A better year ahead?

 Michael – alternate Thursdays

The Washington Post closed last year with an article summarizing the effects of climate change in 2023: The climate future arrived in2023. It left scars across the planet. It documents the horrendous fires in Greece and elsewhere, the drought in South America shrinking the rain forest and disrupting waterways, and the temperatures that made records all over the world in 2023. 

Simon's Town mountains burn
Photo: Daily Maverick

I admit that I didn’t read it when it came out on 31^st December. It seemed to me that there was enough doom and gloom going around with wars and deaths as we exited 2023, and maybe, just maybe, we could be a bit more optimistic for 2024. Besides which, Cape Town was battling its own raging fires and that seemed bad enough for the time being.

Aviation fuel goes green?

A lot of positive things happened in 2023 on the climate front and many of them were based on technology. Solar panels became more efficient and less costly. A Virgin airliner made a transcontinental flight on green fuel (mainly from used cooking oil). Electric cars became more accepted (although, of course, their greenness depends on how the electricity used to charge their batteries is made). Nuclear power started to look more hopeful, both from the viewpoint of fusion energy and on the recycling of waste fuel rods (90% can now be recycled). I believe that it's these technological advances that hold hope for the future.  

The world has discovered that even when people are convinced about climate change, most of them (the so-called third world) have little they can do about it, and the rest will take small steps but are unenthusiastic about big ones. So the new technologies have to be able to replace the existing polluting ones. People are going to travel by car and plane, they are going to warm their homes, they are going to have cattle farms and eat meat. Maybe these activities will be reduced. (It seemed likely after covid, but the airlines have bounced back with record profits.) Efforts have to be focused on supporting the change to, and development of, different technologies. I think the majority of people now believe that addressing climate change is very important, but in reality they won’t give up their lifestyles in order to do so.

South Africa's lone nuclear power station Koeberg. Needs friends?

South Africa had its longest period of uninterrupted power supply in 2023 over the recent holidays – about three weeks. That was a result of people being on their summer vacations, and that schools and many factories and businesses were closed. The rest of the year we had extended “load shedding” (periods of the day when the power utility shut off electricity on a rotating schedule to prevent the collapse of the grid). The country runs on coal and diesel, yet it has abundant hours of sunshine, windy areas, and one recently refurbished nuclear plant. South Africa needs a dramatic shift to more and cleaner power. Nuclear is surely in that category, at least while we transition to other green energy. I now have my own solar power system which supplies most of the electricity I need, but it was a stand-alone system for my house and expensive, especially as the power utility effectively forced everyone who could afford it to move in that direction at the same time. The point is that the large majority of South Africans can’t afford it. Without electricity, they burn wood and oil products for heating and light. That’s the case throughout the third world. (On the other hand, their carbon footprints are tiny in comparison to mine.)

Cop 28

Light at the end of the tunnel? I wrote a blog twelve years ago about the total failure of COP17, which was held in Durban in 2011. We’ve just had COP 28 in the UAE. While a set timetable for phasing out fossil fuels didn’t make it passed the hosts, it’s been agreed in principle, as have a lot of other targets and limits. The first world is on board, and the third world countries of the world are signing on provided they don’t carry all the pain for what the first world has done since the industrial revolution.

Start of a new generation

Back to those fires in the Cape. A friend watched while the fire reached a few hundred yards from his house before the wind changed and the crisis passed. We must expect more of this. However, we should keep in mind that these sorts of events have happened for millennia. The Protea species which are a key component of the Cape Feinbos, one of the world’s six floral kingdoms, actually need fire for their seeds to germinate successfully. They’ve evolved with fire. This isn’t something man is responsible for, and it will carry on whatever we do about climate change. Similarly, there have always been and will continue to be droughts and floods.

Climate change is here. We have to cope with it now. Prepare for worse fires, floods, and droughts. Make plans to evacuate low lying island nations over time. Support third world countries that are carrying the cost of technological change while still trying to develop. That can be where support for solar, wind, and nuclear power should come in.

2024 is a year of elections around the world - 60 countries with 4 billion citizens. That includes the US, UK, South Africa, India, Taiwan. Let's hope that not too many governments are elected that think these problems stop at their borders.