A wise man was asked one day which was the more useful, the sun or the moon. “The moon is more useful of course” was his reply. “Why?” “Because we need the light more during the night than we do during the day!”
Ha- ha, the wise man in the story was of course Nasurdin, that legendary figure that I mentioned in my last blog. He gave his philosophical teachings in the form of funny stories, and he himself would always be the butt of the story himself. However, judging by the celebrations of the 40th anniversary this month of the first moon landing one would be forgiven for thinking that many shared his view of the moon’s high status with one leading British scientist saying “The Apollo programme is arguably the greatest technical achievement of mankind to date.”
Greatest technical achievement or not, there is now awareness of the political agenda that was behind the landing. It was essentially a cold-war race with the Soviets against the backdrop of a difficult political situation in the USA, caused in large part by the worsening of the human and financial cost of the Vietnam War.
Times of have changed and forty years on the manned lunar space programme is seen by many as something of a ‘white elephant’ with billions on dollars spent for very little return. The talks by the current administration of manned travel to Mars haven’t been received so quite so enthusiastically with many wondering who will foot the bill. It is also viewed cynically in many quarters as a politically motivated tactic to divert public attention away from the real problems facing the country, and perhaps even mankind.
While interest in landing a man on the moon may have waned, interest in the fragile blue plant that the astronauts looked back upon has increased. Although ‘Spaceship earth’ was not a new phrase at the time, its significance grew with the unprecedented TV audience that the space programme attracted. The vulnerability of the astronauts was reflected by the beautiful sight of the earth with its own vulnerable cargo of living creatures.
The last forty years have also seen many changes in our own industry. It was shortly after the last foot print was left on the moon surface in 1972 that the effect of CFC’s upon the ozone layer became widely known, which in turn lead to their phase-out, the current phase-out of HCFCs. More recently, an awareness of the effects of green-house gases are now creating a long-term uncertainty for the future of HFC refrigerants, and now, people have more concerned with footprints of a different kind; their carbon ones.
Some in the industry are rising to the challenge and the announcement last week by Waitrose that they plan to eradicate HFCs form their stores and to move to more energy efficient solutions is to be welcomed and hopefully representative of an industry trend. Combine this with their commitment to reduce refrigerant leakage from their existing systems, something the IoR’s Real Zero campaign is also promoting and one can’t help be feel that we are genuinely making progress.
Forty years on from Neil Armstrong’s famous words on the moon, there is a feeling around the ACR industry that we are making small steps in the right environmental direction that may possibly prove to be of greater significance for mankind in the long term. Whether anyone will remember the name of the person at Waitrose, or even what he said, in forty years time, is extremely doubtful. However, it may prove to be just as an important step as that one made at Tranquillity Base all those years ago.
Sometime actions speak louder than words; one small step for man ……
(http://www.acr-news.com/blog/view_entry.asp?id=146)
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