The Bureaucrats in Pursuit of the Invisible

On 1 April this year I received an invitation that, at first reading, I was convinced was a joke.  Could I attend a Treasury meeting to consider a proposal to set up a huge bureaucracy to administer the running of all industry? Whatever else I knew about our government and its policies, I could not credit that we had stooped to the folly of central planning.  I had had experience of Russia in its darkest days, when Moscow ran out of lady’s underwear (don’t ask me how I know!). Surely no-one of sound mind would wish to resuscitate that system?

But no, it was not a joke.  Our Treasury had hired some Dutch consultants to advise them on setting up a system to determine Z-factors, “to reward companies that have taken voluntary and early action to reduce their GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions.”

This is eco-colonialism at its worst.  Europe is struggling with its failed carbon trading system, which has cost it billions of Euros in VAT fraud alone. The value of carbon has fallen to less than €7 per tonne, and is not expected to rise until at least 2020.  At €7, not only have those who invested heavily when it was over €20 per tonne lost their shirts, but it now pays to build new coal-fired power stations. According to the Guardian (22-1-2015) “The Exchange Trading Scheme is currently experiencing a glut of more than 2 billion allowances as a result of factors including massive oversupply and recession.” Yet we are buying European services to tell us how to make the same mistake.

The flaws in thinking are manifold.  First, anything South African companies did to reduce their GHG emissions would be lost amidst the surging emissions of other developing countries.  Every year for the past ten years, China’s and India’s carbon emissions have grown by an average of 520 and 90 million tonnes respectively; South Africa’s total carbon emissions in 2013 were 440 million tonnes.

Secondly, the whole of the climate scam is in disarray.  The saturnine head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC], Dr Pachauri, has been forced to resign after two scandals, one involving some singularly inappropriate emails to a junior female employee and another in which he went around telling stories about Himalayan glaciers disappearing, and then got a huge grant to study what turned out to have been a non-problem all along. A study of the records of the Global Historical Climate Network [GHCN] has shown that temperatures have indeed climbed during the past century due to human interference – by the staff of the GHCN, which has “homogenized” most of the historical data downwards and much of the recent data upwards.  These adjustments have artificially added about 0.35^oC to the reported 0.8^oC temperature rise. Just to add to the destruction of the Carbon Causes Chaos theory, global temperatures had been warm but stable for the past 18 years, when theoretically it should have heated by another 1^oC. Moreover, the “fingerprint” of climate change, the warming of the upper troposphere faster than the earth’s surface, has not happened.  The much-vaunted Conference of Parties in Paris in November this year seems likely to make even less progress than the 20 such Conferences that have gone before.

All of this means that the rationale for curbing our greenhouse gas emissions is weak at best. In this light we have to ask whether it is sensible to set up a bureaucracy to licence industry. Of course, Treasury has talked of “rewards”, but we would be donkeys to think that such carrots did not come without sticks. The Z-factors would also be there to punish industries that did not reduce their GHG emissions.

The point of licensing industry arises from the Department of Environmental Affairs’ White Paper “National Climate Change Response” 2011. This was based upon the Long-Term Mitigation Scenarios, which should immediately warn any reader that the basis is flawed.  Scenarios explore extreme positions; you can then draw up practical plans between the extremes. The Department’s plan sits firmly on the lower scenario – it is by definition not practical.

The Department intends to define the “desired emission reduction outcomes for each sector and sub-sector of the economy - -.”  It would draw up “Carbon Budgets for significant GHG emitting sectors and/or sub-sectors - -.”  “Companies and economic sectors or sub-sectors for whom desired emission reduction outcomes have been established” would be required “to prepare and submit mitigation plans that set out how they intend to achieve the desired emission reduction outcomes.”

So there would be an Emissions Director within the Department who would have the authority to agree how much GHG the company could emit. As emissions are very strongly related to energy consumption, in practice the Emissions Director would determine each company’s permissible energy use. Because energy is one of the essential inputs to production, the Emissions Director would have control of every aspect of South Africa’s productive capacity.

Fortunately somewhat wiser counsel has prevailed at the National Treasury.  Its 2010 Discussion Paper specifically recognized the problem – “There are two options: an upstream tax at the point where fuels enter the economy, according to their carbon content; or a downstream tax on emitters at the point where fuels are combusted. The administrative costs and complexity of an upstream tax are significantly lower.”

