Friends of Stellenbosch Mountain

FSM Home      Documents      News      Legal      Climate      Environment      Solutions

Problems and delinquents; emerging solutions

Structural solutions

• Columnist George Montbiot in this column put it most succinctly: What counts, in seeking to prevent runaway global heating, is not the good things we start to do, but the bad things we cease to do. Shutting down the large emitters such as coal-driven power stations are more important than initiatives to "be good".
• A major step forward would be to stop subsidising fossil fuels. Ten percent of the subsidies paid worldwide would pay for the transition to renewable energy. Here is the short version by the International Institute for Sustainable Development and the full report. See also the worldwide report by Renewables Now.
• Small-scale electric power generation may finally become part of the solution in South Africa. See Mail and Guardian article. NERSA is apparently working on changing the licensing requirements for small and micro power generation. Unfortunately, half of NERSA's website gives dead links at the moment. Who is being paid to run their IT?
• Frequent flyers generate a disproportionate share of emissions. The solution would be a frequent flyer levy which rises based on previous flights taken in a given year.
• There is a broad body of research that financial instruments are among the most effective measures to effect real change. Here is a equitable carbon tax proposal by the Climate Leadership Council which includes conservationists and economists.
• German minister for environmental affairs Svenja Schulze has presented three reports to tax fossil fuels while returning the revenues raised to citizens with lower consumption.
• Analysis of different carbon tax paths by Resources for the Future
• carbonbrief.org
• Got money to invest? You may want to read Mercer's guide to Investing in a time of climate change; here is the 2019 sequel
• Client Earth and other organisations are conscientising investors; see also Library of environmental law documents
• Just Share South Africa has written to local pension funds
• On the face of it, Climate Action 100+ looks like a good initiative, but the companies involved have yet to demonstrate that they mean what they say.
• Efforts to reduce CO2 by means of biofuels and afforestation may play a part, but they in turn have massive consequences for land use. It is unclear whether they would have a net positive effect or not.
• Natural ventilation building techniques, such as in the Harare Eastgate Centre, use 90 percent less energy

Personal solutions

• Inform yourself. Follow the links and read the references on this and similar websites.
• Calculate your carbon footprint, for example the carbon calculator and the WWF calculator which unfortunately does not yet have SA parameters set up.
• Flying makes a large contribution to your personal carbon footprint. For details see atmosfair, a German NGO which includes a flight carbon calculator. It remains to be seen whether so-called offsets are the way to go. There is no doubt that not flying at all or reducing flying is to be preferred.
• Work on reducing your carbon footprint.
• Become engaged with the larger processes. Individual awareness and parsimony are essential, but they are not enough. The political processes must be influenced and the largest emitters changed or closed down.
• Disinvest from carbon-intensive industries; do it early while you still can
• Suggestions by the Guardian on what you can do
• Current status and costs of small-scale solar systems
• Green Cape has a large website covering many aspects of going green
• Somerset West Village Garden
• If nothing else helps, it may be time to start naming and shaming those who continue to act selfishly.

Political solutions

• The United Nations is making an effort to have environmental damage a war crime; the UN law commission has published a set of draft principles
• African Climate Reality Project
• Stellenbosch University has joined
the Global Alliance of Universities on Climate Change
• The organisation Forbidden Stories allows threatened environmental journalists to get their stories out.
• In Britain, some are waking up, but most people there and everywhere just ignore the issue
• Climate change now tops science policy concerns ofAmerican Physicists even as Trump again attempts to cut science funding and especially environmental and climate projects. Concern is not enough; there needs to be concrete action
• Article on environmental policy of South African parties
• Fridays for Future South Africa
• Extinction Rebellion SA
• School children and students protesting: Summary of worldwide demonstrations on 15 March 2019,   South African demonstrations,   another article on TimesLive,   pictures on IOL,   opinion piece in Daily Maverick   Statement published by a leader group including Greta Thunberg. Here is a statement by scientists starting in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, supporting the strikes. The journal Scientific American has published an open letter signed by American scientists in support.
• 350africa and 350.org
• The Green New Deal report by Data for Progress, a think-tank for the USA Democratic Party, sets out an ambitious program to reduce USA emissions to zero. It is a good start, but it is far from official policy at the moment. Unsurprisingly, the US Senate voted it down. At least they discussed climate change.
• Green Times
• Youth Climate Strike US
• UK Student Climate Network
• A new New Mexico energy bill implies that some US states are getting it; here is the PDF file
• Cambridge University has accepted a motion to divest its endowments from fossil fuel-related companies.
• Center for Climate Integrity
• The Carbon Disclosure Project runs the global disclosure system for companies, cities, states and regions to manage their environmental impacts.
• Urban Agriculture Initiative of the Johannesburg Inner City Partnership; here is an newpaper article describing their work

