died from a cholera epidemic sweeping through Zimbabwe. Cholera is easily prevented when people have access to clean drinking water. But even this basic necessity has grown scarce under President Robert Mugabe’s disastrous rule.

The epidemic is expected to worsen during Zimbabwe’s coming rainy season. Despite the humanitarian catastrophe and international scorn, Mugabe remains belligerent.

Starvation
The paranoid Mr. Mugabe banned international charitable organizations from operating in Zimbabwe for three months last summer. He blames all of his countries problems on Britain and the United States. Now more than five million Zimbabweans are facing starvation.

Public institutions like schools and hospitals are all collapsing under Mugabe’s regime. Runaway inflation has made the Zimbabwean currency essentially worthless. Since civil servants get paid in Zimbabwe dollars, their wages have no value. Government offices have closed because no one bothers to show up for work.

Abuse
President Mugabe uses a variety of intimidation tactics to stay in power. His government ordered land seizures put a number of his political opponent’s supporters out of work. His soldiers beat people who show up at rallies for anyone other than him. Mugabe’s political rivals have been imprisoned, tortured and killed.

Recently Mugabe destroyed the homes and businesses of 700,000 Zimbabweans after an election which he lost. Some of these Africans apparently had the audacity to vote for someone else. Life in Zimbabwe may improve next year. It couldn’t get any worse.

Big Oil will have less influence on US energy policy in the coming years. That’s good news for consumers and entrepreneurs.

Weeds
Algae thrives when fed carbon dioxide, a leading contributor to global warming. Harvesting algae for energy therefore reduces our dependence on fossil fuels while eliminating dangerous greenhouse gases.

The US Department of Energy has studied the use of algae as fuel for decades, but their research concentrated on naturally grown organisms. A team of researchers from the University of Virginia believe that supplying algae with extra carbon dioxide and organic waste could boost its oil yield to as much as 40 percent by weight.

Kudzu was introduced to the southern United States in the 1870s. The roots of this invasive plant are rich in the carbohydrates needed for ethanol production. Like switchgrass, no one grows kudzu for food, and neither plant needs to be reseeded every year. That makes these plants superior for ethanol production; especially as existing ethanol plants are converted to use new sources of carbohydrates.

Waste
Thousands of farm animals living together in a confined space produce a lot of raw sewage, which often ends up in open lagoons that contaminate the air and water. Some farm owners are now working with public utilities to install digesters, which convert organic waste into electricity.

Waves
Off the coast of Portugal, a Scottish company has installed electricity generating devices that resemble giant sea serpents. The devices capture the energy from waves that rock individual segments of the mechanical snakes back and forth. On the other side of the pond, a New Jersey company is capturing wave energy from the bobbing of a 90 foot buoy tied to the ocean floor.

The future of energy is all around us.

Apparently the US government’s crackdown on corporate malfeasance in the wake of Enron’s 2001 collapse hasn’t done much to reduce white collar crime. If prizes were handed out for creativity in the art of stealing other people’s money, several worthy candidates would deserve consideration this year.

The Madoff-Ponzi
The Securities and Exchange Commission was once able to protect investors from crooks like Bernard Madoff. Now the toothless SEC is packed with industry cheerleaders. Since the SEC conducts its investigations in private, no one knows if the agency was even aware of Madoff’s illegitimate business practices.

Of course it’s a bit late to investigate Madoff. He has already bilked investors out of $50 billion or so, a number that would make a small time crook like Charles Ponzi blush. Madoff’s downfall has shaken financial institutions that were already staggering from the recent economic downturn.

Pass the Bundle
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac help American homeowners by selling federally insured mortgage loans. But as publicly traded companies, they also need to turn a profit. That means taking chances is part of the game.

Risk management experts at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac warned their bosses about the dangers of investing in sub-prime loans and alternative mortgages. Those warnings were ignored. Instead these quasi-public institutions bundled their bad loans together and sold them as securities to investors. I guess it’s not a Ponzi scheme when the government does it.

Bad Moody Ratings
Independent credit rating agencies like Standard and Poor’s, Moody’s and Fitch Ratings are supposed to warn people about risky investments. Now Congress is investigating why these agencies repeatedly gave credit worthy ratings to companies on the verge of bankruptcy.

