Today, April 8, the World Bank will decide on the loan to South Africa's Electricity Supply Commission (Eskom). It is a big day as it determines the direction South Africa takes for the next 30 years or so.
We'll keep updating on this story. Meanwhile, here are the voices of Prof. Patrick Bond and activist Desmond D'Sa:
World Bank coal loan to South Africa? No thanks!
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Thursday, April 1, 2010
MotherSpeak Structure
This blog is part of the MotherSpeak "hub". The nodes are:
MotherSpeak - the center of it all is fiscally sponsored by Peace Development Fund. You are invited to make a donation any time and you will receive your IRS donor credit from PDF.
This blog derives from the book, Long Time Passing: Mothers Speak about War and Terror. (Buy it and help a sister out! or donate $50 to MotherSpeak and receive the book as a premium and an IRS tax credit!.)
The author, Susan Galleymore, is founder of MotherSpeak, creator of the nodes, and host of the weekly radio show, Raising Sand Radio, under MotherSpeak Media...
and the Cato Ridge Environmental Coalition which is one node of MotherSpeak's environmental arm (think of this as Mother Nature's arm of MotherSpeak) Other nodes include keeping tabs on the Restoration and Rehabilitation of the Superfund site formerly Naval Air Station, Alameda, California, learning about and educating on composting, developing green and sustainable communities, and keeping tabs on unsustainable fossil fuel developments.
For those more oriented towards pictures:
MotherSpeak - the center of it all is fiscally sponsored by Peace Development Fund. You are invited to make a donation any time and you will receive your IRS donor credit from PDF.
This blog derives from the book, Long Time Passing: Mothers Speak about War and Terror. (Buy it and help a sister out! or donate $50 to MotherSpeak and receive the book as a premium and an IRS tax credit!.)
The author, Susan Galleymore, is founder of MotherSpeak, creator of the nodes, and host of the weekly radio show, Raising Sand Radio, under MotherSpeak Media...
and the Cato Ridge Environmental Coalition which is one node of MotherSpeak's environmental arm (think of this as Mother Nature's arm of MotherSpeak) Other nodes include keeping tabs on the Restoration and Rehabilitation of the Superfund site formerly Naval Air Station, Alameda, California, learning about and educating on composting, developing green and sustainable communities, and keeping tabs on unsustainable fossil fuel developments.
For those more oriented towards pictures:
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Holy Crude! Is it true?
Shell Oil apologizes for messing up the environment:
Watch and listen
In a parallel but more equitable universe this could be true. Alas, not in this one but the idea behind the hoax is good. Perked me up for a moment or two!
Thanks to the creators!
Watch and listen
In a parallel but more equitable universe this could be true. Alas, not in this one but the idea behind the hoax is good. Perked me up for a moment or two!
Thanks to the creators!
The World Bank and the Four Horsemen of Climate Change: Apocalypse Now?
Read my article below, ...then tell U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to ensure the U.S. votes against any World Bank loans for dirty coal.
World Bank and the Four Horsemen of Climate Change: Apocalypse Now?
Senator John Kerry described President Obama, Premier Wen, Prime Minister Singh, and President Zuma as “the four horsemen of climate change.” It is, Kerry said, “a powerful signal to see [them] agree on a meeting of the minds.”
As the World Bank prepares to vote April 8 on a $3.75 billion dollar loan to South Africa's parastatal Electricity Supply Commission (Eskom) Kerry's language evokes a powerful vision: the apocalypse of business-as-usual disguised as “clean coal.”
Rocks of ages
The World Bank is positioned better than most to know the true, externalized costs of coal fired energy. Indeed, in 2007 the Bank acquiesced to China's request to excise mortality information from its report, “Cost of Pollution in China”: about 350,000 to 400,000 people die prematurely each year from high air-pollution levels; 300,000 die from exposure to poor air indoors; another 60,000 deaths are attributed to poor water quality.
As a geologist and engineer by profession climate change horseman Premier Wen knows that coal fires have burned for centuries along China's 5000 kilometers mining belt. They contribute up to three percent of annual global carbon emissions, about 360 million metric tons, as much as all the cars and trucks in the US.
