The Rolling Chimney Hack

If one day soon you see one of those ubiquous 'rolling chimneys' - buses, trucks or cars which belch out greasy smoke every time they move - sporting a sticker proudly announcing that it is a 'chimenea,' it's probably not because the driver is proud that he's poisoning us.

More likely, the vehicle is a victim of this blog's hacking campaign, which turns highly polluting vehicles into involuntary rolling billboards denouncing pollution.

A typical Bogotá Sitp bus on Carrera 10 this afternoon. 

An improved bus.

Did you notice it?

'I am a chimney'

Another rolling chimney on Carrera 10 today.

Now, helpfully labeled.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Tell Me Something I Don't Know

El Tiempo ran this interview today pointing out - and who would have thought of it? - that diesel smoke is poisoning our air, and poisoning us.

The interviewee, Universidad de los Andes Prof. Eduardo Behrentz, is undoubtedly a really smart guy. But do we really need him to inform us that diesel is what's killing us? If Bogotá's citizens and authorities can't figure that out for themselves, then God save them!

A TransMilenio bus (pride of the city!) belches its way up Jimenez Ave. (which is also called the 'environmental axis).

Another bus belches its way along Calle 19.

Okay, okay. Now that we've finally figured out where Bogotá's air pollution comes from, can the city finally start doing something about it, such as removing these 'rolling smokestacks' from the road?

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The Real Scandals Behind the Oil Spill

Spilled out from Ecopetrol's Lizama 158 well poisons a nearby stream. (Photo: Vanguardia Liberal)

An abandoned oil well pouring out petroleum since the beginning of this month has generated angry headlines about animals killed, fishermen out of work and residents sickened. But the real scandal may be state oil company EcoPetrol's alleged irresponsible handling of its exhausted wells.

The Lizama 158 oil well in Santander Department has been pouring out oil, much of it into a nearby river, since the start of March. At least 550 barrels of oil - according to the company - and perhaps as many as 23,000 barrels - according to the National Environmental Licensing Agency (ANLA) - have spilled out.

Ecopetrol has speculated that a nearby tectonic shift could have triggered the leak. But whatever the immediate cause of this spill, the press scrutiny has exposed a much larger scandal. According to multiple Controlaria reports, Ecopetrol frequently failed to seal exhausted oil wells, leaving the wells a threat to pour petroleum onto their surroundings.

How many times will this disaster be repeated? How many Ecopetrol wells are leaking away into the jungle?

The accompanying scandal here is the, despite the repeated Controlaria reports, apparently no government enforcement entity bothered to force Ecopetrol to obey the law.

How many other environmental regulations are being ignored, setting the scene for future disasters?

It's worth pointing out, too, that even when it's not spilled into the jungle, oil is an environmental disaster all along its life cycle: Even the cleanest oil wells often require road and pipeline construction, opening the wilderness to farmers and deforestation.

And the oil that is processed 'correctly' will ultimately be burned, polluting the air and contributing to global warming.

The best solution for the environment is not to finally seal well Lizama 158, but to end our addiction to oil.

Meanwhile, yesterday El Espectador printed this impactful article about Colombia's worst environmental disasters. As the paper points out, the leaking oil well is a minor disaster compared to Colombia's terrible deforestation rate, the innumerable rivers destroyed by illegal mining, and the Ciénaga Grande, a wetland on the Caribbean coast, is being steadily killed by roads, dikes and canals.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Car-Free Day

The street behind the Paloquemao market, normally congested and chaotic.

Yesterday's car-free day was a success - if you measure it by the number of cars removed from city streets. Many streets and avenues were bereft of private cars, enabling traffic to flow faster, and reducing pollution.

Calle 26, usually a perpetual traffic jam, was given over to cyclists.

bicyclists abounded.

This year's car-free day was dedicated to pedestrians.

City workers show off information on the benefits of walking.

Still, the day was far from pollution-free. Here was the view from the upper end of La Candelaria at 8:30 a.m.

At 8:30 a.m. a grey haze blanketed the city, as seen from La Candelaria.

And, if cars were restricted, 'rolling chimneys' like this bus still abounded.

One of the car-free day's goals is to motivate car-aholics to try car-free ways of commuting. However, many workplaces make that goal mute by shutting down for the day.

Lots of places just shut down. The Ministry of Technology had its workers telecommute yesterday.

And Paloquemao Market was nearly deserted.

Paloquemao market's usually-crowded parking lot.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Plastic Everywhere, and No Solution in Sight

Before the plastic bag tax: Carrying plastic bags (probably full of more plastic bags) home from the supermarket.

After the bag tax: the more things change, the more they stay the same: Carrying plastic bags (probably full of more plastic bags) home from the supermarket.

Sackss of plastic bags and other trash in the Plaza San Victorino.

Nobody doubts that plastic bags are a problem. They little streets, plazas and parks, trash up rivers and clog sewers. And a lot of them end up in the ocean, where animals swallow them and choke to death. And then there are all the petroleum resources used to manufacture the bags, and the pollution generated during the process. All to make something which is often used just once, for a short time, and then discarded.

