Energy

Flag, anthem, motto - the bare essentials for an independence movement, ay bro. But your own God? This innovation was the implication of a letter in the largest selling Pacific Island newspaper this week.

The ‘No Hela province, no gas’ demand has been gathering momentum among those Southern Highlanders who want to break away from their kinsmen and form a new province encompassing those who identify as Hela people (and who happen to be sitting upon a humungous gas resource).

The writer proclaimed:

We thank our God the Dadagali Wabe for the timing in which the Somare/Temu government has seen the need for a separate province. It is in our Dadagali Wabe’s own wisdom and timing that the announcement has been made and the timing is significant to our God, the Hela people and the country as a whole.

It is well to be careful what you wish for. Said deity may not be the all-seeing, ‘almighty’ god that the writer hankers after. I was only a callow scholar, but years ago I understood that ‘Datagaliwabe is no ordinary deity … His special province is punishing breaches of kinship’ (1).

Breaking with one’s kinsmen could well be the thing to arouse his wrath: cursed be the separatists?

Kapow - oops!

1. R.M. Glasse 1965. ‘The Huli of the Southern Highlands’ in Peter Lawrence and Mervyn J. Meggitt (eds.) Gods, Ghosts, and Men in Melanesia: Some Religions of Australian New Guinea and the New Hebrides. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 37

By now we have used up all the resources on our planet available for this year according to the Global Footprint Network.

The 23 September 2008 is this year’s Earth Overshoot Day 2008 which marks the day when humanity begins living beyond its ecological means, moving into the ecological equivalent of deficit spending, utilizing resources at a rate faster than what the planet can regenerate in a calendar year. Last year this day was the 6 October.

The day is calculated by means of the Ecological Footprint which measures how much land and water area a human population requires to produce the resources it consumes and to absorb its wastes under prevailing technology.

Australia’s Ecological Footprint is 1.8 global hectares per person and year. (A global hectare refers to one hectare of biologically productive space with world-average productivity.) The US is the biggest ecological deficit spender using 5.4 “Earths” to meet its needs.

The ecological footprint should not be confused with the Carbon Footprint. The Carbon Footprint measures the carbon pollution in tonnes of carbon dioxide. Here is Australia is the ’sad’ winner. According to Planet Ark, Australia emits 28.1 tonnes of carbon per person, the highest per capita level in the developed world and five times more per person than China, due to use of coal for electricity.

So, sleep the rest of the year in order not to use any more resources and this might also help to retain newly learned information better such as this one

Following some ideas about how to reduce your footprint: Reducing your carbon footprint; Get energy active; 11Steps by HP; Reduce ecological footprint …

News today that a former Nipa-Kutubu MP is in court for pinching about A$3m of his constituents money, due them from various oil production royalties from the Kutubu and Gobe oil fields in Papua New Guinea.

In case the ARC grant application process is too long-winded and less likely of success, here’s a DIY guide:

1. Prepare a handy list of excuses for later (the most difficult part).
2. Register a landowner association in some plausible name, such as ‘Me and my clansmen association’.
3. Open bank account in same name.
4. Wangle your association onto the royalty distribution list - easiest if you’re a big-wig.
5. A soon as the dosh comes into the account, move it somewhere quick smart.
6. Fob off real claimants - refer handy list of excuses at (1) above.
7. Run like hell - perhaps to America (see below)

Of course, this is all a bit old school. Jimmy Weiner had this sussed in RMAP Working Paper No.17 over a decade ago. Still, just in case anyone thought otherwise, we are led to believe it still works. Roll on the US$10bn gas project.

At an embassy function in 2004: a former Nipa- Kutubu MP; PM Michael Somare; a professor from Columbia; Evan Paki, PNG Ambassador to the US.

Trivia quiz: which ex-governor of a gas-rich province 300km to our north has, according to wags, two wives called Cashlyn and Chequelyn?

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Once upon a time there were economists and, lo!, they pronounced a blessing would come upon the land, and milk and honey would flow, and all men would prosper.

A small boy who overheard looked upon them and said ‘You’re not wearing any clothes!’. And so it was, they weren’t, but all the same the members of the court told the boy he was only small and to go away and have his eyes tested.

Years passed and nothing but pestilence ravaged the land and wicked brothers fought and stole from one another, food was snatched from out of the mouths of babes, and mothers wailed for all the good things they might have had.

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