An Inconvenient Truth: William Dar, The Filipino As Global Manager

THE INCONVENIENT TRUTH, ITS ORIGIN IS WESTERN.

Al Gore’s film, Our Film, directed by David Guggenheim, has just won the Oscar for ‘Best Documentary’ as I revise this 26 February 2007, at high noon Manila time. An inconvenient truth is that it is high time we revise everything we have on our hands that has anything to do with polluting the physical environment, not to mention polluting the psychological, spiritual, political, economic environments, not necessarily in that order.

The Inconvenient Truth as documentary also won the Oscar for ‘Best Original Song’ with the one written by Melissa Etheridge, ‘I Need To Wake Up.’

We need to wake up to the reality that we have to have faith in whom we can’t see, such as God and gravity, and to believe in the things we can’t touch, such as the ozone layer above our heads and the bottom of the iceberg beneath our feet. A crewman said of the Titanic: ‘God himself could not sink this ship’ (National Geographic quoted in NextTag.com/) – well, an iceberg tipped the unsinkable ship. The ozone layer protects us from the relentless ultraviolet radiation of the sun; in return, the ozone layer is not protected from our own relentless greenhouse gas emissions, thereby depleting the ozone layer. So: Global warming is of our own making. Planet Earth is our Noah’s Ark; God would not sink Noah’s Ark, but we would.

After the disquieting UN Report on climate change early this month, I happily note in quiet that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences (the one that awards the Oscars) has not gangrene but has gone green. The difference is gross: In case of injury or disease, gangrene results from an insufficient blood supply to body tissue; in the case of Hollywood, gone green results from a sufficient blood supply to the brain tissue. With that observation, I shall assume most managers will take a lesson from Mr Global Warner himself. Observe how Al Gore is behaving intelligently in his advocacy: Acting locally, acting globally. Thinking locally, thinking globally. Advocating business unusual.

So now I can tell myself: ‘There is intelligent life on earth.’ Long ago and far away, I asked myself some 40 years before this: ‘Is there intelligent life on earth?’ In those times I thought I was the only intelligent life on earth. You call that conceit. Today, some managers’ conceit is that there is no global warming. Insisting business as usual.

We need to go back to the basics of faith and reason. We are 30 years late in responding to Yankee Al Gore’s global warning but, I hope, not too late. In an interview after the Oscars, he told Kim Chipman (25 Feb, bloomberg.com/) about how to behave globally toward climate change and knowing many Yankees wanted him to run again for President of the mightiest nation in the world:

It’s not a political issue; it’s a moral issue. We have everything we need to get started, with the possible exception of the will to act. That’s a renewable resource; let’s renew it.

The will to act? The 79th Oscars acted on its will – in fact, it went green like this (Mary Milliken, 26 Feb, in.today.reuters.com/): first, they made sure the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood underwent an energy audit; then on The Day of the Oscars, movie stars rode in plug-in hybrids and all-electric cars; all around, print materials being distributed had been printed on recycled paper; organic food was served at the Governor’s Ball, with advocacy by the National Resources Defense Council. How green was the Hollywood valley!

About the strange creatures called hybrid vehicles and Hollywood stars, FTM tells us (forthemen.com/) that Cameron Diaz (Shrek) has one, Leonardo di Caprio (The Departed) has two. The Toyota Prius, the first hybrid car released to the public, is very popular with Hollywood stars. The Honda Insight was the first hybrid car sold in the US. Thank God for Toyota and Honda and Hollywood.

How about those of us outside of Hollywood? We can do no less! CNN (06 Feb, cnn.com/) quotes Al Gore as saying:

Our responsibility to our children and those who come after us is sacred and we must discharge our responsibility. And the good news is the changes we need to make are ones that will improve the quality of life. They’re things that we should be doing anyway.

‘My fellow Americans,’ Mr Green Al Gore told the Oscar audience in the US and all over the world (Gary Gentile, Associated Press, 26 Feb, cbsnews.com/), ‘people all over the world: We need to solve the climate crisis.’ Global warming is ‘the overriding world challenge of our time,’ he said. ‘I really hope the decision by the Academy to honor the work by Director David Guggenheim and these producers will convince people who did not go see it to see the movie and learn about the climate crisis and become a part of the solution.’ The producers – Lawrence Bender, Scott Burns, Laurie David (Wikipedia) – have become part of the solution while we’re still part of the problem.

