TIME TRAVELLER 1: LOTS OF BLOSSOM ON THE STREET OF LOTTUM AS COVID-19 SPURNS PLAYING POSSUM

The hopeful future - a peep-hole through the florescence dimension

In my 'business as usual' scenario, at this time of year I'm usually far further south. Usually, I escape from my spartan routine and Berlin's grey monotony. Usually, I slow-train it through Brenner Pass to Italy, to perform, to refresh friendships, and enjoy their earlier spring's heyday. It's truly rejuvenating.

Customarily, all the world's a stage (angels aren't real so this has to be an actor) where one's cup may runneth over

Mates hanging out, following a mindful gap

Peak season

Depending on if it's March, April or May, Italy's soft, warming spring air drifts and succours, heavenly with fragrance and beauty - magnificent earthy magnolia, coronets of ethereal blossom, heady creamy jasmine, or glorious intoxicating wisteria. Public and private gardens; bar, cafe and restaurant trellises; avenues and fields; all abound with colour and fragrance. There, the long, dim, dreary winter of Germany's capital becomes a distant memory.

Forget 2020's dark bleak reality, circa new moon, barely budding...

But usual... is different this year. Despite repeat invitations, I'm definitely not in Italy, and stuck in Berlin I observe that on the heels of a record-breakingly mild, rainy winter, the far north is tentatively enjoying a somewhat untimely blooming of its own. Violets and early blossom vividly illustrate that March is this year's April, and that's not the only show. For just as in the rest of our home planet, the far north's feverish with Covid-19. Suddenly, viral is the new normal.

Looking back - a sidelined view of the same-old, same-old

Our previously open international borders are closing, our countries are going into lockdown, and our air quality's improving with flight routes cancelled, taxis stalled, and commuter traffic diminished by more people working from home. Even if I could've afforded it, no matter how much I'd wanted to, I couldn't have escaped south to Italy now. Let alone to answer another invitation to go really, really far south to Aotearoa New Zealand to pass the inverno in a winter home-stay in semi-rural 'paradise' with my aging Mum.

Nobody gets past here!

(Almost) Nothing (and no-one) to see here

All over our world, everyone's finally finding out what my routine normal - and anyone else with a chronic health condition's routine normal - reality is like. In March 2020, everyday reality = staying the fuck at home. No longer great, escape has gone nanoscopic.

Marie Kondo's got nothing on this version of organisational minimalism. Suddenly, planning escape = a mere excursion out of the house to the supermarket(s), hunting for whatever your staple food, drink and toiletry items are. In Paris these days you need a pass to head outside to do your messages. In peak-virus Wuhan you couldn't even do that - the authorities went shopping for you. If you're lucky enough to have a garden or a balcony, all you can do to escape your own four walls is jog on the spot or stroll back and forth out there. Forget tiny houses, think tiny reality.

You could run a marathon out here if that Dracaena wasn't in the way

For that matter, just think about how lucky enough you may be to have a home right now. No matter how enclosing your walls may feel - at least you've got walls. Not just a flimsy tent on a city embankment, or a waterproof cover to sleep under and a supermarket trolley for your things, or a railway bridge and a blanket and a backpack, or a bit of a dry overhang, or a bombed-out cellar, or an overcrowded refugee camp, or a room shared with 5 other people. Yes, here reading this, safely stuck at home for a (hopefully) relatively short period of time, indeed, you're one of the lucky ones.

Looking the other way? OR Looking at things another way

If you're well-off enough and well enough to risk it and go out grocery shopping, when you reach your local store you may find more minimalism, your dietary choices dramatically reduced by wealthy food-hoarding pros who got there earlier than you. One afternoon last week I visited three different supermarkets before my hunting expedition could be deemed near enough to success. Although one item from my wish-list was still missing - rolled oats - which took yet another pursuit on yet another day to another, larger supermarket, yet further afield, and even then I could still only track down großblatt (large-flake) ones instead of my regular klein. Who knew there were so many ravening porridge fans? Ultimately, after each paltry pantry victory, I carried my measly collection of trophies home and restocked fridge, cupboards and jars.

Ignoring all the coronas I went out to the shops...

...only to find that of some things there was only one variety...

...and this was all the bounty I got

So the triumphal hunting feast shall be cancelled. Not just because nobody can visit me now. For yes, I admit it, after 5-6 years of preparing for proverbial rainy days - nothing to do with spring showers, and everything to do with shopping and getting everything done on less-fatigued, non-pain days - I'm CovidPro level at the mundane rigours of this provisioning business. (Thanks for that, ME/CFS.) Physical distancing/distant socialising and some improvements in health aside, shaking my self-care about in solitude and managing that victory well is more of a long-term modus operandi.