In spite of this, the 2013 Carbon Tax Policy Paper still has a role for the Emissions Director – “The DEA will approve the appropriate emissions factors and procedures - - . “  It will “introduce mandatory reporting of GHG emissions for entities, companies and installations that emit in excess of 100 000 tons of GHGs annually, or consume electricity that results in more than 100 000 tons of emissions from the electricity sector.”  

 It was in the light of this that Treasury decided to ask the eco-colonialists to draw up “benchmarks” and Z-factors against which individual industry emissions could be measured.  Duly a massive (255-page) tome was prepared covering iron & steel, ferroalloys, cement, petroleum, chemicals, pulp & paper and sugar industries. Fortunately, perhaps, it is a case of Parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus [1](Horace), because for most industries there are no data of any worth.

So it seems likely that Treasury, when it finally gets round to taxing carbon, will tax upstream rather than downstream.  Administratively this is much simpler.  Environmental Affairs’ desire to establish a carbon kingdom may be stillborn, which is probably no bad thing.  But we are still left with a possible carbon tax. Is it likely to have any effect?

The answer is almost certainly not.  The prices of petrol and diesel have oscillated widely in recent years.  The demand for these fuels has grown steadily in spite of the price changes.  In economic terms, the demand is inelastic.

What this means is that a carbon tax is an exercise in futility. A tax on energy is unlikely to have any impact on our carbon emissions.  Have you seen any fewer 4x4s on our roads since they were taxed in the name of saving the planet?  Have you used much less electricity because coal-sourced power is levied? What is more important – growing our economy or doing our insignificant bit to save the world from carbon chaos?   

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[1] The mountains have given birth to a ridiculous mouse.

How sustainable is development?

The phrase "sustainable development" has become a sort of word-in-itself.  You can't talk about development without adding the word sustainable.

The trouble is that sustainabledevelopment is really undefined.  There have been noble attempts - everyone remembers the Brundtland story:

Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

Great stuff, but completely useless - you can't dig up something to keep your world going, because that means future generations won't be able to dig it up. The resources of the world are finite, right?

Recently I mulled over the paradox that we never seem to run out of non-renewable things like oil, but we are always running out of renewable things like rhinos and whales and fish and elephant.  There has, of course, been a thesis that we should already have run out of oil - it was called "peak oil" and a man called Hubbard who had worked for Shell developed the theory back in the 1960's. 

 However, in 1945 the world had 25 years of known oil; by 1970 we had used up all that oil, but by then had 30 years left. By 2000 we had used up all the 1970 oil, but by then had 40 years left.  Today we have used up 15 of the 40 years, but we have 55 years left.  What gives?

My resolution of the paradox was that, yes, the renewable resources are indeed finite, but the non-renewable stuff is not measured by the resource but by the reserves, and reserves are something quite different.  They depend on price and technology, and technology is the measure of human ingenuity, so the reserve is flexible and potentially expandable, whereas the poor old renewables have to fend for themselves.

In exploring this in a full-blown paper, I was led to separate sustainabledevelopment back into two words, and ask just what was "sustainable" and just what we meant by "development".  When I tried to publish the paper, one reviewer sniffily reported that I didn't understand sustainabledevelopment, which was rather unhelpful, and another made some useful comments about my economics, but complained I had "merely" used some widely available data, so could not recommend publication.  I am still trying to get the paper published, but recognize how truly politically correct sustainabledevelopment has become.

Of course, its political correctness flows from its being blessed by the United Nations. There are regular conferences on the topic.  One, back in 2000, set up six Millennium Development Goals to be achieved by 2015. 15 years down the line, it is gratifying to be able to report on the success:

• Reduce extreme poverty by half - it has been reduced by over 70% already
• Achieve gender equality in education - achieved by 2012
• Halve the proportion of the population without access to improved drinking water - bettered; it has been reduced by 60%
• Reduce child mortality by two-thirds - only managed a 44% reduction by 2013
• Reduce maternal mortality by three-quarters - only managed to halve by 2013
• Universal primary education - up from 80% in 1990 to 92% in 2013

In September this year, there will be another such conference.  You would think that, buoyed by the success of the Millennium goals, they would see the merit of keeping things simple.  But no, this is the United Nations.  The September conference is to consider a new set of SustainableDevelopment Goals - 169 in all! Focused it is not. 

