7/01 mechanical engineering: editorial

editorial

Ruminations on a Lonely Road

By
John G. Falcioni, Editor-in-Chief

I'm sitting alone in my cousin's Chevy Corsa—a small domestic five-door hatchback that's about two years old—on the side of a sparse road in a remote area of the pampas, halfway between Buenos Aires and Bahia Blanca in Argentina.

The sun is shining, but the temperature is only just above the freezing mark. The wind is penetrating. And it is quiet—too quiet, almost. There are no colorful birds chirping here, only an occasional misguided hawk hovering above.

I can see cows grazing in the great expanse of this celebrated terrain. There is no roadside McDonald's to quench hunger pangs. There are no rest areas to shelter stranded motorists. Worst of all, the Corsa's gas tank is as empty as the road is long.

My cousin Pancho and I were in deep conversation, ironically enough about the exorbitant price of a liter of unleaded gasoline in Buenos Aires, before we realized the car had begun to slow down. Neither of us had the wherewithal to heed the unsuccessful warning of the needle in the gas gauge, which was gasping for nourishment well past the dial's red zone.

So I wait here alone, as Pancho, now an unlikely hitchhiker, disappears down the seemingly endless and unfamiliar road in search of help.

For some unexplainable reason, I wasn't overly worried then about how this episode would finally end. Pancho later told me that it was probably a bad case of naivete on my part.

We survived our energy crunch chagrined, but unhurt (albeit a few hours late to our destination). At least we were left with a good story to tell. But when it comes to the enigma that is the issue of the world's energy crisis, few survive as we did, unscathed.

The problem is no simpler to resolve in countries like Argentina than it is in the United States. While there is an ample supply of natural gas in Argentina, among other natural resources, the problem here is political. Whether it is the politics of government, or the more familiar issue of NIMBY (not in my backyard), development is tricky.

In the neighborhood of Ingeniero White, in Bahia Blanca, a port city nearly 700 kilometers south of Buenos Aires (and the city of my birth), for example, Dow Chemical Co. and Profertil (a partnership between Canada-based Agrium and Spanish-owned YPF S.A.) share a large industrial park housing what is touted as the world's largest fertilizer plant.

Ingeniero White is an old fishing area along Bahia Blanca's eastern coastline. It is home to one of Argentina's most important ports. But shortly after the fertilizer plant opened, an ominous cloud containing an ammonia derivative that leaked from the plant floated eerily above the neighborhood's modest homes. Residents rightfully panicked. Fortunately, strong eastern gusts blew the cloud out to sea and spared the town. The casualties were the inhabitants of the sea.

Fear still persists among local residents. And signs protesting the plant are everywhere in Ingeniero White, reminiscent of those that line neighborhoods in cities across the world.

The road to solving global energy issues appears as uninviting as the one Pancho and I were stuck on.

Observers here say that solving global energy problems is a long shot. They point to Ingeniero White and reason that if politicians, local residents, and plant personnel can't agree on safeguarding a local plant, what shot do energy ministers (all safeguarding their own parochial interests) have of agreeing on processes that would be both technologically and economically fair to all.

Email your comments or questions to: falcionij@asme.org