Showing some spine

Even in the face of things these days, I'm glad I live alone, just grateful to receive and scrape by on below-poverty-line welfare. Glad to be child-free, not having to home-school antsy progeny or try to find non-existent, shut-down childcare facilities for them because I still have to work; glad to be absolved of my former precariat worker life with the ever-present existential stressors of having no financial umbrella to cover cancelled gigs; glad I don't have to expend energy consoling a partner or flatmate whose job may be freshly gone when my own compassion cup hath already run dry. 

(OK, so there's still a lack of financial umbrella and state health insurance, and I do confess to commiserating with family and friends, and I'm extremely indebted to the miracle of the internet a.k.a. the lifeline.) 

This week, in more-or-less lockdown I happily eat my lentil burgers alone. Because despite a run on lentils out there (just like those rolled oats), my own jars of lentils here at home, although they'd not runneth over, were hitherto fully stocked.

Dealing with singular demands on a daily basis. Welcome to my world. We're all in it together now.

A proverbial feast...

...not altogether alone

HOWEVER, if intimate groups of (mainly youthful) fuckwits continue congregating (witnessed on my hunting trips); if devil-may-care human sheep keep flocking en masse to the beach (we all saw the pictures on TV and online); and if sneaky friends carry on meeting elbow-to-elbow (instead of exchanging brief elbow-bumps) on park benches, we'd all better get used to this diminished state of affairs in isolation. Not to mention a diminished population absent some of the precious ones we love. 

Either that, or justice shall dictate that all those non-distant socializing moronas will die and the annual Darwin Awards (which, to cite their webpage "salute the improvement of the human genome by honoring those who accidentally remove themselves from it in a spectacular manner!") will be inundated with non-noteworthy nominations. If only there were a just and vengeful God, I'd say a prayer now: Dear God, PLEASE selectively smite these aforementioned fuckwits down now in order that this plague not drag interminably on!

Hanging out with all your friends at the park may lead to you or someone you love being hoisted by your own petard

Meanwhile, as a neighbourhood mind-map expert who walks my commutes most of the time, at least I know which less populated detours to take on my way to the shops, or anywhere, really. Walking alone is 2020's version of minimal travel. For variety, at intervals one gets to simultaneously swerve or spring nimbly aside from one's good fellow humans to stay those two goodly safe metres apart. It's a hip and footwork move a bit like in Zumba, but on the footpath instead of at your shut-down gym. In Berlin reality, walking's actually far more relaxing now that the e-scooter clutter's been removed from the sidewalks, along with their super-speedster illegal footpath riders. Three cheers for the corona virus!  Hip-hip-oh wait...

Looks cheer-full, but this is no time to pull any punches

It is, however, finally time for another admission. With one obvious, poorly-lit, and bleak exception, all of these photographs were shot circa full moon in April 2019. In more or less the same procedure as every year, the blossom - in all it's crowning glory - is in real-time yet several more days and nights away. Last year, Lottumstraße never looked and smelt so good. 

Circa this April's full moon in two weeks from today's new moon, I'm hoping to then wrangle a solo-stroll via it to that aforementioned larger branch of one of my regular organic supermarkets. Though if things with Covid-19 get really serious here due to carelessness, and under a hard curfew we subsequently lose the freedom to einkaufen futher than 300-500 metres from home, I may well be out of luck.

Airborne 

Good to know it'll be still be here in 2021.
I'd like to hope you, all our loved ones, and I will still be here then too.

THE WORLD ENDS AND BEGINS IN BERLIN WITH MUSIC IN COVID-19 SPRING, FRIDAY 13th MARCH, 2020

It's Friday 13th of March.
I'm in bed office before 11pm with a hot water bottle warming cold toes.
A replay of this evening's live-streamed concert by Daniel Kahn is symbolically replaying to my adjacent empty main workroom, near-replicating how it played to a near-empty P.A.N.D.A Theater, just a 10-minute walk away from me a couple of hours before.

Not the moon

Berlin's bars, pubs and clubs were closed today to flatten the curve of the COVID-19 virus.
I'm in bed office to flatten the curve of my own virus.
I'll be winning as soon as my toes warm up.
The city's large theatres and concert houses already announced closure on Tuesday.
Other, smaller venues, including some of my performer friends' show venues have been cancelling shows.
Public transport is scaled back.

