Zero emissions, protesters tell energy department
Citizen reporter
Members of Extinction Rebellion, an international environment movement who uses nonviolent ways of pushing awareness, protested outside the department of mineral resources and energy in Pretoria.
Protesters are demonstrating against the “collective failure of the global club of polluters to meet the challenge of global heating and the climate crisis”, a statement released yesterday said.
The movement accuses the SA government of following in the footsteps of perpetrators of ecological collapse and mass extinction of species, due to a “unwillingness to transition away from fossil fuels towards renewable energy”.
The group plans to start a campaign of civil disobedience early next year, should government refuse to make a clear commitment to zero carbon emissions.
“The only force that is capable of bringing about the change that we require are the people themselves, in particular those that are the most vulnerable,” they said.
In an open letter published by Daily Maverick, the group announced its plans, in which they stressed that it cannot be “business-as-usual” in South Africa while extinction continues and the planet burns.
Extinction Rebellion want the government to “tell the truth” and “declare an emergency”, and appealed to the department to “reverse its inconsistent policies” on fossil fuels and to transition to renewable energy.
“This requires a state-driven process to enact law and policy measures that rapidly remove us from the club of the world’s biggest polluters,” the published letter stated.
“We need a democracy that is fit for purpose, one that brings in climate justice emergency measures, befitting the crisis we are in”, the letter said.
The group demand a people-led indaba to oversee changes to clean energy because they “have lost faith in the state”.
Only the people themselves can bring change