A “Missionary” for Sustainable Energy

“I want my life to make a difference,” says John Bahr, Ph.D. An active man in his early 70s, Bahr has enriched his retirement years by involving himself in environmental issues. Starting out with very little knowledge, he has become a powerful advocate for Wisconsin’s sustainable energy movement. “This work satisfies my desire to do something worthwhile with my life while I have the opportunity,” he says. I spoke with Bahr from his Wisconsin home. I wanted to learn more about the work that he does and how it fulfills him as a retiree.

BPGL: How did you become interested in the environment?

BAHR: I first became interested in environmental issues as a Boy Scout in the 1950s. We had a very active group that did a lot of hiking and camping in parks and forests in different parts of the country. As an adult, I’ve been on many Boundary Waters wilderness canoe trips, and enjoyed mountain backpacking and lots of camping and hiking.

BPGL: Did your work life prepare you for what you’re doing today?

Bahr in the control room of an ethanol plant in St. Joseph, Missouri, of which he is a member.

BAHR: My electrical, mechanical and biomedical engineering degrees helped set the stage for this current involvement. I’ve worked with General Electric, doing system development and product design research, as well as teaching and program development at the Medical College of Wisconsin. I started and managed two national businesses to develop and sell software to long-term care facilities. In addition, I oversee a farm in Kansas. And I have a lot of experience working with community volunteer organizations.

BPGL: What got you interested in doing advocacy and educational work with alternative energy?

BAHR: After retiring, I began to think about what I might do that would use my experience and also have value to the community. One of my friends asked, “Why not wind power?” He pointed out that there was growing concern about finding an alternative to fossil fuels (coal and oil) to avoid environmental pollution [and lessen] our dependence on foreign countries for our energy needs. I knew very little about this technology, so I started to learn by reading and going to conferences. My interest in wind power expanded to include other renewable energy sources, including: solar PV and heating, biofuels, water power, and geothermal.

It became clear that the general population also had limited knowledge of both the need for alternative energy sources as well as how to meet those needs. People sometimes fear that which they don’t understand, particularly in a time of change. Since renewable energy projects require public acceptance, I realized that those of us who understood this technology, or were learning about it, were in a good position to go out into the community to tell others about it. This became a form of missionary work for me.

SHARING THE MESSAGE

BPGL: You call it “missionary work.” To carry the analogy further, who are you “preaching to” about renewable energy?

BAHR: I divide the population into three groups in terms of learning about something new:

1. Those who already understand what is being proposed, and will accept change without further information or encouragement.
2. Those who strongly oppose change and have no interest in learning anything new (my mind is made up, don’t confuse me with the facts). This group can be written off as beyond reach.
3. Those people who have neither strong feelings for or against a new idea and are open to learning more about it. However, they are not motivated enough to seek information on their own. If you go to where they gather for other reasons, they will listen to you and consider what you are saying.

So, our education work is focused on community groups, such as church forums; schools; library forums; business groups such as Rotary, Kiwanis and Lions clubs; environmental groups; government groups; etc. We are able to reach people who are there because they routinely go to those groups. So far this program has been presented to over 80 groups in Southeast Wisconsin. If we come to talk to them, they will listen and, hopefully, learn and begin to make changes. That’s what we do.

BPGL: I understand you are active in a number of environmental groups and efforts. What are they, and what is your role?

A fellow volunteer celebrates the installation of solar panels on Bahr's church. Photo: John Bahr

BAHR: I’m on the Board of RENEW Wisconsin, where I chair the Education Committee. This group presents programs promoting renewable energy sources and sustainable energy practices to groups that request them. We also contact community groups to explain what we do and offer to present a program for one of their meetings. This may be attractive to groups like Rotary and Kiwanis, which need weekly programs for their meetings. It is a positive sign that global warming and renewable energy are increasingly becoming topics of general interest.

I’m also on the Executive Committee of the local Sierra Club, where I chair the Global Warming and Energy Committees. This work is similar to what I do for RENEW. However, the Sierra Club has a large membership with many volunteers and is well known in the community, while RENEW has a number of technical experts in their fields, but a comparatively small general membership. They fit together well.

Because of my growing visibility as an energy educator, I was appointed to the Energy Committee of my local community, Wauwatosa, Wisconsin. Here, I’m helping develop community programs to use energy more efficiently and reduce the total cost of energy to the city. Knowledge and volunteers from my other groups will be helpful with that. Related to this is my work to introduce and promote the Cool Cities program to regional communities, to help structure and promote their own energy savings programs. I hope to use the experience from Wauwatosa as a model for other communities.

TAKING ACTION TO CONSERVE

BPGL: From your perspective, what are the most significant things the average person can do right now to conserve energy?