But Daniel Kahn is on with some culture, elbows up to him along with Christian Dawid and the Russian theatre for their generosity of spirit.
Instead of cancelling, the show must went on.
It lives on eternally here, and I highly recommend it
https://www.facebook.com/daniel.kahn.9803/videos/10162791289810467/?fref=mentions&__xts__[0]=68.ARDE7oZHeGuZN9aCqfm9azuYLMJWCqMMJYwZCuCfUxO_LhhJec-2D7D8WpOHRNi2-YUHAEVMUEAaqSKXIIsAu6jflUFGH5uBOSc2bg18jND5DZOma5L_elpSqtqMbVFRs1p_B9b_5eAmmp8iE1nkCS_nc4cxrOX64ipnyKFpL1dyco5RqUwQ3Bb46hcPzYc1rQ1oxF_4PK-ccB_HYGvVtCeWYFr3Oi-53lgVQRtu8bKk_cMnDRE2-Ni5xqStUkqgt-pWiW42ryoJWIV-FAMG0MXrGJi_ucrtZ0gWNGfEHZCIqYWBdhiz6u0tdmIhJW3zTAE0YTEOKZ2r4rKe3DAXtnWi89CoOybFRCNAsIyBF5hiFTUQldKIwJaCpkEw83geQRDCMXxyn6_DXPHsdl6a0A_fctzypsOc0OPP4fYBMCPvxpGLnJkD4YOj&__tn__=K-R

Friday the 13th and superstition, be damned.

Outside in the courtyard, the weather is heading back to a bit chillier.
Monday's full moon has lost its fat yin-yang face.
People have recovered from their insomnia.

It is in fact a good day.
Well, night.
A well night.

22 years ago tonight on a full moon I moved to Europe.
After a journey that included two hours of flying into a glorious sunset with the classical music of Russian composers in my in-flight headphones, we landed at a snowy Sheremetyevo and everyone aboard clapped.
I thought they knew something I didn't know.
Just business as usual.

Though it turned out they didn't know about 1998's imminent crash of the rouble.
Having just lived through the crash of South Korea's won, I saw it coming.
It was entirely predictable.
Just like this pandemic virus.

According to all the commentators, the impact of COVID-19 means we're heading for a flat economic curve.
It's looming. 
About time we all got over the myth of endless economic growth.

Thank goodness we've still got culture streaming around our home world this time round the sun.

NOx = NOXIOUS; GENUS CAR = CARCINOGENIC; E-SCOOTERS = ECO?; DE = DEADLY ENVIRONMENT

Nitrogen: it's 78% of our planet's atmosphere and one of the chemical elements crucial for functioning soil and plant life. A derivative group, 'oxides of nitrogen' almost sounds like they could feature on a wine label blurb. Unfortunately, one distillation (well, binary compound to be exact) of nitrogen and oxygen involves not a pleasant loosening of spirits and laughter in good company as complex flavours evolve upon one's tongue, but an atmospheric accumulation poisoning the air that we breathe. Not at all lovable, in the name of some of us humans getting a taste of personal freedom behind a steering wheel, NO₂ comes up pretty short in the communal conviviality stakes.

 

 

LET'S CREATE A BIT OF ATMOS

In case one needs reminding these days, nitrogen dioxide (NO₂₎ is a member of the nitrogen oxides (NO_x) family  – NO, NO₂, the greenhouse gas N₂O, and N₂O₅. It's used to make nitric acid for fertilisers and explosives: once in our atmosphere it leads to acid rain. Along with carbon dioxide (CO
2), its main presence in our daily lives is a result of us burning dense carbon-based fuels – think coal, oil, petrol, diesel, gas, biomass. Perhaps you can't detect any taste of NO₂ in the back of your throat, but if you've got some city vista in line of sight, you might recognise it by its reddish-brown complexion, a layer glowering in the somewhat distant sky. Lamentably, anyone looking over your way will see the same shade glowering back at them from a stratum located somewhere directly above your head. Rain dilutes its concentration, but only temporarily; after a day the toxic haze rating is right back up again. It'd make a violet shrink.

Turning my own face to the sun through the smog, I often recall permaculture giant Bill Mollison commenting about how Europe was one big cloud of pollution, making it a pretty deleterious living place. This is what he was talking about...

You can interact with the 2018 Greenpeace-created world map yourself here  https://energydesk.carto.com/builder/4c2ece4f-3367-4432-a418-8ce61ca01801/embed?state=%7B%22map%22%3A%7B%22ne%22%3A%5B40.54720023441049%2C-23.159179687500004%5D%2C%22sw%22%3A%5B58.008097793068906%2C29.487304687500004%5D%2C%22center%22%3A%5B50.064191736659104%2C3.1640625000000004%5D%2C%22zoom%22%3A5%7D%7D

How do our mere mortal bodies respond to this blanketing embrace? Let’s just say, as these particular nitrogen oxides enter our bloodstream through the lungs, doing irreparable damage to cells and tissues, they're not doing us any favours. Such emissions increase rates of asthma, respiratory illnesses, strokes, and Alzheimers disease, along with impairing our judgement and even making us stupider (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/24/air-pollution-cognitive-improvement-environment?CMP=share_btn_tw).

