Mitra Ardron's Blog

Just a short post ... to say that I'm in Auroville, in Southern India. I arrived a few hours before Cyclone Thane, which took out 70% of the trees, there was one down every 10 meters on the road, and that took out power; water; internet; phone (fixed & mobile). Many farms lost their crops, and the project we are supporting here - low cost wind turbines for rural poor - lost its workshop and one turbine when a tree came through it.

If you feel to help ... please donate here, on  and put "MinVayu" or "Wind" in the comments, I'll pass that on to help them rebuild.

There is more about the damage to Auroville here.

I have limited internet acces / laptop charge, so may be slow responding to email.

Last night I went to a party in Auroville, southern india. Outdoors - lit by christmas lights strung between trees, with a dirt floor and cast concrete tables with inlaid mosaic.

My neighbours over the Middle Eastern dinner were a couple of Australians and she was studying how people relate, or don't, to their national identity. She talked about a couple she'd met, she French/German born in India; he Mexican/Canadian; their kids in theory could have five passports at birth. (Two more than me).

So I looked around - I was sitting with an Ecuadorian; German; South African & Faroe Islander (part of Denmark). The musicians were a Portuguese couple playing West African Kora and Imbira (harp and thumb piano);

About half the party were Indian - mostly Tamils - Indian nationality itself is complex; people identify with the state their family is from. So many are quadri-lingal (the state of their family; their residence; English & Hindi).

Among the other people I knew well at the party were 4 African nationalities; 6 European & 1 South American. I'm sure I could have counted many more if I'd known the nationality of  more of the people there, but then I wonder how much each of these people identifies with their country of birth?

We danced on a dirt floor; listening the approaching thunder and lightning of a monsoon storm. Just as I was thinking that I couldn't be further from home, the DJ put on Wild Marmalade, a high energy didgeridoo band from back home in Byron Bay, I know the musicians, have danced to them at many small gigs in village halls. Yes - I identified through them with Byron; identified to a sense of place; to people I know - though not to its location as part of Australia.

I don't know where the DJ got their music, but he obviously liked the band, and played several tracks, so by the time its first few drops arrived we were so hot from dancing we didn't care.

There was a question on Quora recently "Can anyone imagine a future powered by 100% renewable energy".

It has been interesting to me that parallel efforts are showing that this is very much possible: There are papers in the UK and Australia on exactly this topic - looking at the cost and feasibility.

• UK: www.zerocarbonbritain.com
• Australia: www.beyondzeroemissions.org

In the US there is also a really good report www.gigatonthrowdown.org which looks at how ten sectors could achieve 1 GTonne emission cut each - which is almost the same answer.

In fact by some analysis would be cheaper (even without the cost of dealing with climate change) than coal, natural gas and of course cheaper than nuclear.

Of course - we still need to make this work in developing countries - which is what Natural Innovation is all about.

I've just sent out my second newsletter, and you can read it here, and you can subscribe here to get future issues.

I spent an interesting day with the new "Pre Incubation Program". A mentoring program put together by Villgro in Chennai to effectively leverage the help of experienced mentors to entrepreneurs, through the help of recent MBA graduates.