China's government intends to extinguish fires to meet its own target of 20 percent reduction of carbon emission over three years. But it takes from months to years to put out one fire. Then, small private mining companies working under cover of dark often fail to replace the soil after extracting coal; spontaneous combustion occurs at 80 degrees Celsius. Yet China seems intent to cut greenhouse gas emissions by putting out fires rather than introduce energy saving measures.
Climate change horseman President Zuma's South African government inherited the decades old coalfield fires at Witbank (renamed Emalahleni).
Two years ago, unemployed mother Thandi Mthlango and her young son scavenged for coal to heat their home on land pocked with subsidence from underground fires and acid mine drainage. He was in a trench when it collapsed and crushed him to death.
There is no one to blame; even assigning responsibility is tough as former owners of Emalahleni's seven abandoned mines are long gone; apparently they cannot be traced.
A German consultancy estimated that it would cost at least R1 billion to rehabilitate the area, way beyond the funding capacity of the city council as it mulls relocating squatters crowded on the toxic land. But where? Town planner Eric Parker says the region is “sterilized”. In the video report UnderMined, he laughs ruefully and says he sees one bright spot: local cattle are acclimated. “But, if you bring a new cow from somewhere else, it dies. We have a super breed of resistant cows!”
Climate change horseman Prime Minister Singh's Ministry of Coal controls Coal India Limited (CIL), the world's largest coal mine. But, in November or December 2010 financial investors anywhere could own a piece when CIL presents an initial public offering (IPO). It intends to invest the proceeds of US $1 billion to $1.5 billion in joint ventures in Australia, Indonesia, US, and South Africa. Chairman Bhattacharya told Economic Times, “Our focus is to invest our funds in acquiring assets that deliver energy to our country...in a viable manner.” This includes relocating 400,000 people from mining town Jharia who suffer breathing disorders, skin disease, and compromised health from the fumes emitted by fires.
Singh's government has been criticized for its attitude. But, India's coal is worth US$12 billion and relocating the poor is cheaper than implementing environmental controls.
The unaffordable luxury of clean earth
South Africa's finance minister Pravin Gordhan knows the externalized costs of coal fired energy and believes they are unavoidable. He wrote recently in a Washington Post op ed:
If there were any other way to meet our power needs as quickly or as affordably as our present circumstances demand, or on the required scale, we would obviously prefer technologies -- wind, solar, hydropower, nuclear -- that leave little or no carbon footprint. But we do not have that luxury if we are to meet our obligations.
South Africa has one of the planet's most energy-intensive economies and Eskom plans a five year, $50 billion dollar expansion to increase capacity. Its Kendal plant is already the largest coal-fired power station in the world. If approved, over $3 billion of the Bank loan will go toward constructing 4800 MW Medupi, the first so-called super-critical clean coal plant in Africa and the fourth largest coal-fired power plant in the world that, as advertised, will use “some of the most efficient, lowest-emission coal-fired technology available.”
Analyst Patrick Bond says Eskom’s bid for the loan comes “at a time of intense controversy surrounding Eskom’s mismanagement. In its last annual reporting period, the company lost R9.7 billion, mainly due to miscalculations associated with hedging aluminium prices and the South African currency. Both the chair and chief executive officer lost their jobs late last year amidst unprecedented acrimony.” Moreover, “Eskom's continuation of inexpensive prices to several large export-oriented metals or mining multinational corporations, headquartered abroad, and offering the world's cheapest electricity, [is] heavily subsidised by all other – mainly poor – users in South Africa.”
He refers to Nersa, National Energy Regulator of South Africa, recently tapping ordinary South Africans for power rate increases of 25 percent for each of the next three years.
Gordhan assures the public that the “rest of the loan, $745 million, will be invested in wind and concentrated solar power projects, each generating 100 megawatts, and in various efficiency improvements.” He avoids the government's 2003 White Paper that states that by 2013 four percent of electricity – 4700 MW based on Eskom's projected electricity consumption – must come from renewable energy. Eskom's three year plan – unveiled after Nersa's country-wide community meetings in January – states that only 400 MW will come from such sources.
Gordhan concedes the loan “faces stiff opposition.” Civil society around the world reminds him that Medupi adds an estimated 25 million metric tons of CO2 emissions per year to Eskom’s 40 percent share of South Africa’s overall total greenhouse gas emissions. There is also the real possibility that, if South Africa's currency crashes again – as it has five times since 1996 – repayment in US dollars is more expensive than in South African rands.