LEGACY TECHNOLOGY

Deadly effective, about 80 years ago in the days before catalytic converters, exhaust fumes chock-full of carbon monoxide, sulphur dioxide and NO₂ were one of the gaseous mixes the Nazis first used to murder people. That was before they realised that hooking up a tube to the exhaust pipe of a vehicle then firing up its engine to deliver toxic fumes down said tube into an enclosed space in the back wasn’t the most efficient or cost-effective way of killing people. Over 40 years ago when I was about 11 years old, it was exactly that nevertheless reliable method my beloved tennis coach used to expel his life in the hallowed privacy of his own car. Twenty years ago one of my dearest friends also tested its slow but lethal efficacy. Life can be hard: we can't only blame Nazis, cars and car drivers for that. (In fact, the mobile 'gas van' was invented in the Soviet Union by Isay Berg and first used by Soviet secret police.)

Before the finger-pointing continues, however, in the face of these brutal truths, I must at least admit my own environmental liability. I forwent car ownership over 25 years ago and thenceforth largely dedicated my mobility to bicycles, pedestrianism and public transport, particularly trains. Despite that, and putting thirteen long-distance and about two-dozen shorter-haul flights aside, for the past sixteen years my central Berlin Altbau apartment’s heating system has been a serious ingredient in the CO
2-NO₂ cocktail. No, not a car, but another relic from the past...

Introducing one elderly German driver of climate change, der Kachelofen (in green, on the right, a small stack of coal in black, just to its left)

To stay warm each winter, between October and March I burn one tonne of cheap, heavily subsidized lignite coal (60-70% carbon) in my circa 90% energy-efficient 1950s-era Kachelofen (an enclosed, tiled oven) – it costs 50 euros a month. Quoting lignite's Wikipedia page, it's "the coal most harmful to human health". The age of the slow-release Kachelofen heating system prevents switching to compressed wood – my chimney sweep says that burns too hot, and anyway, it's also a polluter. In addition to the usual villains, I’m additionally contributing sulphur and several heavy metals to the city's already shitty air. This unpleasantness probably won’t end till I move out and the place is modernised, which, due to my long precariat membership and fabulously inexpensive lease won't be happening any time soon – for now I can’t afford to live anywhere else. But that’s another story. The bottom line: I knowingly add to my central city neighbourhood’s small particulate count (PM2.5), and to the bane of reddish-brown smog. I do this at a time of year when, with denser, colder air settled in over the heart of town, it's at its most problematic and harmful. As anyone who has cuddled up to the pretty jade-green beast will attest, at my place in winter it's ultra mega cosy. I don't really understand why I can still get away with it: Germany still hasn't banned them. Admittedly maybe I shouldn't be so surprised, what with the country's phalanx of dirty coal-powered plants not scheduled to be phased out until 2038. Climate crisis? Obviously not in Deutschland, in 2018 still with about 40% of its electricity coal-generated, and one of the most significant consumers of dirty fuels globally.


Though generally in my Prenzlauer Berg Kiez, where its notorious breeding masses are stacked into luxurious renovated flats with impersonal radiator heating, making large contributions to national emissions via sprog-production, we're a couple of decades on from the olden days of deathly, stinking coal fogs. Gentrification, city modernization subsidies, and some clean-air legislation have all helped. But let's not get too complacent: at time of writing Germany's facing a dozen or so EU environmental lawsuits and will miss its 2020 emissions targets, transport sector emissions are basically the same as in 1990, and Berlin is one of Europe's worst-polluted capitals.

If you so wish, you can read more about it here, there are some appalling statistics graphically-represented in some excellent graphs http://www.exberliner.com/features/politics/bad-breath-the-problem-with-berliner-luft/

According to my ongoing monitoring of air pollution this past year or so the city's air is consistently shitty, a situation exacerbated by 2018's outrageously long hot summer (largely attributed to climate chaos) - another drought is expected this year. In real terms this means that after walking an hour across town in the lovely sunny weather you'll have a little cough all the next day. So no, all those goodly measures still haven't been enough, largely because... trucks and cars. Going by the luxury vehicle sample on my block, including numerous Audis, BMWs, Land Cruisers and the two 'his and hers' Range Rovers often parked right in front of my building, many of these 'baby-Berg' Kiez breeders have also contributed to global emissions with SUVs.

Imagine this street with playing kids, edible gardens adjacent proper cycle, e-bike and scooter infrastructure, and circa one third of the cars - in the form of an exclusively shared electric fleet. It's easy if you try

On the other side of town, Neukölln's Silbersteinstraße recently laid claim to being the street with the worst measured air quality in Germany. (You can see the traffic jam here https://www.gettyimages.de/detail/video/traffic-queues-at-an-intersection-on-nachrichtenfilmmaterial/1059623046) Maybe lily-livered city authorities will ban older diesel vehicles there, but don't hold your breath waiting. It's the solution you have when you don't have a solution.

