Arctic velonaut – Arktisk velonaut

A documentary made by Tamara Souchko. Here is the English version, with English subtitles. Released the 7th of October 2017.
En dokumentär gjord av Tamara Souchko. Här den engelska versionen. Släppt den 7 oktober 2017.
Links to all versions / Ссылки на все версии / Collegamenti a tutte le versioni / 所有版本的链接

🇬🇧 English – https://lessco2.wordpress.com/2017/11/21/arktisk-velonaut-arctic-velonaut/
🇷🇺 Русский – https://lessco2.wordpress.com/2018/09/05/arctic-velonaut-russian/
🇮🇹 Italiana – https://lessco2.wordpress.com/2018/04/16/la-versione-italiana-the-italian-version/
🇨🇳 中文 https://lessco2.wordpress.com/2018/02/27/the-chinese-version/

On the road again…

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The beaty is along the road. Here between Älvsbyn and Tvärån the 8th of June 2016.


It always take a while to realize that you once more are on the road again. On one more of those long distance biketrips that you look forward to and also are a little bit scared off. Did I remember to take with me everything needed? Those small things one takes with on the trip and never then uses…
Is there something in the velomobile I should have checked and that will create a problem on the road? How will the weather be? Where can I stay for the night?
And the most important question, the motor of a trip: Am I prepared for the trip myself?
And yes, then everything comes, the road, the places, the people along the road. The meetings are probably the most important. Everything else is moving from one place to another.

Now I made two days, the 7th and 8th of June 2016. The tripmeter shows 103 km day one and 163 km day two.
Here are the linings for the two first days on Google map:
June 7th 2016 https://goo.gl/maps/UgbTvzBf4e72
June 8th 2016 https://goo.gl/maps/TPbdmcyYF522

Two years and 15000 km later

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Yes, 15000 km is a quite long distance.


I was thinking about it earlier – what distance will I reach on the two year anniversary of driving a velomobile? The answer was in the evening of the 30th of April 2016 a very simple amount of kilometers to remember – 15000 km.
It was the 1:th of May 2014 when Tarja Leinonen and I drove over the bridge between Aavasaksa in Finland and Övertorneå in Sweden. Those two velomobiles were the two first velomobiles in Norrbotten county.

My first thought when writing about this anniversary was to think about the savings of CO2-emissions.
From ECF (European Cyclists´ Federation) I found this calculation about quantifying CO2 savings of cycling. There is also a clearer article in Swedish by Klas Elm.
Not going into all details but just writing down the estimated numbers:
• Biking creates 21 gram CO2 per kilometer (21 g CO2/km)
• Driving a car creates 271 gram CO2 per kilometer (271 g CO2/km)
This would mean that every biked kilometer saves 250 gram CO2 compared to driving a car.
Then 15000 km would save 3750 kg of CO2 compared to driving a car. There is this term CO2e that means all greenhouse (GH) gases that are emitted in the calculation, but just to make the text clearer I only write CO2.

How much is that saving?
The total emissions in the World 2014 was 35,9 GtCO2 [Gigaton CO2] per year according to Global Carbon Project.
Writing that to kilograms makes a very long number 35 900 000 000 000 kilogram [kg].
So, my yearly saving then is 0.00000000522284% of the global emissions. Counted on my yearly emission savings of 1875 kg.
If all the people on the earth, 7 424 720 000 [at this moment 25:th of May 2016] would save the same amount of CO2 every year then the total savings would be 13 921 350 000 000 kg or 13,9 GtCO2 [Gigaton CO2]. Ok, that would not stop the Climate Change, but it would make a difference. The rest has the to be done through other means…
And yes, my driving with a velomobile is symbolic in this scale. But very much fun!

How much is 15000 km?
The amount of transportation by biking that I made during these two years is 7500 km per year.
That can be compared to yearly average travel with car for a person in
• Sweden – 6620 km
• Norrbotten County – 7580 km
• Övertorneå eco-municipality [where I live] – 8730 km
The numbers from Miljömål by the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency [Naturvårdsverket].