My hero, Bjorn Lomborg and his Copenhagen Consensus have tried to offer some prioritization. They have found 18 of the goals which have some hope of giving real value, mainly simple things like improving treatment of malaria, immunising more children against preventable childhood diseases and wider use of family planning.  

But far too many of the 169 are politically correct globspeak:

By 2030 ensure all learners acquire knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including among others through education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of the culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship, and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture's contribution to sustainable development.

As The Economist commented, "Try measuring that!" 

Rhodes's legacy

There was a statue of Cecil John Rhodes at the foot of the steps leading to the centre of the University of Cape Town.  He was honoured because he had donated the land on which the University sits.  It is a magnificent site, probably one of the most dramatic sites for any university in the world, nestling under the crags of Devil's Peak with a view across the Cape Flats to distant mountains, with oceans to left and right.

However, Rhodes’ statue has become, in the words of one Stephen Grootes, the “equivalent of a racist swastika.” Worse, he says the Rhodes scholarships “were really set up with the intent of creating more white men like him with the same ideals.” Unfortunately Grootes shows himself to be as bigoted and racist as he claims Rhodes was.  Any reading of Rhodes’ Will shows him to be surprisingly wise, prescient and even pacifist.

For instance, clause 24 of the Will is unequivocal – “No student shall be qualified or disqualified for election to a Scholarship on account of his race or religious opinions.” For 1901 this was an extraordinary qualification – racism was rife at that time.  Five years later a man from central Africa named Ota Benga was exhibited in the monkey house of the Bronx zoo as part of an exhibit on evolution.”[1] No-one who has any sense of history and the way in which what is “normal” can change can fail to recognize that Rhodes was way ahead of his time. Clearly Rhodes did not want to create “more white men like him with the same ideals.”

There is a thesis popular in politically correct circles that Rhodes did not mean “race” when he said “race”.  The thesis holds that Rhodes understood “race” to define other classes of whites like boers. If this were so, then Rhodes was a racist as now understood. 

I think the argument is nonsense.  First, by saying “qualified or disqualified” he made it quite clear that he wanted the scholarships to be fully inclusive.  Secondly, his inclusiveness extended to religion.  We need to remember that anti-semitism was rife at that stage.  Indeed, Rhodes paid £5,338,650 for the assets of Kimberley Central, the largest cheque ever written, so consolidating the Kimberley mine. Part of the deal required Barney Barnato of Kimberley Central to become a member of the Kimberley Club, which up to that time had excluded Jews such as Barnato. So for Rhodes to call on the Trustees to ignore “religious opinions” was as wise as his call to ignore race.

Apollon Davidson quotes Rhodes as saying "I could never accept the position that we should disqualify a human being on account of his colour." Further, the Rhodes Trustees chose the first Black Rhodes Scholar only five years after Rhodes' death, in 1907, so they certainly did not view "race" any differently. So saying that he did not mean "race" as we understand it, but some politically correct interpretation of his meaning of "race", is absolute nonsense. And just to clinch things, it helps to remember that when Rhodes was elected Prime Minister of the Cape Colony, over 40% of the electorate were non-white - on a qualified franchise, to be true, but enfranchised nevertheless.

Of course, he failed to recognize the potential of women, but he was a man of his times.  Britain only gave a qualified franchise to women in 1918 and full franchise in 1928.

That he wanted men with ideals is undoubted. Clause 23 of the Will says that students “elected to the Scholarships shall not be merely bookworms - -.” Of course, they had to have achieved excellence in literary and scholarly things, and in “manly outdoor sports.” They had to show qualities of “truth, courage, devotion to duty, sympathy for and protection of the weak, kindliness, unselfishness and fellowship.” Above all Rhodes sought “moral force of character and instincts to lead” because he believed this would guide the Scholar “to esteem the performance of public duties as his highest aim.” 

