“The climate change bottom line”

Article I had published in the Weekender, 24 October:

THERE’s a widespread and significant misconception about the likely effects of strong action to cut or “mitigate” greenhouse gas emissions: that it will hurt economies.

The chair at a recent climate debate in Cape Town summed up popular perception and prejudice when he said that those calling for a switch to a low-carbon economy are asking for a “huge sacrifice”.

It’s a twofold misconception. First , the damage to gross domestic product (GDP) is usually exaggerated, particularly in the US by conservative opponents of the proposed, and rather modest, Waxman-Markey climate bill.

“Southern Africa in for 10°C temperature rise”

Article I wrote for The Weekender, Oct 3

WITHOUT global cuts in carbon emissions, average temperatures in southern Africa could increase as much as 10°C as early as 2060, according to a study released by the UK’s Meteorological Office last week. The study is based on a range of models, and predicts an average global temperature increase of 4°C by 2060.

But 4°C is just the global average increase — and while some areas will warm by less than 4°C, others will warm by more. For southern Africa, a 10 °C rise is likely in inland areas.

According to Michael Sanderson, co-author of the Met Office report, “The exact impacts of such a large temperature rise on SA were not addressed in this study. However, food production will be adversely affected. The temperature rise will decrease crop productivity and increase the risk of hunger. Some plants and animal species will become extinct…

“Fired up by cleaner coal”

That’s the Weekender’s headline for an article I wrote a couple of weeks ago on underground coal gasification. (My headline was “Old energy’s last gasp?”)

ESKOM is very comfortable with generating power from coal, but like many of the world’s utilities, the parastatal is under ever- increasing pressure to use less coal and reduce its enormous contribution to global warming.
One of Eskom’s latest efforts to make coal cleaner is a pilot project for underground coal gasification (UCG) adjacent to the gigantic Majuba power station near Volksrust in Mpumalanga.
The idea behind UCG is that instead of first mining coal, processing it, then burning it to produce heat and electricity, you set it alight underground to produce a stream of gas that can be burned to produce electricity.

The Weekender’s website carries the full article, which as it has been edited is a little less sceptical than the version I filed. My concern is that Eskom will use successful UCG as yet another strategy to postpone serious investments in renewables.

Getting the asteroid onto page one

Alarmed that the urgency of the climate change crisis has not yet dawned on South African editors, this August I partnered with the Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership, Project 90 by 2030 and the Goedgedacht Forum for Social Reflection, as well as leading South African science writer Leonie Joubert and the environmental writer Monica Graaff, to hold an Editors’ Briefing on Climate Change.

We particularly wished to emphasise the importance of the imminent COP15 talks in Copenhagen in December. There, of course, we very much hope that South Africa will contribute to the world negotiating a visionary extension to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, one that will turn us away from runaway climate change.

We ran the event at the Hyatt, in Rosebank, Johannesburg, on August 6. I had raised money from the Danish government to fund it. Our contributors included:

• Ed Milliband, UK secretary for energy and climate change (in person)

• James Smith, chairman, Shell UK and member of the Prince of Wales’s Corporate Leaders Group on Climate Change (via video link)

• Dr Bob Scholes (CSIR) and Dr Guy Midgley (SANBI), co-authors of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 4th Report of 2007

• Tasneem Essop and Richard Worthington, climate specialists with

Incite Sustainability

Since January 2008, I have been working fairly consistently with Incite Sustainability as a writer, editor and researcher. Late last year, I became an associate. At present, one of my key roles is writing and maintaining the Incite blog.

Incite Sustainability is a South African based consultancy that provides strategy and implementation advice on sustainability policy and practice to the private and public sector. Combining substantial local and international experience across a broad range of industries and sectors, we help our clients to identify the risks and market opportunities associated with sustainable development.

Recent Incite clients include Sasol, Anglo Coal, Pick n Pay, Engen, Bidvest, Western Cape Provincial Government, UNEP, UN Global Compact, Development Bank of Southern Africa, and International Institute for Sustainable Development

An editor again

I’m now, for a short time, the editor of Research Africa.

Research Africa covers the research environment — policy, funding, infrastructure, training — across the continent. Much of it, I fear, is at present crashingly dull: notices of conferences, scholarships and funding opportunities, lightened (if that is the word) by a heady mixture of endless announcements by aid organisations, governments and other earnest twiddlers of the knobs of continental development. These announcements are rarely if ever accompanied by statements of past achievements or measurable targets, and so far my efforts to discover just how much is achieved, and when, and where, are proving frustrating.

I have gained new insight into just how much aid and development is designed without consulting Africans, how much those running these organisations like to patronise Africans, and how self-interested much of this purported benevolence really is.

But the attempt to uncover these things, at least, is enjoyable.

My contract with Research Africa ends on 20 July.