I think that we all have to do what we are able to. It is my Earth and it is yours equally. It is ours. And we are in much of hurry to stop the destruction – the emissions should have stopped already, we have only years left to avoid the 2 degrees threshold.
A person that takes a flight from Sweden to Thailand and back home will emit 6 times more than I have achieved in saving during a year.
A average person in my own municipality, the eco-municipality of Övertorneå, is emitting almost 0,5 ton more CO2 from car-driving than I achieve in saving during a year. To just catch up one of my fellow citizens I would need to bike an additional 2000 km.
Well, I have to admit that it would actually be fun to bike those additional kilometers – but that will not solve the global problem.

Two years is 730 days. If I take an average, that will be 20,5 km/day.

It is really as mentioned a symbolic thing, but it has been so much fun!

And the place where these magic kilometers come on the display was very near home here in Juoksengi. On the photos below you´ll see the crossing to Vyöni and also Misha in front of the village´s church.

 

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Travemünde here we come!

   

 One can always learn new things. So did I here in Münster visiting Vera and Maxim. Maxim showed me a new offline map for iPhone called ”Here”. It seems to work very well, better than Google maps. So the goal for coming home for Christmas is there – Travemünde, here we come!
Thank you Maxim! Thank you Vera – det var som igår även om det var 15 år sedan sist! 

Hotel nights 

   
 If someone is wondering I have now left Paris. Two days biking have brought me 297 km, which is not very much but a bit. 

Two nights in hotels now, near Saint-Quentin and now between Nivelles and Waterloo. In the hotel in Saint-Quentin I met Klara originally from Czech Republic. A bright, nice person able to speak not only good English but also Czech, French, Slovak, Polish, Russian and German.
Here in this hotel in Nivelles in Belgium I have not tested the language skills but good English of course. 

Velomobile at Alternatiba in Montreuil

Montreuil is a part of Paris. During the 5-6th of December there was a huge meeting called The Global Village of Alternatives.
There was 28.000 people visiting the area. I myself was mainly inside my velomobile telling time after time what a velomobile is.
So, here, once more who did not hear my story, the short story:
A velomobile is a fast bicycle. Top speed for my velomobile has been 96,7 km/h and the average speed on flat asphalt is 35-45 km/h. The maybe most interesting thing is that I actually now in my work as a coordinator for the county branch of The Swedish Society for Nature Conservation in Norrbotten County is using the velomobil to transport myself around in the county that is covering 25% (98 245 km²) of the area of Sweden. That is more than the area of both Netherlands (41 526 km²) and Belgium (30 528 km²) combined (72 054 km²). Yes, and as I had not checked the numbers before telling the story, I have been telling too low numbers to people about how big the county of Norrbotten actually is!
One of the numbers that I have mentioned was that you could take away one third of the cars in Paris immediately and replace them with velomobiles. In that way you could get much more space, less pollution and emissions of CO2 and a smoother traffic. Of course I have not counted on that, but look – the most cars are just only standing there along the side of the streets!

Here some photos from the two days in Montreuil.

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Short films from COP21 exhibitions

If you never been to a COP-meeting then you might not understand that it is really big. Everyone wants to make their point of view heard for the important cause. After some hours at the exhibition I was very filled with impressions, actually knowing maybe something more of some new areas of knowledge. The films beneath are in no way complete, just scratches on the surface.

A resume from COP21 – exhibitions

It is not easy to make a resumé from the exhibitions for COP21 at Le Bourget in Paris. There is very much!
I made some mistake with my camera and it made some kind of collage of everything after me leaving the velomobile among the bikes in the parking slot.
It is maybe not something that explains nothing, but it shows that very many people want a change and want´s to affect the climate crisis.
Here also some photos that don´t move so much.

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