The South African government can afford the luxury of R8.4 billion to construct five new stadia and refurbish five others for the 2010 FIFA World Cup. There are further, yet undisclosed, costs to improve public transport, implement special safety measures for tourists' security, and “beautify” (by hiding or removing tens of thousands of shack dwellers). Why can't it afford to clean up environmental degradation that results from generating electricity?
The US is the largest World Bank funder. Send a powerful signal to climate change horseman Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to intervene. Then buckle up for a wild ride along the unexplored path of real energy sustainability. In the long run it affords more security than tripping down the World Bank's yellow brick road of business as usual.
World Bank and the Four Horsemen of Climate Change: Apocalypse Now?
Senator John Kerry described President Obama, Premier Wen, Prime Minister Singh, and President Zuma as “the four horsemen of climate change.” It is, Kerry said, “a powerful signal to see [them] agree on a meeting of the minds.”
As the World Bank prepares to vote April 8 on a $3.75 billion dollar loan to South Africa's parastatal Electricity Supply Commission (Eskom) Kerry's language evokes a powerful vision: the apocalypse of business-as-usual disguised as “clean coal.”
Rocks of ages
The World Bank is positioned better than most to know the true, externalized costs of coal fired energy. Indeed, in 2007 the Bank acquiesced to China's request to excise mortality information from its report, “Cost of Pollution in China”: about 350,000 to 400,000 people die prematurely each year from high air-pollution levels; 300,000 die from exposure to poor air indoors; another 60,000 deaths are attributed to poor water quality.
As a geologist and engineer by profession climate change horseman Premier Wen knows that coal fires have burned for centuries along China's 5000 kilometers mining belt. They contribute up to three percent of annual global carbon emissions, about 360 million metric tons, as much as all the cars and trucks in the US.
China's government intends to extinguish fires to meet its own target of 20 percent reduction of carbon emission over three years. But it takes from months to years to put out one fire. Then, small private mining companies working under cover of dark often fail to replace the soil after extracting coal; spontaneous combustion occurs at 80 degrees Celsius. Yet China seems intent to cut greenhouse gas emissions by putting out fires rather than introduce energy saving measures.
Climate change horseman President Zuma's South African government inherited the decades old coalfield fires at Witbank (renamed Emalahleni).
Two years ago, unemployed mother Thandi Mthlango and her young son scavenged for coal to heat their home on land pocked with subsidence from underground fires and acid mine drainage. He was in a trench when it collapsed and crushed him to death.
There is no one to blame; even assigning responsibility is tough as former owners of Emalahleni's seven abandoned mines are long gone; apparently they cannot be traced.
A German consultancy estimated that it would cost at least R1 billion to rehabilitate the area, way beyond the funding capacity of the city council as it mulls relocating squatters crowded on the toxic land. But where? Town planner Eric Parker says the region is “sterilized”. In the video report UnderMined, he laughs ruefully and says he sees one bright spot: local cattle are acclimated. “But, if you bring a new cow from somewhere else, it dies. We have a super breed of resistant cows!”
Climate change horseman Prime Minister Singh's Ministry of Coal controls Coal India Limited (CIL), the world's largest coal mine. But, in November or December 2010 financial investors anywhere could own a piece when CIL presents an initial public offering (IPO). It intends to invest the proceeds of US $1 billion to $1.5 billion in joint ventures in Australia, Indonesia, US, and South Africa. Chairman Bhattacharya told Economic Times, “Our focus is to invest our funds in acquiring assets that deliver energy to our country...in a viable manner.” This includes relocating 400,000 people from mining town Jharia who suffer breathing disorders, skin disease, and compromised health from the fumes emitted by fires.
Singh's government has been criticized for its attitude. But, India's coal is worth US$12 billion and relocating the poor is cheaper than implementing environmental controls.
The unaffordable luxury of clean earth
South Africa's finance minister Pravin Gordhan knows the externalized costs of coal fired energy and believes they are unavoidable. He wrote recently in a Washington Post op ed:
If there were any other way to meet our power needs as quickly or as affordably as our present circumstances demand, or on the required scale, we would obviously prefer technologies -- wind, solar, hydropower, nuclear -- that leave little or no carbon footprint. But we do not have that luxury if we are to meet our obligations.