Some critters prefer to sleep during the day and hunt under a cloak of darkness. That makes it difficult to get noticed by human conservationists who sleep at night and rise with the sun. These little Aussies have figured out how to turn heads, even in the dead of night.

Be Adorable: Sugar Gliders
Sugar gliders are tiny possums native to the eucalyptus forests of Australia, Tasmania, Indonesia, and Papua-New Guinea. They also star in thousands of photo albums on the internet. Most possums make terrible pets, but sugar gliders are well behaved, friendly and of course, photogenic.

Be Loud: Tasmanian Devils
Many of us first learned about Tasmanian devils through Taz, Bugs Bunny’s ill-tempered nemesis in a series of children’s cartoons. Real Tasmanian devils are known to grunt, growl, scream and lunge at anyone that annoys them, especially during dinner time. And yet we still love them.

Tasmanian devils used to inhabit much of Australia, but lost out in a competition with dingoes for food and living space. Since Tasmanian devils eat pesky rodents and dead animals, Tasmanian farmers appreciate having them around. The Tasmanian devil’s fondness for road kill however, leaves them vulnerable to early morning commuters. Nevertheless their numbers remain strong in Tasmania.

Be Spooky: Ghost Bats
It must be rather disconcerting to suddenly notice a pale rodent with translucent wings swooping down on your campsite in the middle of the night. Ghost bats are mesmerizing, even by flying mammal standards. And yes, they are carnivorous.

Sadly, the ghost bat population has dwindled to around 5,000. Their habitat in northern Australia is shrinking because of mining and tourism, as well as competition for food from other animals.

African conservationists seem to favor exotic, long necked birds with ostentatious plumage. And since the competition over fragile wetlands on the continent is pretty fierce, local flocks need all the help they can get.

Pink Flamingos
About a million flamingos live and breed around the edges of Lake Natron in northern Tanzania. Lake Natron is rich in salt and other minerals which the flamingos need to survive. But the briny water has also attracted industrialists, who want to build a soda ash processing facility on the lake.

Wildlife conservationists have recently managed to delay building plans for the soda ash plant; at least until further environmental impact studies can be performed. This was no small feat since the company drawing up plans to build the plant is partly owned by the Tanzanian government.

A small number of pink flamingos now call an S shaped artificial island near Kimberley, South Africa home. This man made flamingo habitat shows promise, with more and more chicks hatching every year.

Blue Cranes
Blue Cranes live almost exclusively on the plains of South Africa. Their limited range leaves them particularly vulnerable to human encroachment. A certain number of these birds die every year from things like collisions with power lines and poisoning meant for other animals. Still, the population of Blue Cranes remains fairly stable, thanks to environmental activists like the Endangered Wildlife Trust and the Overberg Crane Group.

The Blue Crane’s status as the national bird of South Africa also helps. South Africans can all be proud of their efforts to defend these magnificent animals.

Scientists love a challenge and the need to find viable new sources of energy is a technological doozy.

Powerful Pond Scum
Swimming pool owners can attest to the fact that algae multiplies faster than almost any other organism on the planet. Now entrepreneurs are extracting oil from these rabbits of the plant world and converting it to biofuel, suitable for burning in airplanes and automobiles. Algae also consumes carbon dioxide, a major contributor to global warming.

A California company called Valcent uses a closed, vertical system to grow algae in long rows of moving plastic bags. This exposes the slime to more sunshine, something it can never get enough of. The bottom line is that while crops grown in the dirt look better on the dinner table, they can’t compete with muck when it comes to producing clean energy.

Whispering Winds
Wind turbines have a whole new look this season. The northern New York landscape is now dotted with energy producing structures that resemble giant stacks of Venetian Blinds. Engineers at an organization called ETLLC claim that their machines are quieter, safer and more efficient than propeller style turbines. And since all of the mechanics are at ground level rather than 300 feet, these turbines will also be easier to maintain.

The inner workings of turbines are getting an upgrade as well. Traditional power plant generators are built to operate at a constant speed. But a new model designed by Exro Technologies of Vancouver, British Columbia uses an electronic transmission which can adapt to variable wind speeds, so dealing with gusts and lulls is all in a day’s work.