Retrospect for a Talk-shop

Thursday, August 16, 2012
Wasted Seed
Zeroing In On Waste: The Uses and Abuses of Climate Change
When sunny Durban hosted the 17th Conference of the Parties (COP17) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Kyoto Protocol (CMP7), there were many expectations and the excitement was palpable. Before D-Day, which was the Monday of 28 November 2011, the eThekwini Municipal Manager Dr Michael Sutcliffe offered R600- million as a guestimate based on an average daily estimate of 25 000 visitors spending R60-million per day for three whole weeks.
To those who followed this crucial spectacle, it’s clear that the final sessions were stretched for about 2 to 3 days; one therefore wonders if the City of Durban ended up paying much more than the R200-million it initially budgeted for. The point of this essay is to ascertain whether all this was worth it or is it another wasted expense costing the already ailing global economy billions and also further depleting our meagre energy potential.
The parties to the convention have met annually since 1995 as COP to assess progress in dealing with Climate Change. In 1997, the Kyoto Protocol established legally binding obligations for developed countries to reduce their Greenhouse emissions. So COP17 seeks to secure global climate agreements as the Kyoto Protocols first commitment period (2008-2012) is ending. Many opinion makers emphasised that success at COP17 negotiations ultimately rested on China’s diplomatic skills. Industrializing countries with constrained resources such as China and India were set no binding targets at COP3, in Kyoto, in 1997.

During COP15, which was held in 2009 in Copenhagen, No binding agreement for long term climate change action was reached, although a ‘political accord’ was adopted by 25 parties including the USA and China; which included the first time a collective commitment by developed countries to provide additional resources totalling nearly US$30 billion by 2012 to mitigate against Climate Change. Now it is also instructive to note that there have been scores of suspicious conspiracy theories in the form of You-Tube video’s and blatant pseudo political propaganda documentaries issued by United States citizens who see themselves as defenders of democracy. Many of these ‘film-makers’ are vehemently opposed to the notion of Global Warming or Climate Change, they see all such conferences, UN and state backed initiatives as part of the global agenda to create more profits at the expense of poor citizens.
Now most ordinary African people had no clear idea what Climate Change was until the media blitz preceding COP17. A lot of younger people including myself have hardly even heard of the preceding conferences of the parties, yet we were always aware of what wanton pollution and exploitation is. What COP17 literally brought home was that it was mostly industrial emissions which contributed massively to polluting the atmosphere, provoking Climate Change and that the purported solution had to be “green energy” development.

Yet we are hardly ever informed about the merits and demerits of wind power, hydro-power and the other ‘cleaner’ alternatives to fossil fuels. South Africa’s task in COP17 was to elicit contributions from developed economies to support the Green Climate Fund. The GCF is a UN mechanism to support programmes in developing countries to mitigate and eventually reverse the damage of Climate Change.

To someone like myself and the many other observers, COP17 and the developed countries are just wasting time and throwing money at a problem which requires more creativity, sacrifice and a willingness to change or transform old patterns of thought and civilisation. Surely the billions of figures mentioned in the first paragraph could be better spent on education, developing Indigenous Knowledge Systems & climate friendly technologies.
But there is no great and one sided profit in such things for the multinational health, energy, fuel and mining industries, there are no corrupt politicians and local chiefs to bribe in a system that empowers people to get off their dependency on inefficient and expensive energy grids.
Our world suffers from the actions of a handful of greedy people, people whose lives and livelihoods are never affected by the nuclear fall-outs and adverse weather conditions that affect subsistence farmers and shack dwellers.

If politicians were really the public servants that they are supposed to be, they would pass laws that not only restrict the subjugation of other people and the planet; they would also be obliged to use public health systems. A law that says public servants should utilize public utilities, housing, schools and transportation would place them in a position where they would empathise with the plight ordinary people.

Instead of waiting for global polluters to amend their ways and invest in a fund that impedes their overzealous greed for profit at all costs, local governments of developing countries should zero in on Zero Waste principles focussing on redesigning products and methods of production to eliminate waste by mimicking natural processes and developing closed loops.
South Africa should be converting waste to resources for the benefits of local production and creation of healthy and sustainable living conditions, an awakened society.
Inextricably connected to global corporate greed is a deeply embedded culture of institutionalised racism, a matter which is conveniently shunned in such expensive talk-shops. The perpetrators cannot afford to be introspective and change their ways, there’s no money to be made in common sense.