When decoded, “unlock funding and accelerate renewable energy,” the slogan of those advocating human efforts to manage climate change, actually has contradictory consequences which, sadly, are being ignored.
By definition, unlock means open, release or liberate. By advocating acceptance of funding for so-called renewable energy, the debt implications of that direction amount to greater debt captivity. This is obvious when the advocates stipulate that investment in ‘renewable capacity’ needs to triple in the next five years – more than R1 trillion – in order to stave off the “devastating warming” consequences of fossil fuel usage (INL, November 25).
As it is, South Africa’s rapidly increasing and unsustainable debt burden – now 75% of GDP (R5,2 trillion) - has prompted the IMF to advise adoption of a debt-ceiling. To “accelerate renewable energy” means, therefore, accelerating debt. It also means accelerating costs for electricity consumers. Investments in wind energy in the US and Europe have dried up. Shell has just abandoned the New Jersey Atlantic Shores project in which it had invested nearly $1 billion. The 40% increase in megawatt costs for consumers deters the viability of such projects.
The word ‘renewable’ is also misleading. Wind turbines are not only very expensive and high maintenance but in themselves are not renewable. Besides, they are unreliable as key components of a secure energy infrastructure. Germany's social and industrial experience this winter of costly, intermittent supply provides a sobering lesson as to what happens when reliable, standard energy generation sources are sidelined.
Despite the glaring shortcomings of “renewable energy,” the claim that human efforts at decarbonisation can influence climate change qualifies such believers as modern day Canutes and henceforth should be called 'Climate Canutes.'
Like King Canute of England who believed his power could deter the rising tide from wetting his feet as he sat on a beach, the Climate Canutes refuse to appreciate that climate change is regulated by the sun's modes, the variable tilt of the earth and the eccentricity of the elliptical paths of the earth around the sun, all of which is validated by science and history. There is nothing humans can do about that natural phenomenon.
Fortunately, we are going to be spared the studied ignorance of the Climate Canutes because where the US goes, the world follows. President Trump’s bold rejection of the unscientific and exorbitantly costly Paris Climate Accord is restoring common sense and sanity. History will reckon with the Climate Canutes.
DR DUNCAN DU BOIS| DURBAN