February 28, 2018

March 6, 2018

March 28, 2018

April 5, 2018

September 19, 2018

October 31, 2018

November 8, 2018

Jan 2, 2019, the figures in red for Jan1, after the annual war of fireworks event

Welcome, spring. May 10, 2019

Welcome, summer. June 7, 2019 and the first +30° days of the season kick in

Dating back to the days of the industrial revolution, we've known for generations that NO₂ and CO
2 are deadly shite. Indeed, that genie spirit is well escaped out of the bottle: we probably should have gotten rid of cars with dirty fuel-burning internal combustion engines yesterday. Or even better, about a hundred and thirty three and a half years ago yesterday in January 1886, when Karl Friedrich Benz had his patent granted on the first one. Yes, perhaps a terrible thing we can blame the Germans for; a century and a third on, their massive car industry is still going strong. 'Strangely' enough, even though we see PM10 and NO₂ levels are published, the country's government (I say theirs: despite 17 years in Berlin I still don't get to vote) doesn’t publish transparent, meaningful PM2.5 data, so we can't truly know exactly how badly that pernicious shite is pricking at our lungs.

THE POLITICS OF THOSE NOT PARTICULAR TO FUDGE

Instead of government bodies making PM2.5 readings available daily, after a good long look online the only trace of published measurements I found was a single, yearly average figure for each on a list of measuring stations somewhere near your Deutschland neighbourhood, published on the Umweltbundesamt (Ministry of the Environment) website. My upstairs neighbour insisted PM2.5 readings were published, and yes, he's right, they are, but just a single yearly average figure? Let's call that opaque bullshit. Why on earth doesn't the German government publish useful figures so we can see the risk before venturing outdoors?

It's not just the Umweltbundesamt info that's lax. As the earlier-cited Guardian article mentions, German vehicle-manufacturing company Volkswagen deliberately developed software to fuzz emissions tests, meaning their vehicles alone were haemorrhaging nitrogen oxides into the air at levels 40 times the legal limit. At the time of writing, the German government has still done pretty much nothing against this historical jewel of a company. The only case in court was brought by share-holders concerned about the cover-up's impact on their investment. Could the German government be in bed with the car industry? Thousands upon thousands of jobs do make things tricky when voters are intimated. But as you know, I'm free of that relationship.

I was first alerted to Germany's woefully non-transparent emissions-data omission in a casual encounter at a University of the Phoenix feminist economics ritual in late 2017. As a room full of people who'd temporarily liberated themselves from their mobiles retrieved them again (except me, a fixed line-only type), by chance/incidental joke I met a man cunningly waiting till the telephonic tower of technology diminished, leaving just one phone on the chair – his. An expatriate German long ago off-shored to Japan, he works at an environmental monitoring agency there. Disgusted with his native country’s murky stance on PM2.5, it was he who told me the government a.) didn’t really publish the information, and b.) if it was there anywhere, they made it really difficult to find. “Even Turkey publishes PM2.5 data,” he said. (And that country’s pretty much a dictatorship these days, in case you need reminding.) An artist friend later sent me a link to the locations of various city measuring stations: none of them, so far as I could tell, located on any of Berlin's major city-centre arterial roads. People bike, walk on, and live their lives adjacent to these roads. I guess, to the German government, that’s no biggie.

So why is this important? We can see daily PM10 data: in 2018 and 2019, along with NO₂ these were frequently sitting in the high orange or red-lining ‘Dangerous to human health’ levels. But the PM10 measure is more about atmospheric dust, including dust from crushing, grinding (e.g. for the construction industry), and what's stirred up by cars on roads. Small particulates are what PM2.5 is all about, and it's these ones that penetrate the lungs and harm them. Caused by all kinds of combustion, small particulates are created almost exclusively by human actions. In recent times in Beijing, capital of the People’s Republic of China (another country known for its totalitarian tendencies), where air pollution data is/was also not made public, its citizens could at least turn to data on the local USA Embassy’s website when the pea-souper outside their windows in the morning made them question whether to don a protective mask or not, or wonder if it was even safe to exit the house. Of course, Berlin is a lot less polluted than Beijing, but the German government is just as guilty of hazing. From the lack of published information the only thing clear is that they don’t want us to know, even though, at one point in 2018, one media headline quotation screamed “Air pollution is killing Germans every day!” Thank goodness I’m a foreigner.

AN UNHEALTHY AFFAIR WITH AUTOS

So strong is the German car industry, that on February 27th 2018, when the Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig made its ruling on banning diesel engine vehicles, it ruled that in the future, on some stretches of road in Germany, some diesel vehicles might be able to be banned. It's not exactly tough love: Germans have long held nationalistic pride in their cars. "Ein VW!" "Noch ein!" ("A VW!" "Another!") Two enthusiastic car-spotters on lower Prenzlauer Allee, Berlin, aged approximately seven and five.

