Very soon; in two weeks, it will be Electric Bicycle World Tour first anniversary!
Yes, yes, already one year on the road showing electric bicycles to people, opening their eyes to this amazing environmentally friendly means of transport that can easily become 100% sustainable, if you charge your batteries with a solar panel as EBWT is doing.
But, sadly, during this year that brings me through 12 countries, I did manage to observe the reality as it is. Nobody seriously cares about the environment.
In countries like China, where there are more than 100 million electric bicycles, the reason to ride them is because they are cheap. Fair enough for a developing country.
Then in developed countries, like Japan or Australia, the star of the show is the car, and I observed that cars are an individual means of transport. You can see people going to buy milk to a supermarket that is not farther than 500m from their homes. Or thousands of people every morning going one per car to work.
If you ask people if they will consider commuting by an electric bicycle instead of by car, they start pointing some reasons why not do it. The main ones, are comfort, social status, the weather… nobody thinks about using an environmentally friendly means of transport that will help you to do some exercise while going to work. Nobody. Also, governments and institutions seem not to be really excited about the idea to promote this means of transport. All EBWT efforts to organize activities with them, end up always with a answer like “we don’t think our citizens will be interested”… Do they really know what the society want?
But once people start realizing that with an electric bicycle you do not need a license, or insurance, or pay parking fees; and that if you add a solar panel to your home or office then you can have a 0 travel cost means of transport… then their eyes start getting open… Go to work, to the supermarket, to the doctor, to visit my friends or out for dinner, while doing exercise and for free? Mmm…
EBWT has decided to stay for another month in Sydney working hard to find new sponsors that can sustain the project financially, and also, together with GloWorm electric bicycles shop, awakening Sydney’s interest for this fantastic means of transport.
The worldwide electric two-wheel vehicle market is expected grow at a compound annual rate of 9% through 2016.
Hamamatsu is the bigger city in Shizuoka prefacture, a city famous for it’s music and for being the headquarters of many famous motorbike companies. But besides this passion for motor, it is located in a nature area.
Is a great pleasure to arrive at Hamamatsu by bicycle. A beautiful, but no so well preserved, bicycle lane goes all along the cost through sand beaches, where surfers enjoy ocean’s waves. But is just the only exlusive bicycle lane I found in Japan after riding there for a month. The quietness of its beaches and the big sand dunes, were the perfect habitat for the reproduction of the marine turtles. Unfortunetyly the motor leisure human activities had badly affected their habitat and their reproductive behaivour. Humans have put the turtles in danger, and that’s why a conservation centre was estalished to look for them at the Hamamatsu beach.
Not only the turtles catch Hamamatsu peoples’ attention as an endangered species. The big concentration of people in the most populated areas, has caused situations like the one Hamanako lake is suffering, wherein the number of crabs and fishes has decreased drastically, due to the ecxcessive fishing practices, human leisure activities and the loss of water quality. It’s the same movie that is being played all over the world, a movie that doens’t need to be translated or have subtitles, as we all speak the same language, the one of human action on the planet. The never ending history.
A history like the one that’s being lived in Shibukawa, a little village located in a mountain area, 50 km away from Hamamatsu. Here the flight of young people from the rural regions to the big cities, means the school is on the verge of closing down for next season. With the young people go the stong backs to labour in the fields so their departure also causes lots of fields to be abandoned due to lack of manpower. The displacement of young people to big cities looking for a better paid, more safe, and well socially considered works, is a commoun situation to many countries in the world. But we all know that life in big cities is not always easy, and there’s no opportunities for everybody, and sometimes it’s not as “beautiful” as it appears on the tv, and even the life in the countryside is hard and not easy, it’s necessary for all of us, and it’s important to keep the balance. At Shibukawa you can see how day after day the city is getting closer, fisically or through the construction of big motorways under the promise that they’ll will reactivate the area. But this is not 100% right, and the Sibukawa habitants, they know it. They know that they will end hidden under the big motorway that’s being constructed, a motorway that does not understand about natural spots, neither about pure air or native animal species, and that as motorways move in a straight line, it goes right in front of your house or across the rice plantations.
And in one of the hidden corners offered by Shibukawa valley, is where Masayuki Nishio bought a hundred year old house to refurbish it following the original construction, and create an open-door centre dedicated to the environment. Founder and owner of a company who provides pieces to big motor industries, Masayuki Nishio, has lived all his life thinking what he can do for the others and for the planet, and now thanks to old people village’s help, and also form young ones like Cori, who are returning from the big city, the centre has become a reality.
Here they recycle everything. The bottle tops to one side, the bottles to another one, the cans in one box, and the can rings in a plastic bottle cut in half, everything classified and ready.
The most precious thing that they have in Shibukawa, is their concern for the environment. This is the most important thing, to exercise the mind trying to find solutions or actions, and people’s love for the land and the surrondings, knowing that without it we would not be here. Every little detail is important, and the worry and the actions are a great value for the conservation of the Shibukawa surrondings, and also for any other place in the world. It’s not been more than 50 years that, at least in my country, rubbish disposal has reached the majority of the population and slowly slowly almost everybody has been able to get one, or two, or three…Â No more than 50 years and roads are full, there’s need to build bigger motorways and the emissions levels to the atmosphere caused by the motor vehicles are increasing and badly affects the planet. There are new means of transport that have a less negative impact on our planet; might it not be the right time to start thinking about the next 50, 200, 500 years, and realize that the movie we are leaving it’s just 50 years old and that will never win an Oscar?
The history about villages becoming deserted, of motorways that cross natural spots, of straight lines that allow humans to transit faster, of the society that values economic progress more than environment is a history that seems never ending. But also the little histories, actions or projects, the little details of all those people that do something in favour to the environment, are never ending too.
The solution is not inside one day, nor in just one person’s hands. Each person must add his grain of sand, even if it’s small. We can’t just stop, neither that the steamroller into wich has been converted the consumist and high speeds society, will sooner or later converting the planet in a ending history.