To those who can’t manage their global doubts, or global indifference, I suggest this: First, look at whatever you’re doing (thinking locally) and then think long and hard about what it’s doing outside of you (thinking globally). What about freedom? you Americans may ask. You’re free to decide what to do next. I only hope you appreciate the fact that this time you can’t manage to evade your responsibility in the exercise of your freedom. And why is that? Freedom is like this: You are free to swing your arm short of my nose (I borrowed that from Dean Ricardo Pascual of the College of Law of the University of the Philippines, something I memorized more than 40 years ago). You are free to ride your car and throw your CO2 (acting locally) short of my nose (acting globally).

In case you didn’t know, carbon dioxide or CO2 is the most infamous of the exhausts from humans. Of the 6 major greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming, carbon dioxide leads all the rest: methane, nitrous oxide, sulfur hexafluoride, HFCs and PFCs (Larry West 2007, environment.about.com/). And the United States is still leading all the rest of the countries with her contribution of 5 trillion tonnes of CO2 a year, and all 16 countries of the European Union with their total of 6 trillion tonnes (West 2007). This should not be the case.

Enter The Inconvenient Fruit, a different kind of hybrid.

THE INCONVENIENT FRUIT, ITS ORIGIN IS EASTERN.

Belonging to the inconvenient class, fossil fuels are non-renewable; so, making them the major energy source for cars should not have been the case in the first place. Those gas-guzzling-and-therefore-gas-emitting cars have become the antithesis of man’s civilized progress.

We need to completely junk fossil fuels in favor of biofuels – that’s an inconvenient truth. Meanwhile, hybrid cars in many states in the US now use 10% to 90% ethanol to gasoline blends; Brazil uses 24% (Madhu Chittora, 2 May 2005, projectsmonitor.com/). We do have a choice of source: The Yankee gets his bioenergy from Zea mays (corn); the Brazilian gets his from Saccharum officinarum (sugarcane); the Indian gets his from Sorghum bicolor (sweet sorghum). To each his own species.

Let’s go Indian, choosing the inconvenient fruit. Among those I call the climate crops, sweet sorghum is relatively unknown among those species that catch the CO2 from the air and turn it into food, feed, fuel, fertilizer for the survival of the species. I know that to advocate sweet sorghum as the global source of ethanol for biofuel is to advocate a relatively unknown and largely unappreciated crop in Asia, Africa and America – to write two major feature articles on this poor man’s crop may be on my part an inconvenient froth over an inconvenient fruit. This should not be the case either.

Meanwhile, they have gone Indian at the campus of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (icrisat) in Andhra Pradesh. They have come up with what I shall refer to here as the sweet sorghum initiative. For having come up with the initiative, the concept if not the term, for having led Team icrisat in the rediscovery and nurturing of sweet sorghum as an energy crop, for having successfully marketed the idea of sweet sorghum ethanol first to the private and government sectors in India, for now boldly propagating sweet sorghum as the climate crop in Africa and Asia:

Dr William Dar, Director General of icrisat in faraway India, Filipino, is My Global Manager of the Year (2006).

Since there is no such award, it has been necessary to invent it. I have 7 reasons choosing Dr Dar as my global manager because he has chosen:

A global crop – Sweet sorghum used to be the least famous of those species that catch the CO2 from the air and turn it into food, feed, fuel, fertilizer for man and beast – and help mitigate global warming for all of us sinners & saints, black & white & brown. I happen to believe that sweet sorghum is the best climate crop of them all, for 7 reasons; here’s a summary of what I said about it in ‘The Yankee Dawdle. On Discovery Sorghum, The Great Climate Crop,’ earlier published in American Chronicle: (1) Sorghum is a much cheaper source of ethanol for blending with gasoline than sugarcane. (2) It is plantable in wastelands, drylands and wetlands, so it does not have to compete for space with major food crops like rice, wheat and corn. (3) Like rice, sweet sorghum is a cash crop; it grows fast and the farmer harvests in 4 months. (4) Since it thrives even on poor soils, sweet sorghum can save on millions of dollars of fossil fuel-based fertilizer imports where the optimum sustainable yield is the objective. (5) Sweet sorghum is the crop of millions of poor farmers, and therefore any increased need for the harvest increases their benefits from their crop. (6) Cultivating sweet sorghum as crop for ethanol production will save more millions of dollars in terms of fossil fuel non-imports than corn or sugarcane. (7) An ethanol distillery based on sweet sorghum is less polluting than that based on sugarcane or corn.