At the start of October 2018 a Berlin court decided it would ban some diesel vehicles from eleven (Count 'em! It won't take long) high-traffic density streets in the city. Aside from tokenism and the question of how it'll be monitored, it's only going to move the problem somewhere else. A stalemate to add to the city's traffic jams.

A poll run on the day a Berlin judge decided it would more or less still be OK to keep fa(h)rting diesel emissions into the foul-smelling wind, basically, over 43000 people said the car companies should pay for retrofitting diesel vehicles

Back in March 2018, while travelling gloriously traffic-jam free on a CO
2-neutral high-speed ICE train headed southwest, various chapters from Germany's auto-friendly history were visible along our route. Early in the journey we passed through Wolfsburg, home to VW since 1938, formerly catchily known as 'Stadt des KdF-Wagens' (City of the Kraft durch Freude – 'Strength through Joy' – car). The city was purpose built for workers manufacturing cars, part of Adolf Hitler's dream that every German citizen could have an auto. (For this we can blame an Austrian.) WWII hijacked things, and as the factory segued into making military vehicles, the first slaves to cars at Stadt des KDF-Wagens were slave labourers from concentration camps. Of course these days Volkswagen is no longer so notorious for having been founded by the German Labour Front (the Deutsche Arbeitsfront or DAF), the National Socialist's trade union organisation, but instead for faking diesel exhaust emission tests – as per the 'Dieselgate' scandal revealed 2015 in the USA.

Occasionally on that March 2018 trip, those train lines also slunk past tree-shielded Baggerseen (literally, 'digger lakes'), excavated during the same National Socialist era in order to construct the autobahns. On 1 September 1999, my first proper day on German soil, I first wallowed in a spring-fed mud pool, then swam in one of those lakes. It was marvellous, but for VW it'll be far more difficult to wash itself clean. The Germans sure did dig some nice big holes for themselves. Take Matthias Müller, for example, the former CEO of VW, who that very same month said, "I am convinced that diesel is experiencing a renaissance". He was ousted a month later, just one day short of April 2018's 'black' Friday 13th. So it goes.

Didn't actually swim in this one, nor was it on my train route, but 'Autobahnsee Augsburg' truly was excavated during 1936-37 to obtain gravel for motorway construction PHOTO: Mailtosap (Sascha Pöschl) from Wikimedia Commons

 SLOW TO POWER UP

On September 10, 2018, the day a trial – brought to court by investors – began in the higher regional court in Braunschweig against VW to decide if the company should have informed shareholders that they were using extremely dodgy technology to falsify emissions tests, I wandered up Berlin's hectic car-jammed Freidrichstraße and popped into VW's Stadtmitte showcase store. In an attempt at appearing progressive, various mock-ups of purported electric car models of the future were on display. Visible from the footpath, a snazzy red one slowly revolved on a platform to lure you in. Another was without a steering wheel, 'drivers' supposed to be able to control its direction with the wave of a hand. (Ponder what happens if you make an inadvertent gesture, or deliberately give another motorist the middle finger...) A central mini-lounge with a virtual reality set-up had a single person queue. And there were various static displays boasting statistics about electric cars, mainly sourced from a STERN magazine article. Once upon a time, the story went, in the early 20th century (before the oil industry got busy), there were three times more electric vehicles registered than any other kind. It was almost happily ever after.

In September 2018 the only VW electric vehicle in the showroom with a remote chance of appearing on our streets any time soon was scooter prototype, the 'Cityskater'. (The propaganda said 2018, it finally debuted as "production ready" alongside stablemate the 'Streetmate' at the Geneva Motor Show in March 2019, but still had no indicators on actualisation.) I jumped on the prototype to have a go, complete with all my hidden baggage.

TO GO E, OR NOT TO GO E: WHETHER 'TIS NOBLER TO DRINK FROM ANOTHER POISONED CHALICE

All those years ago when I gave up driving it was because 1. cars are space-consuming, evil polluting machines with an insatiable appetite for your money, which in return do nothing except continuously decrease in value from their day of purchase, and 2. driving can be stressful, taking as you do your own life and the lives of others into your hands every time you do it, no matter how tired, ill, stressed, argumentative, head-achey, moody, intoxicated, mobile phone or child-diverted, et cetera, you are. I wasn't surprised to learn that this test-ride electric scooter was little different stress-wise, as I rapidly transformed into an adrenaline-riddled monster. We humans first tried scooters 100 years ago: after 20 years they (not we) were being referred to as a "traffic menace" https://mashable.com/2015/06/15/1916-suffragette-scooter/?europe=true#2Ed3KlHegZqp

It's real: See how much fun I'm having

So yes, as you well see, that's me, heavily biased menace to road traffic in a controlled environment (a.k.a. fixed platform), pressing the accelerator button. As a prototypical 'Cityskater' scooter rider, you were encouraged to go fast and beat previous riders' times. Various obstacles, including moving walls (!?), presented themselves along the way, none of which I hit. Perhaps adrenaline was working for me after all. But what really irked, was that this demo run was not visualised taking place at speed in a wheeled-traffic zone, but on some kind of footpath-like area. Given the vehicle can reach speeds up to 19 km/h, on a footpath, as in the demo, this sounds mega-dodgy. Given the propensity for human stupidity – and remember we're additionally being poisoned by air pollution, making us even dumber – the obvious risk factors rise yet higher.

