Courage is vital to dump coal for green gold
The shift to a green economy, powered mostly by renewable energy sources like wind and solar, is the goal of most governments as climate change forces a seismic shift in mankind’s relationship with Earth. Finite energy resources, like coal and oil, can cause almost infinite damage to the world’s ecology, threatening livelihoods and even survival. Until now, with the internal combustion engine as its totem, the industrial revolution that has shaped the world we live in has been powered by oil. That this is having a disastrous and permanent effect on our climate is beyond dispute, regardless of the vested interests that sponsor a vocal “doubt” industry, operating under the cover of free speech. In extreme weather, in the lived experiences of farmers and fishermen who have seen their surrounds change before their eyes and in their lifetimes, and even vanish, none but the most obstinate fail to accept the truth.
Like all big technological changes, the shift to renewable energy away from fossil fuels will have winners and losers. In SA, billed as the world’s 12th-largest emitter of harmful gases, entire communities are built around the fossil-fuel value chain, from mining to burning the coal to produce the steam to power the turbines that keep our lights on. How will they be assisted to transition to this brave new world? Will the political and economic interests at the heart of the mining-energy complex that has shaped public policy to its benefit for so many decades have to be confronted head-on? Will SA necessarily have to sacrifice growth to meet its new greenhouse gas emission targets? Or is green the new gold?
This week it was announced that SA had adopted significantly stricter targets to be submitted in the build-up to the UN’s COP26 climate conference in Glasgow. It relies on “a very ambitious power sector investment plan” and the implementation of a green transport strategy, energy efficiency programmes and a carbon tax to meet the goal.
The more onerous targets set by President Cyril Ramaphosa’s government may well be interpreted as a pre-emptive warning to the vested coal interests that change is coming and is unavoidable. Now all we need is the political will to follow it through.