BAHR: Conserve energy where you live and where you work. We like to say that the least expensive and non-polluting kWh is the one not used. Due to cost considerations, not everyone can put a wind turbine in their back yard or solar panels on their roof. But everybody can save energy. There are many books, publications, and articles containing lists of things everyone can do to save energy. People should get one of these lists and use it. There are trained inspectors, sometimes paid or subsidized by local utilities or state-sponsored energy programs, who will come to your home or business to do an energy survey and offer suggestions of how to reduce your energy consumption. There are very simple things anyone can do, such as convert to compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs). You can also use energy-efficient appliances, carefully manage your thermostat, reduce heat loss through windows, etc. Get — and follow — a guidelines list.

Members of the Renewable Energy Committee standing with hub and blade assembly of a 1.65 mW wind turbine. Photo: John Bahr

BPGL: What about for the longer term?

BAHR: We need to promote the greater development of renewable energy sources. This may require lobbying with your government and utilities. Work with your neighbors to form neighborhood-based, energy-efficiency groups who can inform and encourage each other in energy efficiency progress in each home. When building a new building or remodeling, use energy-efficient designs and materials. Consider geothermal as a heating and cooling technology. Promote mass transit, and manage your personal transportation to reduce energy use. Recruit and support political candidates who promote responsible energy use.

BPGL: There is a lot of good information available to the public now, but also some misinformation. Are you aware of any harmful myths about alternative energy or conserving energy?

BAHR: A primary concern is the attitude that the most important thing is to provide energy in our country at the lowest possible cost, regardless of the effect on our environment. Sadly there is popular support for this position from some people who think only in the short term.

MYTH BUSTING

There is a lot of misinformation, such as the these myths:

MYTH: CFLs pose a great risk to our environment due to their mercury content.

CFL bulbs last 5000 hours compared to 750 hours for a regular light bulb.

FACT: Using a CFL for its rated life will reduce environmental mercury much more, because of lower power plant emissions, than the small amount that can be released if the bulb is broken.

MYTH: The power surge required to turn on a CFL is so large that you must leave the light on for several hours to justify using it.

FACT: When you turn on a CFL, the extra energy to get it going is the amount used in 7 seconds of regular use.

MYTH: Frequent turning on and off will reduce the life of a CFL by as much as 50%. An example of this would be a bathroom or closet light. Thus using a CFL in one of these short cycle locations would reduce its expected life to perhaps 5000 hours, compared to 750 hours for a regular light bulb. Of course, if you consider that CFLs cost $1.00 on sale, and that in 5000 hours they save a huge amount of energy ($50.00 worth at current rates), and that they reduce a large amount of greenhouse gas emission, there isn’t much argument.

THE TRUTH ABOUT WIND TURBINES

There are many wild stories about the danger of wind turbines to those who live nearby. Someone claimed that a woman couldn’t get pregnant if she lived within a mile of a wind turbine (not true). A lawyer appeared at a public hearing to say, “Listening to a wind turbine is like standing next to a runway when a 747 airplane takes off.” When later confronted about the absurdity of his comment, he pointed out that he will say anything his clients will pay him to say. Having stood under a wind turbine running at full power, I can say how quiet they are. It’s like listening to your kitchen refrigerator from the next room. You can hear traffic on an expressway a mile away over the noise of the turbine. Unfortunately, people believe and retell ridiculous things like this.

Myths about windmills abound, but Bahr is working to dispel them. Photo: John Bahr

There is continuing comment about bird kill from wind turbines. At one of our presentations, a person claimed that if you install a wind turbine, “you’ll have flaming birds fall out of the sky.” Information based on many studies indicates the average turbine kills 1.7 birds per year. A study by the highly regarded Sibley Guide estimated that all the wind turbines in the country kill under 100,000 birds per year compared to 500,000,000 killed by cats.

Some things are true but fixable: If the turbine is between the observer and the sun — this will be true for a few houses in morning and evening on a clear day for about 10 minutes a year — shadow flicker can be a problem. If this is objectionable, you can use window blinds or plant a hedge. Most wind farm developers will help with this. In the same category, if the TV signal path from the station antenna to a home goes through wind turbine blades, there can be a problem. Most utilities will work with homeowners to install a different type of home antenna. As you can expect, this is a rare event.

Some people complain about aesthetics. Studies have shown that property values go up faster near a new wind farm than away from it. Many people find them interesting, kind of like living near Mt. Rushmore. If you go by the wind farm at Montford, Wisconsin, in the western part of the state on Highway 18, you see a restaurant that provides parking and an information stand for those who want to stop to see and learn about the turbines (and watch the cows grazing under them). The restaurant staff finds this brings in new business.

These and other sorts of misinformation are the kind of things we address in our educational programs.

AN ENRICHING EXPERIENCE

BPGL: How has your voluntary environmental work benefited you personally?