As a pedestrian, do you actually want this much speedy shit on your footpath alongside the already existing hazards of non-motorized scooters and the really fucking dangerous 'entitled' illegal cyclists who expect you to get out of their way? No, you do not. As a good cyclist who rides legally in the cycle lane, do you want this speedy shit there with you? Depends how good the existing infrastructure is: in Berlin, in places where cycle-dedicated infrastructure does exist, it's still not yet adequate for the ever-growing number of cyclists, so again the answer is "No". And if you are blind, elderly, visually, mentally or mobility impaired, deaf, a young child or an aging dog, do you want to give up your footpath safe zone to these speedy beasts? Nein. As a motorist, do you want this not quite as speedy shit as you on the road, or even give up a car lane to them? Once again, the answer's most probably a big fat negative. E-bikes present similar issues. So where are these small electric vehicles going to ride? There ain't no infrastructure for them, no matter how supposedly effing 'eco' they are.

In another fortuitous past meeting (in 2018 in the diverse society of social media) I was led to inside dirt from someone living in a city in the USA, where fleets of shared lease e-scooters had recently been rolled out. My source said they'd quickly met opposition, and indeed, the first random article I found verified his tale https://la.curbed.com/2018/2/14/17010034/bird-electric-scooters-transit-venice-santa-monica. Number one issue? Safety.

Researching further, I discovered that in places where they'd been launched, including in my country of origin, Aotearoa New Zealand, not only were they cluttering up footpaths around public transit stations (along with the over-supply/scourge of shared lease bikes), but also that accident and emergency departments had reported a massive spike in e-scooter-related accidents. As in, for example, e-scooterists getting hit by cars, pedestrians getting hit by e-scooterists. In Paris there'll be a €135 fine if you're caught riding one on their tiny footpaths, and most fortunately, at the beginning of May, Berlin's Senat voted against German transport minister Andreas Scheuer's misguided vision to allow them onto local footpaths. Given that cyclists riding illegally on footpaths here is already barely policed, it'll be interesting to see whether transgressing e-scooterists will be, especially as meaningful fines could be a great solution to the city's financial woes, and could be used to directly fund improvements to infrastructure. Between 2001-2017, accidents in which Berlin's cyclists injured pedestrians increased seven percent, with cyclists involved in every fifth pedestrian death. And then there's e-scooter 'self-harm': Head trauma injuries to people e-scootering without helmets, or otherwise injured in falls, variously cutting themselves, spraining something, or fracturing or dislocating bones; accidents caused by things such as drunkenness, inexperience, or scooter wheels hitting small obstacles on the ground at speed. Think, 'uneven paving stones'. Think, 'BAM!' (Still don't believe me? Read on... https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2018/09/us-emergency-rooms-say-people-are-getting-really-hurt-on-electric-scooters/?fbclid=IwAR2owa2joH-JGzEdP486210DaiR2-e8Nf8374Y1vnN4IDmPb60WIqxGyvDg) 

This is all even before we get onto the issue of the ecological footprint of the batteries – and that goes for e-cars too. But once again, that's another story. Don't even get me started on the huge and ever-present danger of Smombies.

ALL ABOUT INFRASTRUCTURE 

But wait, back to evil polluting trucks and cars. In 2018 in Berlin, deaths of 11 cyclists and 19 pedestrians occurred due to road accidents – nationwide, cyclist deaths were up 15 percent on 2017, 20 percent of them involving e-bike riders. E-scooters are slated for permission to hit Berlin's roads in 2019's summer: given existing cycle stats and e-scooter experiences elsewhere, alongside the woeful lack of infrastructure it's fairly guaranteed they will be hitting them. In an online DW.com article (dated 02.04.19) Siegfried Brockmann of UDV (Unfallforschung der Versicherer: 'Insurers Accident Research'), said: "You would expect infrastructure would get ahead of the new developments, and not merely follow them, but we are far from that." In recent years several people from my personal circle of friends have come in close contact with cyclist deaths. One rode past a fresh incident near Potsdamer Platz where a woman riding straight ahead had been hit by a right-turning truck. Dead. Another friend, working in a high-rise overlooking a major intersection near Alexander Platz, had a bird's eye view of unsuccessful attempts to save the life of a male cyclist in his late 40s who'd been riding straight ahead when run over by a large transport truck – again, one making a right turn – in mid September 2018. 