A global vision – icrisat’s global vision is ‘Science with a Human Face.’ A ‘corporate vision is a short, succinct, inspiring statement of what the organization intends to become and to achieve at some point in the future’ (1000ventures.com/). ‘Corporate success depends on the vision articulated by the chief executive or the top management.’ As chief executive of icrisat, Dr Dar has been articulating this global vision for 7 years now. I have not seen or read a vision more global than that for science. So: Sweet sorghum for ethanol production is a global crop with a global vision.

A global mission – A mission must be that which is designed to help bring about a vision. With that in mind, as I see it, icrisat’s advocacy of a ‘Grey-to-Green Revolution’ (William Dar 2007, Nurturing Life In The Drylands Of Hope, icrisat, Andhra Pradesh, India, in CD) is the Institute’s global mission. So: Growing sweet sorghum for ethanol production is implementing a grey-to-green revolution towards achieving a global vision.

A global strategy – From Vadim Kotelnikov (2001, 1000ventures.com/), we learn that a strategy is ‘the way in which a company orients itself towards the market in which it operates and towards the other companies in the marketplace against which it competes. It is a plan an organization formulates to gain a sustainable advantage over the competition.’ As I see it, sweet sorghum was chosen by icrisat as its climate crop not for maximizing production but for optimizing it: what you sow is what you get (wysiwyg). To optimize is to make the most of what you have; ergo, to wysiwyg is to optimize. So: icrisat has come up with sweet sorghum hybrids that are ‘photoperiod insensitive’ – meaning, they can be planted at different months so that there can be harvests of the crop all months of the year, ensuring continuous supply of raw materials, which is necessary for successful manufacturing and marketing. As far as I know, we don’t have corn or sugarcane hybrids that grow well whatever the month or season. So: The planting of icrisat’s sorghum hybrids for ethanol production is a global strategy to implement a global mission / global revolution towards achieving a global vision.

A global outlook – An outlook is a point of view, an attitude (American Heritage Dictionary 2000). By dictionary, the word global has many shades of meaning: international, worldwide, multinational, great, powerful (American Heritage); universal, comprehensive, total, inclusive, overall, large-scale (Microsoft Encarta Dictionary 2005). I will now summarize all those and thereby add my own definition in one word:shared. Within icrisat itself, the work ethic is shared – the work force call themselves Team icrisat. Dr Dar, Team Captain, leads and guides the icrisat staff to work together for the good of all, literally and figuratively. This is how icrisat has been able to produce hybrids of sweet sorghum as well as sell the species as a global crop for ethanol production to Rusni Distilleries Ltd so that now Rusni is producing commercial ethanol from sweet sorghum stalks (IPR, 11 Oct 2006, seedquest.com/). So: Teamwork is icrisat’s internal global outlook in nurturing sweet sorghum as a global crop using a global strategy to implement a global mission to achieve a global vision.

A global reach and impact - Today Africa, tomorrow the world. Already, icrisat has regional centers and research stations in Africa: Kenya, Niger, Mali, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Mozambique. Icrisat is now reaching out to Asian and American countries with its sweet sorghum initiative. Sweet sorghum is actually already grown in many countries: the United States, Australia, Africa (where it is known as durra), India (jowar), Ethiopia (bachanta). On her part, directly inspired by the Rusni sweet sorghum distillery as proof of concept, led by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, the Philippines has embarked on her own program of producing ethanol from the crop despite the fact that sweet sorghum is exotic to the islands (INF, 10 Sept 2006, nordis.net/). So: icrisat is reaching out globally in nurturing sweet sorghum as a global crop using a global strategy to implement a global mission to achieve a global vision.

