At the least, environment minister should fight for clean air
The air on the South African Highveld is some of the most polluted in the world. It kills and ruins the health of thousands of people every year. You would think that, in the face of this, it would be a priority of the environment minister to ensure cleaner air.
It seems, though, that Minister of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment Barbara Creecy would rather side with polluters while scolding those trying to force her office to clean up its act.
In what is being called the Deadly Air or Umoya Obulalayo Case, non-profit environmental justice organisation groundWork and the Vukani Environmental Justice Movement in Action have taken Creecy and others to court.
They are suing them for cleaner air in line with the government’s own plans from 2007, which were not meaningfully implemented.
Rather than pledging to make up for lost time, Creecy chose to scold those suing her:
“I noted the emotive description by the applicants of the coal-fired stations of Eskom as ‘dirty’, but those dirty coal-fired stations provide the electricity which enabled the applicants and their attorneys to type and print out the very papers upon which they rely in this application.”
If the minister thinks the word “dirty” is overly emotive, I would like to see her send her kids to school under a cloud of pollution. The pollution those power stations create is dirty. It is deadly.
Creecy’s response also smacks of hypocrisy. Yes, the groups suing her have to rely on Eskom’s dirty power, but that does not make them hypocrites.
Most South Africans would gladly choose clean energy if they had a choice. It is our most affordable, job-creating and reliable energy source, which would most rapidly solve our load shedding woes.
Civil society has been fighting for clean energy and climate action for decades. But the ANC government has stifled and crushed our renewable-energy aspirations.
It has forced in filthy new coal, fossil gas and oil projects and infrastructure over the objections of civil society. It has crushed climate action and renewable-energy development through inaction, red tape, corruption.
Several giant steps backwards
Some applauded Creecy when she finally held Eskom and Sasol accountable for violating our very weak air-pollution regulations.
We should not applaud our environment minister for doing the bare minimum requirements of her job, particularly when with her other hand she is weakening those very environmental regulations.
During the first days of South Africa’s first hard lockdown, Creecy moved ahead with weakening our air-pollution regulations, making our coal-fired power regulations for sulphur dioxide 28 times weaker than China’s, resulting in an estimated 3,300 additional deaths.
A regressive realisation of rights
In response to the “Deadly Air” case, the ruling party is arguing that in a context of poverty and inequality such as ours, we cannot move too quickly on cleaning up our air as it will hinder our development goals.
The problem with that argument is that it is precisely because of our reliance on an exploitative and extractive model of development that we are in this nightmare of poverty and inequality.
The evidence is overwhelming that a clean-energy future would create more jobs, more inclusive growth, ensure more reliable energy and help address the health and ecological crises we face. Yet we are being locked into a failed status quo by an old guard that prefers polluting patronage and economic stagnation over innovation, job creation and transformation.
Failed promises
The ANC is deeply compromised and only has false promises to offer when it comes to putting forward a developmental model that tackles our interconnected social, economic and ecological crises.
We need One Million Climate Jobs and a Green New Eskom.
At the least, we need our environment minister to fight for clean air, not for polluters. You’d think that would be her job, after all.