A 'white bike' vigil and demonstration put on by the German Cycling Association, at the intersection of Mollstraße and Otto-Braun-Straße to honor the September 2018 victim and to bring attention to safety issues regarding traffic lights, laws and bicycles PHOTO: Samuel Dylan Clayton

In May 2015 an old acquaintance of mine, 'Books in Berlin' owner Dave Solomon, died after being hit by a turning taxi at a big intersection beside Zoologische Garten train station while on his beloved bike. The 'white-bike' memorial to Dave, previously locked to a railing at the accident site, is no longer there. Just like him.

At the very least, in terms of memorials and recorded cause of death, these tragic and avoidable cyclist fatalities are extremely visible.  The air pollution-caused deaths – according to new modelling results released early this year, about 790,000 in Europe in 2015, and an estimated 8.8 million annually worldwide – are far less so. (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/03/190312075933.htm) What is transparently clear from these new figures, is that combustion engine car and truck drivers are fully signed up documented agents of the Grim Reaper. The deadly scythe they bear in their hands is a steering wheel.

We need better infrastructure. Converting existing car lanes into proper, dedicated cycle, e-bike and e-scooter lanes will reduce fatalities. Reducing space in cities for cars will disincentivise private car use. Reducing car numbers will reduce air pollution. Which will also save lives. In the episode of 'Boston Calling' broadcast on the BBC World Service on January 9, 2019, economist Michael Greenstone spoke about a University of Chicago study showing that on average, air pollution takes about two years off individual life expectancy. He says it's "the single greatest risk to human health on earth." You can listen here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06xmy59 (3 minutes audio) His working group is establishing a new metric, the Air Quality Life Index.

IS ALL WE NEED THE AIR THAT WE BREATHE? CHOOSE WISELY

On May 24 2019 I revisited the VW showroom. Now it was all giant video screen propaganda for their some-whenever future ID range, claiming a zero-CO
2 production cycle, and boasting misleading slogans such as "Rein elektrisch!" ('Purely electric!') Imagine yourself gliding along in your very own voice-controlled vehicle upon those all-too-smirched-by-history Autobahns! Forget about the environmental footprint of your dirty e-car battery, and that there's probably not nearly enough grid capacity if everyone plugged in at once to charge, or that Germany's coal-generated power charging them won't be phased out till 2038! Perhaps you can do so by chanting their meaningless but catchy slogan "Now you can!" 

No, I can't. Not only because that car (whether theirs or any other manufacturer's, which I shall continue to forgo in favour of a bike, tram or train) is voice-controlled, and chanting in the third-person may therefore be neither safe, nor digitally secure. But also, I couldn't, because on that very day I'd just come there fresh from one of the Greta Thunberg-inspiried  'Fridays for future' marches; a march held two days before Germany's European Union election day. It was an election which ultimately delivered a huge move away from the denialist, out-of-touch politics of the country's ruling coalition, and a huge shift toward greater Green party representation in the EU parliament. In spite of my Aotearoa New Zealand passport denying me the right to vote here, I could at least add my foot-falls and voice to those of 15,000 other locals calling for government that will create a better, truly cleaner, and more hopeful future. One placard, pertinent in a country where attending school is compulsory/not attending is punishable, read "We're stopping lessons so we can teach you one". My favourite was "Rettet die Wahlen", or, 'Save the elections', a play on the same-sounding German word for whale, Wal.

As human populations continue flocking into cities like Berlin, making them ever larger, noisier and more polluting, it would seem infinitely wise to ban private car ownership and get stuck into supporting mass public transit. In 2019 it's well over time, to prove by example that we Homo sapiens truly are sapient. We have a choice. It's a choice we have even if we don't get to vote. If we make the correct choices, most of us will get to live better-quality lives.

  On Berlin's Friedrichstraße on May 24 2019, the driver of an almost certainly diesel-powered concrete mixer couldn't even wait 5 minutes to give way to all these people calling for a cleaner future

"Wir sind hier, wir sind laut, weil ihr uns die Zukunft klaut!" ('We are here! We are loud! Because you're stealing our future!') As we passed beneath the foot bridge delivering pedestrians up to or down from the big Friedrichstraße S & U-Bahn train station, our common vocal chant resonated loudly. We were choosing to stake a claim on a better future for our living earth: we marchers were calling for life-saving changes such as a stop to coal by 2030, the introduction of a CO
2 tax, the end of dirty-fuel subsidies, and for all energy to come from renewables by 2034. Our extremely acoustically satisfying chanting quenched a deeply spiritual thirst for better quality of life. Not only that, it created a great atmosphere.

'Stop climate catastrophe': YES WE CAN!