We Appreciate your Predicament, Mr. Bond

Mud Volcanos in Gobustan, Azerbaijan

Bond villains, war criminals, mud volcanoes and ununderstandable Scottish accents in this weeks Camino a Ítaca. It's the second year in a row that the United Conference Conference Climate Change conference (COP29) has been held in a fossil fuel dependant state and the watered down results are sadly foreseeable. We think we have so much choice, but do we? Click over to read the originally published piece in Spanish in the HOY or read the English translation below. This was also picked up in SUR in English.  (PDF en castellano abajo)

The freshly laid blacktop rolled out from Baku across the dun Gobustan desert like a strip of electrical tape vainly adhering to the surface of a sandbox. Its very newness was a political statement against the antediluvian moonscape, complete with gurgling mud volcanoes, that stretched out from the bus’s tinted windows. It was a Monday morning and the highland Scots oil technicians sitting around me were regaling each other about their weekends in a shared language I could barely understand.

We saw them before they could even be heard. Tremendous dust storms raised up out of the desert as a pair of Apache helicopters buzzed past followed by two bigger transport helicopters. One of which landed in the middle of the highway ahead and disgorged a squad of troops that blocked the road. The American Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, was visiting the gas terminal where we were headed, and it was about to be inaugurated.

We weren’t going to work today. Geopolitics had literally landed in our path out in the wastelands of Azerbaijan.

It’s been 20 years since that pipeline opened the flow of gas from the Caspian to its terminus in Turkey. Then, that highway was the only new road to have been built, let alone repaved, since the USSR had collapsed some 15 years prior. Now, after 20 years of gas revenues, the petrocity on the finger-like peninsula sticking out into the world’s largest inland sea looks like Dubai on the fringes of the Central Asian steppe.

Its oil riches have also served to help establish it as a regional powerhouse. Projecting it onto the international stage by hosting large events like Eurovision, the Azerbaijan Grand Prix and most recently the United Nations Climate Change Conference. The second consecutive year the conference has been held in a fossil fuel dependent state.

Azerbaijan’s autocratic president Ilham Aliyev took over the reigns of the small ex-Soviet nation more than 20 years ago from his father Heydar Aliyev. Himself a former high ranking KGB officer who morphed into a Bond-style Central Asian strongman. The type with shark tanks in their plush offices who enjoy boiling opposition figures and journalists in vats of oil.

His son has tempered down some of those strongman excesses but continues to maintain a tight grip on the country, prompting the OSCE to state that the recent parliamentary elections “did not offer voters genuine political alternatives and took place within a legal framework overly restrictive of fundamental freedoms and the media…”

This week Aliyev told world leaders gathered for COP29 that natural gas was a “gift from God” and that the country shouldn’t be blamed for bringing it to market. He went on to expose hypocritical Western governments who buy his gas and lecture him about torching the planet, “Unfortunately double standards, a habit to lecture other countries and political hypocrisy became kind of modus operandi for some politicians, state-controlled NGOs and fake news media in some Western countries.”

 In a country where elections are controlled and rigged, the average Azeri can’t be blamed for having a climate denier as leader, but for those of us who supposedly have free and fair elections, what’s our excuse?

Talking about the Stones on CKUA

Stories Left in Stone, Trails and Traces in Cáceres, Spain

I was lucky enough to have a nice chat with my old bandmate, drummer Grant Stoval on the Arts and Culture supplement on his Alberta Morning program on CKUA the other day. Have a listen to a walk though my new book Stories Left in Stone, Trails and Traces in Cáceres, Spain published by the University of Alberta Press.

CKUA Radio · Troy Nahumko - on Stories Left in Stone

Debuting in SUR in English

I've been writing for the Spanish newspaper HOY for almost 15 years now, but my pieces have always been in, surprise surprise, Spanish. It took a tragedy in Valencia and a chance look at a tranlated piece by my colleague J.R Alonso de la Torre to put the pieces together. Today, I try out my andaluz accent and publish my first piece for SUR in English, a newspaper that covers Málaga and Andalucia.

I do like to get down to the coast whenever I can. This way, at least my words are getting a bit of sea air. Click over for the first piece.

Lessons to Learn from Tragedy: Valencia

In today's Camino a Ítaca memories of a parachute flapping up and down above the bar as I easily peeled the labels off sodden beer bottles in the Florida damp heat. The end of the world was on its way and it was too late to get out. The Green Parrot seemed as good a place as any to meet the storm surge. Lessons could have and should have been learned and put into place in the recent tragedy in and around Valencia, Spain. Neoliberal climate change deniers in power instead held firm in their suicidal disbelief and hundreds died as a result. Click over to read the terrible tale in Spanish in the HOY or read the English translation below. (PDF en castellano abajo)

I sat waiting for the end of the world on a barstool some 200kms out in the turquoise waters of the Caribbean. There, whirling around on the screen above the bar rode the four horsemen, in hurricane form, barreling down on my little island less than a meter above sea level at the tail end of the Florida Keys. After days of heading elsewhere, the storm had made a capricious, last minute turn and was now coming straight for us. As there was no time to leave, no evacuation order could be given. The only thing left to do was sit and wait.

The thing is, this was Florida and the locals had been down this road many, many times before. Everyone had done what they could do in preparation. The bathtubs were filled with water and they had enough bottled water, canned provisions and batteries for that antique machine called a radio that would last them several days.

Once everything that could be done had been done, that only thing you could do was watch. Some spent the time praying while others, like myself, ran up exorbitant bar tabs thinking they might never have to be paid. It was completely possible that the bar would be found floating somewhere off of Miami in the coming days.

Everyone had been warned and information from every level of the administration had been given. It was now the people’s choice whether to follow it or not. Those who chose not to heed the warnings were prime candidates for the Darwin awards, but that was their choice.

The thing is, they were given that choice.

The current drama taking place in Valencia is catastrophic. Mother Nature has once again made it abundantly clear that she is changing and is not happy about it. Local wisdom that once may have served to keep people safe no longer holds true for a warming sea. Entirely new models need to be imagined and fresh protocols need to be put in place to confront this new reality. Things like the gota fria aren’t those of our grandparents anymore.

The deadly challenge is that there are some who for economic, political and/or religious reasons refuse to accept this new normal. In Valencia, the AEMET had been issuing warnings for days prior, but the regional government chose to ignore them until it was too late. This cost many lives.

This disaster has shown that the right and far right will choose their own interests above those they govern. Not only that, but they will also then blatantly lie and try cover their tracks with fake news, even if there is a written record that it is not true.

This is why knowledge and information has become essential. In the face of so much misinformation, non-partisan efforts need to be made to educate people how to stay safe and survive the aftermath. Just as those do in places like Florida.

As for the hurricane, it once again took a capricious turn and all we were left with was a serious hangover, an outrageous bar tab and knowledge of what to do next time. Because there will be a next time.