Changing Perspectives

From this height, the Eastern Cape province is a frothy milky white plain, it is a convuluted dark ridged surface, hilly green and olive region bounded by the blue of the ocean, which stretches away to vanish into a wall of tall white clouds - clouds which seem to live here above the warmer waters of the tail of the Mozambique current. Although the perspective is unusual, the feeling for this piece of land is the same. I know what beauty lies down there below me. Even from up here it remains, but transformed. Now a golden fiery snake winds its way beneath. It's broad body is incandescent in the rising sun, twisting this way and that between what must be tall mountains, but seem to be bumps. It can only be the mighty Caledon, the other boundary of this region.

Beside the mighty river, hut roofs glint like diamonds. I am transported into a future where the inhabitants of these dwellings grow up knowing that they have a right to know, that they have the means to know and that they can know about all subjects of human knowledge. The economy that powers this knowledge is built to 95% on renewable energy. Photovoltaics have been revolutionised - their efficiency ratio is still not much above 12,5%, but they are manufactured from cheap plastics that are in turn derived from agricultural by-products and seed oils, right here in the Eastern Cape. These cheap cells are everywhere, and the plentiful sun of this area keeps the knowledge turning over. Solid state cells built of myriads of capacitors keep systems running over night, during darkness, etc. Or cheaper hydrogen cells which occasionally need to be watered, like crops. Even the aeroplane I am sitting in is run on a mixture of Hydrogen, Nitrogen and Oxygen all produced through the renewable power.

A future I look forward to and am building towards.



Posted: October 2nd 2008 05:53
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