Problems and delinquents

• The top 20 delinquents have been identified. See the press release and the details by the Climate Accountability Institute. By far the largest delinquent is Saudi Aramco but Norway is also represented. Also on the radar are BHP Billiton, Sasol and Anglo American. The Chinese are not represented because of a dearth of data.
• The ultraconservative Brazilian government under Bolsonaro is currently the world's worst environmental delinquent as its reckless encouragement of logging and burning the Amazon rain forest gather pace. G7 leaders are finally doing something but the fires rage on.
• Coal and reliance on coal is a major problem
  • An accessible summary of the issues and the attempts by the coal industry to pretend that "clean coal" exists.
  • The SA coal industry continues to claim that all is fine, citing current income, current employment, current prospects and current excuses, with no regard of the drastic changes which are more than likely in the coming years.
• German right-wing political party AfD reportedly is veering towards climate denialism
• The Climate Leadership Council appears to be an effort by the largest emitters to get off scot-free. Behind the green cloak there are hard financial interests at stake. While carbon taxes as such are not disputed, the multinationals would prefer to cap the price at about USD40 while the IPCC estimates far higher costs rising to thousands of dollars per CO2 ton later this century. See section 2.5.2.1 of the IPCC SR15 special report's Chapter 2 this article which says that Microsoft and others are trying to head off a number of climate lawsuits.
• As everyone knows, Eskom is a threat to South Africa both financially and climatewise. A former insider explains that Eskom has a drug problem: unlimited government financial support. An opinion piece in the Mail and Guardian places the blame on the World Bank for its 2010 loan to South Africa, in which the lion's share went towards funding Medupi. Presumably the World Bank Loan forms a major component of the massive debt incurred by Eskom. Once you realise that that loan is Dollar-denominated, the chances of repayment of SA's external debt become even worse under a Rand deprectiation scenario.
• The SA Government and NERSA are displaying amazing incompetence (or perhaps are using deliberate delaying tactics) in implementing the obvious solutions: distributed power generation, also called Small-Scale Embedded Generation.
• According to the Guardian, based on a report by InfluenceMap, oil firms are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to delay, control or block policies to tackle climate change.
• Large companies have joined in the Industry Task Team on Climate Change to halt the carbon tax and influence policy to their benefit. The related Energy Intensive User Group includes the largest emitters such as Sasol and the large mining houses. Typical efforts at lobbying and raising public ire are directed at minimising and preferably reversing the tax.
• Apart from Eskom itself, Sasol is by far the largest emitter in South Africa. Its recent troubles at Lake Charles are only the beginning of a downward spiral as there is no viable solution to keep the Secunda plant operational as pressure mounts.
• The Bosasa-famed Watsons are into building a wind farm on Groot Winterhoek Mountains. As much as wind power is an important part of the future, it may not come at the cost of further destruction of the biosphere.
• Saudi Arabia is buying up land and water for agricultural purposes worldwide and shipping the produce back home
• On 22 May 2019, Botswana lifted a ban on elephant hunting despite indications of an increase in poaching; here is another article