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It often strikes me–and others–as I report on my travels in this blog series that I love a remarkably privileged live. It also strikes me that the air travel component is something that future generations will not be able to enjoy unless there is an unforeseen breakthrough in carbon-neutral flight. Reading Helen Simpson’s wonderful collection of short stories a few days back, called In-Flight Entertainment, I was reminded of this concern by her story Ahead of the Pack.

In it, a personal carbon emissions consultant says something rather memorable about photograph albums. Given the pace of climate change, he notes, and the first bit of this is something I have often said, the world will be looking around for scapegoats. “Children will be accusing parents, and wise parents will have disappeared all visual evidence of Dad’s gap year in South America and Mum on Ayers Rock and the whole gang over in Florida waiting in line to shake Mickey’s hand.”

Both at SustainAbility and at Volans, we have long offset our carbon emissions, in many cases doubling our offsets and asking clients to do likewise. But, as I argued when we started perhaps 9 or 10 years ago, this really has been a bit like the medieval indulgences that were meant absolve you from your sins. So then the only excuse I’m left with is that the work we do when we get to the other end is God’s work–well, good work at least. But In-Flight Entertainment has picked at an uncomfortable scab.

Tim (seated) and BBC film crew pause as plane flies by

With the build-up to the seventieth anniversary of the Battle Britain, I have been fielding a number of interview requests for my father, Tim. He did a filmed interview this week, to screen in September. Doesn’t much like interviews – says he didn’t do much and can’t remember much – but he did and does, and I think it’s great that there is such interest these days.

What concerns me, though, is that we tend to overlook the at-least-as-heroic efforts of people like the bomb disposal experts, the firemen, the convoy crews, the submariners and – because the bombing of Germany has come to be seen as overkill – the bomber crews. They may not have had such sexy (by the standards of the day) uniforms, but we should remember them, too.

Solar Impulse

25 years ago, Pelican published my book Sun Traps: The Renewable Energy Forecast. At the time, the aerial solar phenomenon was the late Paul MacCready‘s Solar Challenger, which I featured in the book. As we travelled around India, Richard (Northcote) was keeping a close eye on developments with the first through-the-night flight of the Solar Impulse. The pioneers this time being Bertrand Piccard and André Borschberg. Their aim, in a few years, is a round-the-world flight.

Powered only by solar energy, the aircraft was airborne for a total of 26 hours – from 7 am on July 7 until 9 am the following day (Central European Time) – before finally landing, as planned, at Payerne airbase in Switzerland. It is now officially the first manned aircraft capable of flying day and night without fuel, powered entirely by solar energy. Bayer MaterialScience is one of the sponsors, hence Richard’s interest.

The Imperial’s Jaguar – lens misted by humidity Our (Bayer branded) Tata Nano for the day Nano parked on Development Alternatives surface designed to harvest rainwater Later in the day – and I’m taken with the Nano George shows us around the new DA building Glittering cow dung Inside the building’s courtyard – the central rectangle of stone will stream with water Interior (detail) Amy about to interview Ashok

As I emerged from The Imperial this morning, I snapped a picture of the hotel’s old Jaguar – my lens steaming up with humidity. One of the busiest days of the trip, with trips to see Development Alternatives, IDE India, (where we had an excellent lunch), TERI, MART and the European Business and Technology Centre (EBTC), which aims to promote a range of technologies, products and services in India, with a particular focus on climate change and renewable energy.

At Development Alternatives, we were hosted by Ashok Khosla (Chairman), who I have known for what seems like a very long time, and DA’s two Presidents, Arun Kumar and George Varughese. They took us around their new HQ building, still in construction, where you could hear wild peacocks in the nature reserve behind. Wonderful atmosphere to the place – and I particularly liked the glittering spirals set into inverted domes of cow dung. Interesting to hear how DA’s refusal to bribe officials massively extended the time-scale for the development – and led to the loss of at least one government grant, ironically from a European country.

At TERI, we were hosted by Leena Srivastava, Executive Director, who had kindly convened a group of the organisation’s key people – to present work they were doing in areas as various as biotechnology and renewable energy. Afterwards, we headed across to the Ambassador Hotel, one of the Taj chain, to meet Shankar Venkataswaran of SustainAbility in the Yellow Brick Road restaurant – which is where I first met him, years ago, thanks to Kavita Prakash-Mani – and Saroj Kumar Mohanta of MART, founded in 1983 and a leading consultancy on base of the pyramid (BoP) markets.

My eye was caught by the Imperial Airways poster, see below, showing a seaplane and putting me in mind of that wonderful book of a few years back, Corsairville: The Lost Domain of the Flying Boat. What days those were, for those who could afford them.

The Yellow Brick Road (detail)

Then, after a pretty intensive team dinner back at The Imperial, we all headed across to the Radisson hotel, near the airport, for a (very) late night session with Poul Jensen (Director) and Wolf Zech (Head of Business Development) from the EBTC. By the time my head hit the pillow, I was more than ready for sleep. Dreams crowded with solar planes, no doubt inspired by the success of the Solar Impulse.

Early morning prayers – my lens misted by humidity Francis Bacon would loved it here in the fish market In conversations – at the vegetable market Fish market 1 Fish market 2 Fish market 3 Moove over

Fascinating day spent with SEWA, the Self Employed Women’s Association, visiting various of their activities, including their HQ here, their vegetable and fish marketing operations, and their bank. Found the women enormously engaging, with their enthusiasm and energy, but the conditions in which they worked in the markets were horrendous.

At times, the fish market reminded me of something painted by Francis Bacon on a bad day, with carcasses hanging in glassless windows, and the fish in the street coated with flies. But the mood of those we met there was upbeat – and when Amy and Azita appeared in the street, they were surrounded by hordes of admirers, of all ages and sexes, to the point where the traffic ground to a halt.

Then, very late in the day, we flew on to new Delhi, where the plane’s taxiing in to the terminal seemed to take longer than our trip out to the farm yesterday. We arrived at the hotel, The Imperial, in the early hours – with, once again, an early start on the cards. The reptile in me protests, but is overriden.