Bahama Pundit

Renewable Energy & Offshore Finance

by Larry Smith

On a trip to Florida this past weekend, I picked up several magazines. By chance, three featured stories that were relevant to the Bahamas.

Power from the Ocean
The first was an article in The Futurist about a project by Florida Atlantic University - located just down the road from my hotel - on the Gulf Stream's potential to produce electricity.

The university has a $5 million grant to research technology to generate electricity from the Gulf Stream current that flows from the Caribbean to Greenland - between Florida and the Bahamas - at a top speed of about four knots.

Florida's electricity use is expected to rise by 30 per cent over the next decade, and the state is heavily dependent on imported sources of energy. That's one reason why there has been so much interest in basing liquified natural gas plants at Bimini and Freeport (to pipe imported gas across the Gulf Stream to Florida power stations).

But this new project will use tidal current turbines to generate power in much the same way that land-based windmills do - in the form of an offshore underwater 'wind' farm. Since water is denser than air, even slow-moving currents can exert great force on a turbine, meaning that smaller rotors can be used to keep costs down. The blades turn slowly in the water and do not pose a threat to marine life.

Climate Change Report Points to Serious Threat for Bahamas

by Sir Arthur Foulkes

In all the furore over the Anna Nicole Smith affair and the excitement normally generated at election time, some Bahamians may not have paid much attention to a big news story about a matter that has the most profound implications for The Bahamas.

It is about a threat not only to our incalculably valuable marine resources but to the very existence of these islands as the home the Bahamian nation. But it got very little attention in the local media making the front page of one daily below the fold.

In what The New York Times described as “a bleak and powerful assessment of the future of the planet”, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports that global warming is an unequivocal phenomenon and that it is very likely being driven by human activity.

The Queen - and the Future of the Bahamian Monarchy

by Larry Smith

We saw The Queen this past weekend.

That award-winning film portrays the British political elite sparring with the royal family over what to do about the death of Princess Diana in 1997. It has been described as "the most reverent, irreverent comedy imaginable."

As we all know, the death of Diana was the media-political event to end all media-political events - until the death of Anna Nicole Smith, that is. But enough about that.

The movie pits an upstart commoner named Tony Blair (who was swept into power by a Labour landslide just before Diana's death in a car crash) against the aloof monarch who has remained on the throne for more than half a century.

Although it seems rather mundane in retrospect, this was a confrontation that brought the whole issue of the British monarchy into question.

Bahamian Political Leaders Bring Troubles on Themselves

by Sir Arthur Foulkes

It is not unusual in politics to see a government in a state of meltdown. When it happens, all the usual clichés and adages come to mind: when it rains it pours; those whom the gods would destroy they first make mad; troubles come not in singles but in battalions.

In the United States the administration of a previously cocky George Bush is facing a sea of troubles and in Britain the shine has worn off the leadership of Prime Minister Tony Blair.

In some people, as Oliver Wendell Holmes put it, “Trouble creates a capacity to handle it.” Others just go to pieces and blame everybody in sight for their misery.

It is true that in the political arena as it is in life that good people often suffer from the schemes, snares and slanders of opponents. It is also true that many political troubles are self-inflicted, but that does not stop the victims of self-mutilation from blaming others.

Anna Nicole & Shane Gibson, Alfred Sears & Bahamian Teachers, BTC & Customers

by Larry Smith

BABYSITTERS FOR THE RICH AND FAMOUS

The boffins over at ThinkProgress - who produce "hard-hitting research and analysis you can’t find anywhere else" - described the death of Anna Nicole Smith last week as "a feeding frenzy" for the American media that drowned coverage of the war in Iraq.

"NBC’s Nightly News devoted 14 seconds to Iraq compared to 3 minutes and 13 seconds to Anna Nicole. CNN referenced Anna Nicole 522% more frequently than it did Iraq." ThinkProgress reported.

And this hardcore research was confirmed by CNN talk royalty, Larry King, who declared Smith's death "the number one story around the world”.

Here in Nassau, radio talk show callers focused on Immigration Minister Shane Gibson's "close" relationship with the expired stripper. Many Bahamians in the know praised Gibson for "reaching out to help a distressed lady in a Christian act of compassion."

Bahamian Relationship with Foreigners needs Attention

by Sir Arthur Foulkes

The incident at the exclusive Lyford Cay Club involving a distinguished Bahamian gentleman and an expatriate manager merits comment in light of the growing tension over the presence and role of foreigners in this country.

The Bahama Journal reported that Baswell Donaldson, the first Governor of the Central Bank of The Bahamas and currently Chairman of the very successful Bahamian-owned Commonwealth Bank, took some friends to the club on a Saturday for a poolside lunch.

The party was refused service by Managing Director Didier Picquot because one of Mr. Donaldson’s guests was not in compliance with the dress code. There had been a change in the code but Mr. Donaldson, a member of the club for 12 years, had not been informed.

The Bahamian staff went ahead and served the party in defiance of their manager who never apologized for his behaviour. Another official of the club did offer apologies but the damage had been done.

Apparently Mr. Donaldson and the Bahamian staff concluded that there was an element of racism in the whole thing. “He thought because he was white and foreign he could intimidate me,” Mr. Donaldson told The Journal.

Bahamian Politicians Must Address Real Issues in 2007 General Election

by Larry Smith

National Security Minister Cynthia Pratt says we are living in a new era: "It's a different mindset. Today, we cloak our children in wrongdoing." She was lamenting the social breakdown reflected by a rising tide of violence among young people and within families.

We have had nearly five years of a New PLP government that was supposed to bring a "fresh wind" of social reform and introduce a new kind of politics - an obvious attempt to regain the high ground after the FNM's far more dramatic 1992 break with the discredited policies of the past.

But despite this government's patchwork of urban renewal initiatives and the relative prosperity of recent years, the plain fact is that lawlessness and social irresponsibility are on the rise - with armed robberies, assaults, murders and sex crimes topping the list.

People largely do as they please. And as Prime Minister Perry Christie acknowledged recently, "Among young people there is a growing discrepancy with respect to order, discipline and the protection and safety of those in our society."

Analysis of this problem must begin with a critique of government, although wider and deeper factors are involved. That's because politicians like to advertise the changes they will make, and when elected they are in a unique position to implement those changes.

Bahamians Must Vote in the Next General Election for the Next Generation

by Sir Arthur Foulkes

Prime Minister Perry Christie has announced that the current register of voters will come to an end on March 12. No doubt this will serve as an incentive for those Bahamians who have not yet done so to register for the next general election only a few months away.

In every run-up to general elections there are those who inevitably predict that the slow pace of registration of voters is an indication that Bahamians are either fed up with the system or with the political parties or have simply become apathetic.

Every time they are proven wrong, but that does not deter them from making much the same prediction again. Perhaps the idea is that Bahamians are bound to get fed up with their democracy at some point and refuse to vote. Then the negative pundits will at last be proven right.