BAHR: It provides the opportunity to learn and apply new things. It connects me, in a satisfying way, with the community where I live. It brings me together with people who have similar values. And it provides a good model for my children.

Miriam Kashia

Contributing Writers

Blue Planet Green Living (Home Page)

Peace Corps Volunteer Teaches Green Living in Namibia

Seated across from me is a gentle, silver-haired woman. She speaks in soft tones, gesturing slightly from time to time. Her manner is warm and welcoming. You could easily call her mild-mannered. But don’t let her appearance fool you. Miriam Kashia is a force to be reckoned with when there’s a job to be done. And that’s just the spirit with which she tackled her recent Peace Corps assignment in Namibia, home to some of the world’s most impoverished people.

Peace Corps volunteer Miriam Kashia. Photo: Julia Wasson

For full disclosure, Joe and I have been friends with Miriam Kashia for a few years. We had heard something of the difficult decisions she wrestled with while weighing a two-year commitment as a Peace Corps volunteer against a full, active life in our community and a thriving psychotherapy private practice. In November of 2005, she accepted the opportunity to make a difference in the larger world and embarked on a two-year adventure that many people nearly a third her age find arduous and challenging.

Kashia returned to the United States a year ago, in January 2008. She’s had time to reflect on her experience, and to see from a distance the effects of the work she did half a world away. I interviewed her in her Iowa City home. What follows is Part 1 of a two-part interview.

BPGL: Describe your Peace Corps assignment.

KASHIA: I was assigned to Namibia, which is on the west coast of Africa just above the country of South Africa. It’s been a democratic country since 1990, when it gained its independence from South Africa following a 30-year war. As a point of interest, Namibia is the only country in the world that has environmental protection written into its constitution.

My job there was to work in a small community of about 6,000 people, counting the surrounding settlements and farms in the countryside. I was called a health worker, which could look many different ways. For me, it meant I was assigned to an organization called CAFO, the Church Alliance For Orphans, under the Namibian Council of Churches. Because Namibia has an HIV infection rate of 22 percent of the population, there are a lot of orphans and vulnerable children in the country, so that was my primary assignment. It was very challenging, as the Peace Corps almost always is.

BPGL: In what ways did your work relate to the environment?

Serious drought is exacerbating the spread of desertification. Photo: Miriam Kashia

KASHIA: As in most places, there are a lot of environmental issues. In Namibia, the issues mostly tend to have to do with water. I lived on the edge of the Kalahari Desert, in the south of Namibia. They used to have wildlife roaming free there — giraffes, elephants, and lions, etc. They’re long gone, partly because they were hunted, and partly because it’s too dry for them there now. The country’s becoming increasingly drier, and there’s a lot of drought.

The water tables are falling, so even though the water in Namibia is probably just about the best in Africa — it was safe to drink in almost the whole country — it’s becoming more scarce. So, drought is an increasing environmental problem.

Something that contributes to the drought is a process called desertification, which is an expanding problem in Namibia. Desertification is caused sometimes by natural causes, such as less rainfall, and by global warming. It’s being exacerbated by the practice of African people cooking over open fires and cutting all the brush and trees in order to have fuel. Not only does this create a big problem with (mostly) women having to go further and further out into the veldt (savanna or desert) in order to find something to burn for cooking, but it depletes what few plants there are, and it increases the desertification problem. That results in less and less water. It’s a problem that is increasing exponentially as we speak.

BPGL: What other environmental problems did you see?

Litter is a serious environmental problem in Namibia. Photo: Miriam Kashia

KASHIA: Litter is a terrible problem in Namibia, as I believe it is in most African countries.There’s just not much consciousness about that. It’s a visual problem, but it’s also a health problem. Everything gets dumped anywhere. Especially around the towns, there are just thousands and thousands of wrappers, packaging, broken glass, and plastic bags. If a goat eats a plastic bag, it will probably die, because the bag plugs up its digestive system. Since a lot of people’s livelihood depends on raising goats, that’s an economic problem as well. Litter looks dirty and is dirty, so that’s a health problem, which also affects tourism.

BPGL: Do the Namibians not care how it looks? Are they not aware of it?

KASHIA: My own understanding is that the development in African countries, and probably elsewhere in the world, happened very rapidly. They went from no packaging to all this modern packaging in a generation or two. They don’t have the resources for adequate garbage pickup or adequate garbage cans. Nor do they have the mentality that you don’t throw things on the ground. So, one of the projects that I undertook there was a litter cleanup project. But, in truth, it was like removing water from the ocean with a thimble, to try to and make a dent in that.

BPGL: Did you change any minds about litter?

KASHIA: Yes, I did.