The Scholars have borne out Rhodes’ hopes.  The list of past Scholars includes a host of household names, many of whom have attained the peak of academic excellence, or become leading jurists and scientists.  Among them there is, of course, Bill Clinton, 42^nd US President, and the forthcoming election may well have a Rhodes Scholar candidate for US Presidency, Bobby Jindal, who was conceived in India, imported into America in his mother’s womb, and is presently the Governor of Louisiana.  I know of no other scholarship which has had such a history of success in identifying future leaders of the global society.

But I was really struck by Rhodes’ foresight when I came to a late codicil. “I leave five yearly scholarships at Oxford - - to students of German birth, the scholars to be nominated by the German Emperor - -. The object is that an understanding between the three great powers will render war impossible, and educational relations make the strongest tie.”  This in 1901?  Victoria was still on the throne, and her nephew was the German Emperor. Yet Rhodes foresaw even the possibility of war between the nations, and took such steps as he could to strive for peace. 

Perhaps after all the rage over his duplicitousness towards Lobenguela, Rhodes’ basic pacifist instinct can be recognized.  How else can one understand Lobenguela’s Bayete salute at Rhodes’ burial?

So yes, the Rhodes statue is a reminder of the excesses of colonialism, and that leaves traces of anger even today.  But no, he did much that was good and for that he needs to be remembered.  Move him near the grave of the first Vice-Chancellor of UCT, Sir John Carruthers Beattie.  It is a peaceful spot in the woods, just off the track that Rhodes used to ride on his way to the prominence where his Memorial now stands.

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[1] http://www.nypl.org/blog/2013/10/15/classroom-connections-social-darwinism-european-imperialism

A departy?

When I first left school, the section of the school magazine devoted to past pupils suddenly became of more interest.  There was a fascination in seeing who was marrying, who was fathering, and even who was dying. There was a section devoted to those who had attained the great age of 80 during the past three months.  In the 1950's, the list of surviving geriatrics was three or four names.  Today it spreads over pages.  It is a graphic indication of how our life expectancy has increased during my own life.

The result is that these days I get invited to more and more 80th  birthday celebrations.  Last night it was time to cheer an old friend, but the cheer was decidedly dampened by the announcement that ten days ago he had been diagnosed with lung cancer, that the cancer had metastasized, and that he had only days to live.He was there, looking pale and on a crutch because his sense of balance had been affected, but he greeted us all. Eighty close friends sat down to dinner in his home, after snacking our way through a mountain of oysters.  The wine flowed freely - his wife is a true connoisseur of good vintages - and the talk was loud.

Then the speeches started, and they were wonderful. His wife of 30 years spoke of the exciting times they had had together.  His eldest stepson produced some of the finest quotes from the ex-editor's writing, and made an interesting observation - in days past, the elderly usually  lived with their family, and death was a familiar experience, while sex was something unspoken and behind closed doors.  Today, sex is out in the open, and the elderly die in old-age homes so the young never experience it at close hand!

Then it was the turn of our 80-year old host to speak.  He used a microphone, but his voice was firm and strong.  He told us of his early life, of being tortured by his schoolmates whenever he spoke English in a predominantly Afrikaans area.  He told us how, when he was 10, images of the German concentration camps displayed in the window of a Jewish shop in his country town turned him into a hater of Fascism.  When he was 15, the story of a Russian escaping from a Stalinist prison camp in Kamchatka turned into a hater of Communism.  These two stakes in the ground had defined his political positions all his life.

His early life in Fleet Street had led to a series of alcoholic adventures.  He expressed his heartfelt thanks to the kind, warm people of Alcoholics Anonymous who had taken him in, dried him out, and returned him to life.  He told of returning to a career in journalism, of being given editorship of a prestigious daily and the public disturbances that followed his appointment, of his time as editor of the largest weekend paper with a circulation of over a million, and how he had successfully annoyed virtually everyone at one time or another. He closed by thanking us all for coming to his party, and he was certain that this was the last time he would see us.  Then he moved around the room, talking to each in turn, saying farewell.

I found it incredibly moving - so much so that when someone asked me how I felt about the party, I could only respond with a neutral "Most interesting!" He snorted.