So, give Bogotá officials credit for recognizing the problem. If only they would try an effective solution.

First came 'educational' measures for stores. Some neighborhood stores put up signs encouraging customers to bring their own bags - which almost everybody ignored.

Worth something?

Then, on July 1 a bag tax kicked in - of 20 pesos -  or 6/10 of one U.S. penny. Nobody bothers to pick a 20 peso coin up off the street, nor do people carry them, making this tax meaningless. So, unless the same customer uses five bags, he likely won't get charged at all. At the same time, I don't see any practical way the DIAN can monitor how many plastic bags a store uses. (Expect a black market in plastic bags). So, stores will simply pass on to all of their customers the tax bill for the bags they report using, eliminating the tax's incentive quality.

The tax didn't discourage this shopper from packing her
shopping cart with bags filled with more bags.

All of this makes about as much sense as Colombia's policy to reduce carbon generation, in which the country simultaeneously taxes carbon to discourage its use, and also subsidizes fuel consumption and encourages oil and coal production.

It's no wonder that plastic bag habits are tough to change. Not only are plastic bags convenient, but a friend points out that giving them out has become a 'social gesture.' I couldn't count the number of times that a seller has chased after me or literally cried out in protest when I rejected his or her offer of a completely useless plastic bag to carry home a single apple, a candy bar or a box of aspirin. But the bag came from somebody's heart.

Taxes have effectively reduced plastic bag use in Ireland, some U.S. cities, and other localesbcxi. But those places have stronger legal systems and lower rates of corruption and black markets.

Perhaps a bag tax would work here if the government either enforced it using sting operations, or actually taxed the newly-manufactured bags.

'Please bring your own bag.' This sign, in a shop in La Candelaria, was removed once employees realized that the pllastic bag decree wouldn't be enforced.

A sign in a shop implores customers to save the planet by bringing their own bags.
Notice the woman's hand giving a customer a bag.

City workers hand out reuseable bags in La Candelaria. They gave the bags to anybody willing to sign for them, whether they needed them or not.

A proud woman with her free bags.

This older woman scored two bags. But will she ever use them? Could she actually carry one full of stuff?

The La Panamericana stores seem to have taken real measures. Here, a sign at the checkout counter saying they no longer will give out bags smaller than 30 by 30 cms.

Canvas bags for sale in La Panamericana.

The bag rule doesn't apply to neighborhood corner shops and traditional markets like this one.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Do Rivers Have Rights?

Colombia's Constitutional Court made a surprising ruling recently.

The Atrato River flows into the
Caribbean near the border
with Panama.

The court ordered the government to end illegal mining in the Chocó region and clean up the widespread environmental damage mining has caused. But the ruling went further, and declared that the Atrato River possesses rights which must be respected - giving the river a legal status something like personhood.

There's no doubting the environmental catastrophe caused by illegal mining, logging and other resource extraction activities in the Chocó region. Huge areas have been deforested and poisoned with mercury. According to news reports, mercury concentrations in residents' blood may be as many as 120 times higher than levels considered safe.

Land denuded by illegal mining in the Chocó region.

But stopping the environmental damage is easier said than done. Illegal and informal gold miners use mercury because it's the cheapest, easiest way to pull out the precious metal, and believe they can't afford to use safer methods. Poverty drives impoverished Chocó residents to suffer the dangers and miserable conditions in illegal mines, and that won't change until Colombia's economy undergoes a transformation.

Future court decisions will define what rights a river can have, and perhaps, also give trees, seas and non-human aniimals human-like rights as well.

But, in light of Colombia's inability to protect its rivers and forests, it would be nice to arm those trees, rivers and forests and enable them to protect themselves

The lawsuit was filed by the NGO Tierra Digna, which works to protect the rights of traditional communities.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

New Labels, Same Smoke

Recently, in its desperation to expand its peso-hemorrhaging SITP bus system, the Petro administration has been slapping 'SITP' stickers on old buses and - like magic! - transforming them into new, modern, efficient, orderly and clean buses.

Except for the fact that they continue stopping in mid-block, running red lights and belching smoke.

Apparently, that sticker doesn't change anything inside the buses.

¿Why haven't any of the mayoral candidates made cleaning the air part of their campaign platforms?

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Bogotá's Transit Reform - Still Stuck at Start

A bus stops at a green light, blocking Carrera 10, to let a passenger board.

Bogotá's much-ballyhooed transition from private, commercial buses to publicly-managed SITP buses started off this week so slowly you might not have noticed, if not for the headlines.

Between now and November, the city's thousands of privately-owned and run buses are supposed to either be retired or switched to public control and management and integrated into the SITP system. 

Perhaps that will happen - or perhaps before then the city will discover that it doesn't know how to operate a bus system which people actually want to ride. 

In any case, on the first days of this transition, I found the usual lack of a basic ingredient necessary for bringing order to Bogotá's streets: Law enforcement.