The CLEAN Club picked up litter in their community. Photo: Miriam Kashia

And that brings me to another topic, a secondary project, which is optional for Peace Corps volunteers. We’re invited, if we see a need, and it corresponds with something within us — an interest or a passion — to create a project of our own. So I started a club for learners, which is what students are called in Namibia, an environmental club. We called it the CLEAN Club, which is an acronym for Club for Learners on the Environment, AIDS, and Nature. Every fourth week, we focused on HIV/AIDS prevention and education. And the rest of the time, we did environmental projects and environmental education.

BPGL: How many students participated?

KASHIA: It was made up of between 25 and 35 high school kids. They joined because they wanted to be in it, and they attended very regularly, which is pretty much a huge success story. I had very little in the way of support for running this club, because I was doing it on my own. So, I had to be there every week, and I had to do all the preparation. I didn’t have access to email.

There were no environmental resources to speak of in the schools or the library, so I sort of had to work from what I knew in my head. But I think the kids learned quite a bit about environmental issues, such as population, water use, and alternative energy. I also called in local people, such as a science teacher, who talked about the water table and desertification. And I invited a businessman who had a private business setting up windmills and solar energy on some of the larger farms. They came in and talked to the kids.

BPGL: What was the response of the students?

KASHIA: I tried to make it fun, and they were very interested. They’d never been exposed to this information. Keep in mind, Namibia is a country twice the size of California, with a population smaller than Iowa. Population as a problem doesn’t resonate with them. So when I talked about the world being overpopulated and that being a problem — one of the core problems behind environmental degradation — that was news to them.

BPGL: What activities did the CLEAN Club do?

The NaDEET environmental camp. Photo: Miriam Kashia

KASHIA: I took them on two environmental trips, which were funded entirely by my friends and family here in the U.S. That was quite wonderful for the kids. It’s very expensive to travel, and I had to hire a bus to do it. We went to NaDEET, which stands for the Namib Desert Environmental Education Trust. It was started by an American woman about seven or eight years ago for the sole purpose of educating young people in Namibia about the environment and environmental concerns.

NaDEET is an amazing camp. It’s entirely off the grid. The kids learned about preserving water and did all the cooking with solar ovens and stoves. They had a lot of creative projects and interesting forays into the desert, including a night scorpion hunt! The kids loved it and learned a great deal. I also loved it and learned a lot. I wish we had camps like that for kids here. The whole thing was run on a sustainability model, with a focus on learning about Nature so we can protect it.

The other trip I took the kids on was to the Fish River Canyon in southern Namibia. It’s the second-largest canyon in the world after the Grand Canyon. We arranged to stay at a fancy tourist lodge there, which graciously and generously housed and fed 23 kids, myself, and one other adult. They loaned us their tourist guide to take us around. He taught the kids about the canyon, about the environment, and about plants and animals in the vicinity, which was just great. Most of the learners in the CLEAN Club had never been more than a few kilometers away from our small community of Karasburg. So, these trips were an enormous experience for them.

The learners baked bread in solar ovens at NaDEET. Photo: Miriam Kashia

The CLEAN club also did some litter cleanup projects in our community, which I mentioned, so I know their consciousness got raised. And I know they started talking to other people about it. It was gratifying.

BPGL: What role, if any, does the Peace Corps take in protecting the environment of Namibia?

KASHIA: Most of the Peace Corps volunteers in my group of 60 were teachers. they had the option of including environmental and AIDS awareness in their curriculum. The group after mine, who came a year later, in 2006, were all given solar stoves by the Peace Corps to take to their sites all over the country. These were to be used personally, as well as to demonstrate and teach people how to use them. So that’s a very positive effort which can help reduce desertification. They bought the stoves from a company in Namibia that makes them and gave them to the Peace Corps volunteers.

We made a solar oven at NaDEET, when we did small-group projects. We divided into small groups to do projects. We used cardboard boxes, newspaper, a piece of glass, tape, and black paint. We put the boxes one inside the other, with newspaper in between for insulation. We painted it black, then got a piece of glass, like window glass, to put on for a lid. Put some meat and rice in it, put it in the sun for a couple of hours, and you have dinner!

Women carry firewood for cooking over long distances. Photo: Miriam Kashia

The problem with getting people to change their technology in terms of fuel and cooking resources is that it tastes different. They’re used to cooking in one of the classic African, three-legged pots over an open fire. Food tastes different when you cook it in a solar oven. People have to get used to the idea that then they don’t have to spend two or three hours every day going far afield and cutting brush to burn. Maybe when they have a chance to observe it over a period of time, they will get the message.

Part 1: Peace Corps Volunteer Teaches Green Living in Namibia (Top of Page)

Part 2: Seeking Sustainability in a Harsh and Beautiful Land

Julia Wasson

Blue Planet Green Living (Home Page)

Related Posts:

My 5: Miriam Kashia, Peace Corps Volunteer

Children Raising Children: Documenting Africa’s AIDS Crisis