But having had an opportunity to sleep on the matter, I have come to grips with the sadness of impending loss of an old friend.  I think it was a marvellous occasion.  How often have we thought at a funeral how limited was the picture of the dead one's life - this time we had had a picture from the heart and it rang with glorious truth.How often at the wake after a funeral had we reflected that the dead one would really have enjoyed the party - this time, he had.

I think there should be more celebrations like this.  We need a word to describe them.  Would "departy" fit the bill?

The dangers of television

I rarely watch television.  We have a set at home. Once I tried to turn it on and failed.  I told my wife.  She said "Oh! I tried it three weeks ago and it didn't seem to be working then." It was repaired, but still gets little use.

When there was excitement about the State of the Nation Address, a friend, knowing of my telephobia, kindly invited me to join him and a political friend in observing the great ceremony. We sipped generous gins-and-tonic as we steeled ourselves for the event, and tried to get enthusiastic as the cameras showed dignitaries strolling self-consciously up the red carpet.  Finally the State President arrived in a very ordinary-looking van with what I presume were bullet-proof windows. After all the fancy black cars and 4x4s, it was something of a shock to see the presidential carriage so apparently modest.

Inside Parliament, there was a measure of chaos.  Various factions were chanting away -"Pay back the money" - "We love Zuma" - "Bring back the signal." The last became the operative call for a while, until the Speaker told Parliament's Secretary to turn off the jamming device and allow Members to talk to the outside world.

Finally, the State President rose to speak.  Soon, he was interrupted by an Economic Freedom Front speaker, asking a question in terms of one of the rules of the House.  The Speaker did not respond with a ruling on the rule, she merely informed him that the question was inadmissible.  This brought the leader of the EFF to his feet, to object to the effect that the rule cited by his fellow allowed a question, and that the Speaker's response was wrong.  Things soon got out of hand, with the Speaker ordering the Black Rod to escort the two EFF members from the House, them refusing to go (which was, in point of fact, breaking a rule of Parliament, to leave when so ordered by the Speaker) and the Speaker then calling in security to enforce her ruling - and the screen went blank, the goons stormed in, the whole of the EFF was bundled out, Zuma sat roaring with laughter at the spectacle, and the screen returned. (I later watched a video taken from the public gallery to find out what actually happened when the broadcast was censored).

Thus to the first real question - why was the whole of the EFF group removed?  The Speaker had only called on two of its members to leave. The remainder had every right to be there.  

When proceedings resumed, members of the Democratic Alliance were on their feet.  Who were these goons? Were they members of the police?  Neither the Speaker nor the Secretary of the Council of Provinces (who was joint chair of the meeting) would answer the direct question.  Finally the Secretary said she could not tell from where she sat whether or not they were police, and that was enough for the DA to walk out, joined by some other parties.  

Thus to the second real question - what were the police doing in the House, as seems most likely?  The police force is part of the executive arm of government, and have no place in the legislature.

The affair got under way again, this time with a half-empty house.  A member rose - Chief Mangosuthu Buthulezi, leader of the Inkatha Freedom Party, and he was allowed to make a rather rambling speech about what had happened being a disgrace.  The remaining members cheered, but was Buthulezi criticising the behaviour of the opposition or that of the government?  What he said could easily have applied to the latter.

Finally Zuma was allowed to finish his address.  He stumbled badly along the way, at one stage reading "1" as "I" before realizing his mistake.  Throughout he smiled and joked, and given the seriousness of what had just happened, I came to the conclusion that he must have been taking some form of tranquillizer.  Only a "happy pill" could have produced such a reaction in such awful circumstances.

Afterwards, I watched an interview with the leadership of the DA.  The most telling comments came from that latter-day Margaret Thatcher, our own Helen Zille.  The rules of the House had been broken in ways that showed clearly that the executive had absolutely no respect for democratic institutions. Others had broken the rules, too, but this did not excuse the executive for its breaches of the constitution.  If you wanted to seek the origin of the executive's intransigence, you need look no further than the president, who had broken rule after rule in his pursuit of power. The nation is clearly in a very bad state.

I did not sleep happily that evening. It comes from watching too much television.

