Series: Waterworld
Title: Towers of Ethane
I begin my series WATERWORLD with an image that could be chosen for a book cover if I can find a publisher to give this work some greater exposure. I call this ‘The Towers of Ethane. ‘Ethane-Methane. Methane gas. Formed from the anaerobic bacterial decomposition of plant and animal matter, such as occurs under water, which produces marsh gas, another name for methane. It’s one of the most plentiful organic compounds on Earth but even though it’s everywhere, you would never know it’s there, as methane is colorless, odorless and tasteless. It harbors huge potential as a fuel, but also poses a major threat to the climate. It’s a greenhouse gas like carbon dioxide, the primary driver of human-induced climate change, and its heat-trapping effects are even stronger than those of CO2.
With this in mind, I return to the the image I call the Towers of Ethane. Methane is rising invisibly off the surface of the shrimping pond. To my mind the Towers of Ethane, suggesting a high rise structure similar say to the World Trade Centre, which was a symbol of capitalist decadence and greed. The Towers of Ethane seem to be disappearing into swirling toxic cloud.
In reality what you are seeing are pipes that form part of the water pumping mechanism employed to bring fresh sea water in from the adjacent tidal mangrove forests and to pump out the heavily contaminate shrimp pond water. What we see floating on the surface of this pond is organic matter, including unconsumed shrimp food, detritus, shrimp feaces phytoplankton, zooplankton, and bacteria. Environmental problems from shrimp farm effluents are directly related to coastal water pollution and disease.
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