...another bus stops in the middle of the block and in the middle of the street to pick up a passenger.

The calibradores, who tell private bus drivers how far another bus on the same line is ahead of them, were supposed to disappear with the private buses. They're still at work.

A police post at the same intersection. The cops here protect against muggings, but turn a blind eye to transit violations. 

A bus belches diesel smoke. 

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

How to Not Recycle the Bogotá Way

Don't worry. They'll soon be in an empty lot or public park near you.

Want to condemn a recycling program to failure? Try this:

Take a group of people known for limited education and zero environmental awareness but a great capacity for drinking beer and ogling women, and put them in charge of carrying out an environmental program.

The result is predictably a disaster - which is the situation Bogotá is in.

Will they catch fire?

Thank such good planning for the piles of tires on our sidewalk, and carcinogenic tire smoke in our lungs. Did you enjoy the other week's used tire fire, which turned our air gray? Count on Bogotá's environmental policy bureaucrats ensuring it happens again!

The city has no rational disposal system for the tens of thousands of used tires produced each year, which litter public parks and sidewalks. A few weeks ago, a dump containing more than 100,000 used tires caught fire, poisoning the air for days. According to Elaw.com, tire smoke is some 13,000 times more cancer-causing than pollution from a coal plant equipped with emissions controls.


You probably haven't heard of Bogotá's EcoPuntos program, and there are good reasons why: the city hasn't publicized it and it barely functions.

Could those tires on the sidewalk around the
corner have come from here?

Bogotá's EcoPuntos program, supposedly involves 92 spots across the city where people can drop off used tires for proper disposal or recycling. Of course, it seems that those tires just get tossed into unregulated dumps, where they breed mosquitoes and eventually catch fire. But, no matter.

And, Bogotá City Councilman Diego García, a member of the Green Alliance party, visited a dozen of those designated drop-off points and found that half didn't know about the program and others didn't have anyplace to store old tires. Only one of the dozen sites actually accepted tires. But, no matter.

The real flaw in this system is its lack of incentives.

EcoPuntos everywhere, but nobody's seen them.

How many environmental idealists do you think Bogotá has willing to lug a heavy tire across town to dispose of it correctly -  for free? And how many of those people work in tire shops?

As is evident on many Bogotá sidewalks, tire shops find it easier to toss their waste tires around the corner, where they become the public's problem.

The only solution here are economic incentives.

Consider two scenarios.

Scenario No. 1, Bogotá's existing disfunctional system: A bunch of guys are sitting around a tire shop one afternoon scratching their balls. The boss asks:

Deposit your can here, and feel good
about producing garbage.

'Hey guys, who wants to load those old tires out back into the truck and drive them across town for ecologically proper disposal?'

Tire shop employees look around awkwardly, scratch their balls and ponder the pin-up girls on the walls. They suddenly recall urgent commitments they have for that afternoon.

'Alright', says the boss, impatiently; 'We've gotta get rid of those tires. Someone load them up and get them out of my sight! Remember that dumping them in the park or on the sidewalk is against the law - but I won't ask any questions.'

Tire shop workers grumble, load up the tires and return 15 minutes later, the problem solved.

Scenario No. 2, with economic incentives: In this case, the tire industry pays a small deposit for each tire imported or manufactured in Colombia. That deposit goes into a public fund. Upon delivering the used tire for proper disposal, part of the deposit is returned.

Back in the tire shop, with used tires piling up in the corner.

350,000 bottles is a tiny proportion of the
millions used by Bogotanos each week.
Better not to have used
them at all. 

'Who wants to take these tires off to be disposed of?' the boss asks.

The shop employees stop scratching their balls and look up with interest.

'The desposit's all yours,' the boss adds.

The shop employees envision beer money, a date with their girlfriend, perhaps even buying the kids' schoolbooks. Hands shoot up all over the room.

'Hey boss! I'll take those tires away!'

The shop guys compete to load up the tires and drive them to a collection point, where an employee eagerly receives them, knowing that he'll also get a deposit for delivering them to a disposal point.

The rest of the deposit goes to subsidize some use for the old tires, such as shredding them to be used as road material or burning in a cement plant.

That same mechanic who's been using the neighborhood park as his dumping ground, has now become an environmentalist - not because he loves the planet, but because it fills his pockets.

The EcoPuntos program has another part, only slightly less perverse.

Those are reverse vending machines located in some Bogotá malls, into which people drop used beverage containers to receive 'EcoPuntos', which are supposed to be good for something. The percentage of bottles thus returned is infinitesimal. Still, hopefully, those bottles do get reused instead of ending up in the dump.

Unfortunately, however, the consumer walks away from the EcoPuntos machine with a positive feeling that he or she has done something good for the planet, when all he's done is delay the bottle's trip to the dump. Much better would have been not to use that can or bottle at all, especially since it probably contained something either useless, such as bottled water (the tap water here is perfectly potable), or a sugary soft drink which only did its drinker harm.







By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours