An opinion piece published in Landscape SA magazine, 2008. This column won an award at the 2008 "Practising the craft: writing about climate change and global warming" conference at Kirstenbosch in July 2008.
2008 will be remembered as the year in which two great strides forward were taken in enforcing more environmentally responsible behaviour in South Africans. The first kicked off around 10am one morning in late January with a decision by Eskom to institute emergency load shedding. Years of underinvestment in the country’s power generation infrastructure was finally brought to a head by a perfect storm of heavy rain across the coal heaps of Mpumalanga, unseasonably cold weather driving up electricity demand and the closure of a number of power stations for ‘routine maintenance’.
The response by citizens was immediate and emphatic. Radio stations sold millions of rands worth of advertising to companies pushing alternative methods of power generation. Solar panels threatened to provide the next gold rush. Every media outlet in the country instituted segments advising consumers on ways to live more simply, save more money and use less energy. Industrial parks across the nation were forced to re-evaluate their processes, learning rapidly how to operate in an environment where power became a scarce resource. Plans to be ‘off-grid’ replaced smash-and-grab hotspots as the favoured topic of (candle-lit) dinner time conversation. For the first time outside of an economic downturn, Eskom engineers were able to point at a measurable decrease in electricity demand, albeit forced by the severe rationing of the load shedding schedule.
Until that wet and chilly Thursday when our computer screens suddenly went blank and the fridge stopped humming, we were unequipped either mentally or emotionally to deal with the concept of electricity as a finite resource. For decades, South Africans wallowed in the excesses of dirt-cheap power belched out of the low-grade coal guzzling power stations that dot the eastern Highveld. We sloshed it through our houses, bought free rounds of the stuff for foreign owned aluminium smelters and traded it for political gain and economic stability with our northern neighbours. And then, suddenly, the free lunch was over.
For the second event, we can thank one of the candidates of America’s 2000 presidential election. By sticking to his beliefs through the most adverse swings in public opinion imagineable, one of those men has seen his efforts rewarded with a world economy that, for the first time, has energy as its most pressing concern. He has presided over a meteoric rise in investment and publicity in alternative technologies for both energy generation and transport, and historians will look back at his regime as having been in power when world attitudes towards fossil fuels changed forever. The other candidate got a Nobel prize for waffling on about Climate Change or something.
It may be unfair to lay the entire five-fold increase in the oil price since his inauguration solely at the door of the Oval Office, but through his meddlings in the Middle East, George W Bush has done more to ensure that alternative energy has a future than any signatory of the Kyoto Protocol. As $135 a barrel for Brent crude translates into massive hikes in the pump price, consumers across the planet have had to rethink their relationship with fossil fuels. Suddenly, the poster child for first world excess, the American SUV, looks like an endangered animal. Large vehicle sales in the US have suffered the sort of dramatic decline in the first third of 2008 that Green Peace have not been able to achieve in two decades of protest.
As the ripples from high energy prices spread out across the world economy, we are reminded of quite how selfishly humans are programmed to operate. For the better part of half a century, activists have called upon our better natures to live better, consume less, tread more lightly on the earth. With the exception of some pretty window dressing in the form of plant-a-tree days and petitions to stop clubbing baby seals, society’s behaviour as a whole has remained largely unchanged except when threatened with the immediate consequences of its actions. History does not abound with examples of large groups of people changing behaviour for reasons other than an improvement in individual comfort or economic well being.
The Gaia hypothesists may recognize the signs of a planet beginning to shrug back against the species that would dominate her. High energy prices have contributed to high food prices. The beginnings of measurable climate instability is driving up the relative value of water and arable land. A global tax in the form of higher insurance premiums related to increased storm damage risk adds a further, subtle brake to our runaway consumption. It is as if, after years of trying, the Earth has finally discovered the language of macro-economics with which to communicate with the human race.
I would love to believe that an innate goodness within each of us will some day arise to make us worthy custodians of the planet, and yet the evidence is clear. We are fundamentally programmed to only modify our behaviour in such a way as to derive the maximum value from our surroundings. In a few cases that value is emotional or aesthetic and can lead to the great life works of the likes of Jane Goodall, James Stevenson-Hamilton and Jacques Costeau. But generally, we are hard wired as a species to act in ways that maximize our comfort, and so make decisions that benefit us economically. The challenge for environmentalists is to ensure that we publicise the true costs of our actions in such a way that those who eat the lunch are also those who are presented with the bill.
Too cynical? Ask yourself this question: Which gave you greater pause for thought this year: World Environment Day? Or the first time you noticed that you were paying R10.40 for a litre of petrol?
Simon Gear, July 2008