Castles Made of Sand

As a long term fan of the airship, for their beauty and grace, their engagement with the ‘cruising’ element of travel – slow travel – if you will, I’m always pleased to hear about new developments promising their return to the skies.

While I’m waiting for a Hindenburg scale helium dirigible, with restaurants, state rooms, ballrooms etc. built using the best of modern knowledge and materials (see previous entry) – the flight of the more modest Spirit of Dubai over London this week is still inspiring.

The BBC Online story doesn’t shy away from energy descent future either, with Dick Chadburn, chairman of the Airship Association, and a former engineer manager at Shell quoted saying:

"In a world with very limited fossil fuels or restricted use of fossil fuels you have got to go back to the technology of your great grandfather - no cars, but bicycles. The airships could form part of that."

In light of this it’s intriguing that the Spirit of Dubai is travelling across Europe, Egypt and the Middle East (largely following the “all red air route” Alan Cobham mapped out for the 1930s British airships before the R101 disaster - and thence used by Imperial Airways) to Dubai.

It's advertising, en route, the “Palm Jumeirah”, Dubai's enormous development in the shape of a palm on land reclaimed from the sea. Dubai’s massive development of new skyscrapers, shopping malls, luxury hotels and villas has been motivated by the Kingdom’s realisation that it’s oil wealth is about to go into decline in the face of peaking fossil fuels. Dubai figures it can turn itself into a luxury tourist resort, site of second homes on fantasy islands and become a major city of the 21^st Century getting new wealth from super-rich visitors (see Mike Davis' excellent article 'Fear and Money in Dubai' in the New Left Review on how Dubai is "Speer meets Disney on the shores of Araby").

What I’ve always wondered is – in this peak oil future of energy descent – how anyone is supposed to get to Dubai to enjoy this set-up(certainly in the numbers required to make it financially add up), let alone how they are going to run the a/c, elevators etc. Perhaps airships are part of the plan – but I can’t see that their thinking is that advanced (Emirate Airlines recently placed a $37 billion order for new airplanes from Boeing and Airbus). Anyway, international transport is going to be the last of their worries when there’s no artificial cooling of 120 degree Fahrenheit heat, and the desalination plants have no power to produce drinking water…

I imagine the whole place as castles in the sand, ruins of the (near) future being built now. Grander follies than the 6 storey towers the Anasazi nation abandoned, or even the empty buildings of Detroit photographed and discussed by Camilo Jose Vergara in American Ruins.

It’s a JG Ballard style urban dystopia in the making, and when I think about all those glass fronted tall buildings waiting for airborne travellers to descend and spend and save the place - then it reminds me of Jimi Hendrix too, singing:

"Look, a golden winged ship is passing my way"
And it really didn't have to stop...it just kept on going.
And so castles made of sand slips into the sea,
Eventually.

IMAGES: Spirit of Dubai over London, Dubai skyscrapers, abandoned Anasazi city, the abandoned Michigan Station in Detroit.