The problems that belief can cause

Unfounded beliefs can cause awful tragedy.  The Americans fought a disastrous war in Vietnam because they believed the Vietnamese were in league with the Chinese communists.  Years and thousands of wasted lives later, they found out that the Vietnamese and the Chinese had been at odds for a millennium. And Blair's belief in Iraqi weapons of mass destruction had Britain joining the Americans in wrecking Iraq, again with countless thousands of dead.

Of course, the moment you start to consider the futility of religious wars, the folly of ill-founded belief becomes only too obvious.  But I am more concerned with beliefs that are at least demonstrably on the shakiest of grounds.  In particular, those where there is good science to establish a strong base for disbelief.

Of course, I immediately recognize the problem in that weasel word "good." How do you tell good science from bad?  The philosopher Karl Popper is my favorite source for answering this question.  In essence, one of his strongest tests is that a good scientific finding is one that is independently replicable. If I scientist tell you non-scientist that I did X and Y was the result, and I also tell you how I did X, and you follow my recipe and Y happens, then you have a strong basis for believing that X causes Y. That is good science.

Of course, we may not have established the true basis for the link between X and Y, but at least we have a working hypothesis on which to found further questions.  And by linking a whole body of questions and their testable answers, we can build a world view that possesses a strong logic.  Armed with such a view, the need for belief in answering new questions weakens.

We may ultimately find that the link between X and Y is fortuitous, and that there is a better answer which improves our world view.  That, of course, is precisely what happened when Einstein linked mass and energy and overthrew Newton's view of the world which had directed our thoughts for over 200 years. But Newton's world is still taught in our schools, because it answers many of our day-to-day questions with adequate precision.

However, today there is a new problem. Bad science can give rise to disastrous beliefs.  There is an excellent example in the bad science of one Andrew Wakefield, who in 1998 published a paper in the prestigious Lancet claiming a link between inoculation and bowel disease which in turn caused autism in children.  It was bad science, because it turned out not to be replicable. Wakefield was eventually charged with fraud and found guilty, while Lancet withdrew the paper.

However, many felt that the risk of inoculation causing autism was unacceptable, and refused to have their children inoculated.  Seventeen years later the results are becoming apparent.  From America comes news of children being "sent home from school. Their families are barred from birthday parties and neighborhood play dates. Online, people call them negligent and criminal. And as officials in 14 states grapple to contain a spreading measles outbreak - -, the parents at the heart of America’s anti-vaccine movement are being blamed for incubating an otherwise preventable public-health crisis." (New York Times 30 Jan)

The human tragedies that the fear of inoculation has caused are innumerable.  There are the parents whose child contracted whooping cough, and with whom they had to sit day and night for nearly four months as their child fought for breath. They could not understand that the vaccine would not work once the disease had been contracted. There is the young mother who had consciously decided that the risks of the vaccine were so great that she should do without, then contracted rubella and gave birth to a blind, deformed child. There is a reaction building, and doctors are refusing to help parents who neglected to have their children inoculated. Perhaps America will slowly come to its senses.

If it is not replicable, it is not good science. Inoculation is eminently replicable - it may have slight side effects, but the risks of the side effects are minuscule compared to the risks of the infectious diseases it prevents.

We have to speak out against bad science.  It can cause beliefs that have tragic consequences.   Nowhere is this more apparent than in the area of climate pseudoscience. Billions of dollars are being diverted to prop up a belief system that daily is becoming more irreplicable. It is even going so far as to change historical data to try to convince us that the world is warming faster than before:

 (Thanks to Josh and WUWT)

The "adjustments" turn out to be in exact multiples of tenths of a degree, for reasons that no-one can explain. All are downwards in the early years, thus making the apparent warming greater than it would otherwise be.  And these are the "official" figures from the Global Historical Climate Network, the basis for all the fears about climate change.  Bad, bad science, with predictably tragic consequences.

Begone, prophets of doom!

The prophets of doom have a long history.  Job was prominent among those who suffered, yet remained confident even when his supposed friends told him the end was nigh. Recently, the breed has spawned a new source of doom - "The fossil fuel industry must be put out of business by 2050 to avoid dangerous climate change" intoned one David le Page recently in the Mail &Guardian. He is part of a long tradition of those who have advised abandoning all hope when facing difficulties.  Fortunately history has a message for him and his kind – the human spirit is such that it can rise to almost every challenge.