A global mode of operation – My readings of the many reports of icrisat and on icrisat have given me another idea. The global mode of operation that this international research institute has adopted for its successful sweet sorghum initiative may be referred to as the sci-fi mode. That’s an acronym for science, citizen, financing, management, good offices, distribution of benefits, ecology. The assumptions here are that there is (a) acoalition of the willing: science, citizen, financing, management, good offices, and (b) a qualification of benefitsto man and the ecology. It is science that brings the crop to the attention of the citizen farmer who cultivates the soil and the citizen entrepreneur who brings in the needed technology and financing for a distillery. The good offices that have been supportive of the sweet sorghum initiative of icrisat are (a) in terms of policy – the local and national governments of India, and (b) in terms of advocacy – the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (cgiar), of which icrisat is one of the 15 international centers under its wings. Since the growing of sweet sorghum is labor-intensive, starting with the sowing of the seeds, this crop benefits more people by way of job creation. This kind of sci-fi must be managed well, remembering that what sci-fi management needs is not a business model but rather a development model. And since ethanol lowers the cost of energy for cars as well as lowers the threat of global warming, the sci-fi mode for sweet sorghum distributes the benefits of science-citizen-finance collaboration truly on a global scale, to the largest ecology of them all: Planet Earth.

Al Gore’s film is Our Film, as Planet Earth is Our Town. Thornton Wilder is quoted as saying about his play ‘Our Town’ (PBS (pbs.org/) :

Our claim, our hope, our despair are in the mind – not in things, not in ‘scenery.’ Moliere said that for the theatre all he needed was a platform and a passion or two. The climax of this play needs only five square feet of boarding and the passion to know what life means to us.

We can say then that ‘global warming’ is merely scenery, so we don’t have to present it to the citizens of Our Town. If we believe that, we lack five square feet of understanding and the passion to feel what life means to us, all of us together.

Now then, an inconvenient truth is that what the world needs now is go into not only a paradigm shift but a mode shift. 

The sci-fi mode I have just described for the sweet sorghum initiative of icrisat is so far a successful attempt to scale up science as to become global, as in:

(a) pandemic, involving wide geographic areas within a country
(b) universal, involving applicability under varied conditions
(c) multi-sectoral, involving all sectors of society
(d) multi-national, involving international partners within a country
(e) total, involving production, processing, marketing of products and distribution of benefits
(f) regional, involving formal groupings of several countries in an identifiable geographical setting
(g) worldwide, involving multiplier effects or ramifications throughout the world.

Cannot the climate change initiative of Al Gore learn from all that?

Sugarcane ethanol is the Brazilians’ choice, corn ethanol is the Yankees’ choice. Sweet sorghum ethanol has lower sulphur and higher octane and is cheaper to produce than sugarcane ethanol (Belum VS Reddy et al 2006, ‘Sweet Sorghum,’ icrisat brochure), as well as is cheaper than corn ethanol (Michael H Lau et al 2006, afpc.tamu.edu/). With a global manager in the person of a Filipino from Santa Maria, Ilocos Sur in Northern Philippines, an inconvenient PhD (Horticulture) graduate from the University of the Philippines Los Baños working in inconvenient India, sweet sorghum as an inconvenient fruit is proving to be a convenient fruit of science in the service of the people, directly aimed at effectively delivering good fire to stronger car engines, contributing good wealth to fuller people’s pockets, distributing good health from cleaner everyday winds.

Al Gore’s Occidental initiative is global warning; William Dar’s Oriental initiative is global cropping. Oh, East is East, and West is West / And it’s up to us to make sure / The twain ever shall meet.

Al Gore is a layman talking science; William Dar is a scientist talking layman. They are talking the same language: it’s called Global Warming. The Oscar for The Inconvenient Truth is another global warning about the survival of Planet Earth as we know it, our own survival as a species as we cherish it.

Another ‘scholar of grand ideas,’ in Andrew Leigh’s words (2000, econrsss.anu.edu.au/) is Francis Fukuyama, who is into politics and economics and is Chairman of the Board of a new magazine, The American Interest. Fukuyama is best known as the brash author and proclaimer of The End Of History And The Last Man published by the Free Press in 1992. 

Fukuyama says in his book The Great Disruption (1999): ‘A great deal of social behavior is not learned but part of the genetic inheritance of man and his great ape forbears’ (quoted by Marc D Guerra 2001, acton.org/). Now, I don’t think Fukuyama’s theory of the great disruption of social order worldwide in the 3 decades between the 1960s and 1990s is correct, but if we continue to ignore the 3 decades of global warning by Al Gore, it is not to the American interest only that we are not descendants but that we are the great apes ourselves and Fukuyama’s prediction will come true:

The End Of History And The Last Man.

Copyright 27 February 2007 by Frank A Hilario. The image of Al Gore and the globe is from the Internet; what you see is my rendering by Photoshop.