Le Page’s thesis is that if mankind consumes much more fossil fuel, the additional carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will cause the average global temperature to increase more than 2^oC above what it was in the pre-industrial era before 1800.   It is a difficult thesis to substantiate, if only because we do not know exactly what the average temperature was in the early part of the 19^th century.  We only started to have some idea of the global temperature around 1860, when calibrated thermometers became widely available.  Since then, it has warmed by a little over 0.8^oC.

The million dollar question is how much of this warming is caused by added carbon dioxide.  Clearly not all of it, because the temperature shot up between 1910 and 1940, and there was little increase in carbon dioxide over that period.  So we don’t know how much extra carbon dioxide is likely to cause the atmosphere to warm by 2^oC.  It seems decidedly irrational to propose getting rid of fossil fuels, all our coal, oil and natural gas, to achieve a target which is so ill defined.

Proposing to get rid of fossil fuels becomes even more irrational once you realize than nearly 90% of all the energy we use comes from fossil fuels, worldwide.  South Africa uses fossil fuel for nearly 95% of its needs. So the world cannot be weaned off fossil fuels overnight.  Indeed, right now the use of fossil fuels is growing rapidly, and that growth seems likely to persist as China develops, India follows and Africa finally takes off economically.

There is a direct relationship between economic growth and the consumption of energy.  When nearly 90% of your energy comes from fossil fuels, then there is an equally close relationship between economic growth and growth in fossil fuel use.  So in calling for restrictions on the use of fossil fuels, Le Page is in fact putting in a plea for less development.  That is all very well if you are part of the developed world, but if you are in the process of developing, and have millions living in poverty, then you actually view such pleas as highly irresponsible.

Events in India illustrate this very well.  When China announced it would start to curb its growth in emissions after 2020, and would aim for zero further growth after 2030, India went on record as saying it was not in the least interested in any curbs on emissions.  Its development problems were such that eliminating poverty was far more important than addressing climate change. Recently, it has banned foreign funding of Greenpeace and other non-governmental organisations which it saw as posing a “significant threat to national economic security.”  A decade ago, India was emitting about twice as much carbon dioxide as South Africa; today it is emitting about four times as much and growing at about 100 million tons per annum.

We must not underestimate the benefits of fossil fuel use. If the internal combustion engine had not come into widespread use during the 20^th century, we would have seen massive starvation on earth.  In 1900, nearly half the area devoted to agriculture was used to grow fodder for draft and carriage animals.  By 1940, fodder was still vital.  Surprisingly, the largest use of horses in warfare was the German invasion of Russia in 1942, which involved about one million animals.  Fossil fuels have allowed us to convert huge tracts of land to the job of feeding people, not animals.  That, and the increase in productivity due to scientific farming, has meant that the supply of food has grown faster than the human population, so starvation is no longer a real threat for most people.

While renewable energy may have its place, we have to remember that modern economies need constant power.  The South African economy is stuttering right now because even the fossil fuel supply is intermittent.  Try to imagine what life would be like if the most of our power stopped the moment the sun went down.  Yes, we as individuals could probably cope with gas cooking and paraffin lamps or candles. However, most of the energy we generate does not go to individuals, but to keeping our developed economy going.  Less than 100 organisations in South Africa use about two-thirds of all the energy we produce.  Modern economies demand energy to generate wealth, and that energy needs to be available every hour of every day.  An intermittent supply is better than nothing, but much worse than a continuous supply.

Indeed, we can measure the cost of not having energy, and compare it to the cost of generation.  The loss of power early in 2008 hit the South African economy with about R75 for every kilowatt-hour that was lost.  Compare that to the approximately R0.60 that Eskom spends at present to produce a kilowatt-hour. It is infinitely better to have too much power than too little.

Of course, we need sustainable development. But there is no point in committing economic suicide in an attempt to sustain ourselves, as Le Page would have us do. According to the Brundlandt definition, “Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” Yes, we have to worry about future generations, but we also have to do so without compromising our ability to meet our own needs.  My generation coped with the previous generation’s love affair with the Mutually Assured Destruction of nuclear weapons.  I have every confidence that my children will cope with the far lesser threats of climate change in ways that will amaze us.