South Africa has one of the planet's most energy-intensive economies and Eskom plans a five year, $50 billion dollar expansion to increase capacity. Its Kendal plant is already the largest coal-fired power station in the world. If approved, over $3 billion of the Bank loan will go toward constructing 4800 MW Medupi, the first so-called super-critical clean coal plant in Africa and the fourth largest coal-fired power plant in the world that, as advertised, will use “some of the most efficient, lowest-emission coal-fired technology available.”
Analyst Patrick Bond says Eskom’s bid for the loan comes “at a time of intense controversy surrounding Eskom’s mismanagement. In its last annual reporting period, the company lost R9.7 billion, mainly due to miscalculations associated with hedging aluminium prices and the South African currency. Both the chair and chief executive officer lost their jobs late last year amidst unprecedented acrimony.” Moreover, “Eskom's continuation of inexpensive prices to several large export-oriented metals or mining multinational corporations, headquartered abroad, and offering the world's cheapest electricity, [is] heavily subsidised by all other – mainly poor – users in South Africa.”
He refers to Nersa, National Energy Regulator of South Africa, recently tapping ordinary South Africans for power rate increases of 25 percent for each of the next three years.
Gordhan assures the public that the “rest of the loan, $745 million, will be invested in wind and concentrated solar power projects, each generating 100 megawatts, and in various efficiency improvements.” He avoids the government's 2003 White Paper that states that by 2013 four percent of electricity – 4700 MW based on Eskom's projected electricity consumption – must come from renewable energy. Eskom's three year plan – unveiled after Nersa's country-wide community meetings in January – states that only 400 MW will come from such sources.
Gordhan concedes the loan “faces stiff opposition.” Civil society around the world reminds him that Medupi adds an estimated 25 million metric tons of CO2 emissions per year to Eskom’s 40 percent share of South Africa’s overall total greenhouse gas emissions. There is also the real possibility that, if South Africa's currency crashes again – as it has five times since 1996 – repayment in US dollars is more expensive than in South African rands.
The South African government can afford the luxury of R8.4 billion to construct five new stadia and refurbish five others for the 2010 FIFA World Cup. There are further, yet undisclosed, costs to improve public transport, implement special safety measures for tourists' security, and “beautify” (by hiding or removing tens of thousands of shack dwellers). Why can't it afford to clean up environmental degradation that results from generating electricity?
The US is the largest World Bank funder. Send a powerful signal to climate change horseman Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to intervene. Then buckle up for a wild ride along the unexplored path of real energy sustainability. In the long run it affords more security than tripping down the World Bank's yellow brick road of business as usual.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Goodbye Guinea Fowl, Hello Truck Stop
This week I learned that the land I grew up on will be a truck stop as of mid-February 2010. Each day after that up to 32 trucks with trailers, those eighteen wheelers that terrify motorists as they race along the N3, will drive over the land where once stood our horse stables, pigsties, and my grandfather's cow shed. Soon I will wonder if it is true that I once played barefoot here and watched the penny stinker grasshoppers leap, the shongalolos curl into spirals, and the snake swallow the frog. Alas, these memories, taken for granted back then, have not been passed on....
This time next month the unique veld grass that only grows on this plateau, in this part of the Valley of a Thousand Hills, in this section of KwaZulu Natal, will be replaced by tar and macadam and encircled by a high brick wall. The thorn- and corral trees will be gone, chopped down, roots dug up, and hauled to a waste dump to rot slowly among discarded papers and toys, food scraps, and plastic bottles.
I worry about the weaver and Hoopoe birds and the flock of four adult guinea fowl with two new chicks that live in the scrub and bush among the razor wire under the electric fence that, until this week, separated Thor Chemical from our land.
It is not as if this was a pristine environment. For decades, Assmang – called Ferralloys during my youth – belched smoke most days and flared most nights on the western horizon. Despite the black dust that cakes our buildings that facility is as familiar and as annoying as an old relative puffing a pipe on the back porch.
It was a shock when Thor Chemical arose on what was also once my grandfather's land...and a further shock when it contaminated the region with toxic waste. Then, three years ago and despite “the process” required when a new facility is built – the EIAs, meetings to gather input from Interested and Affected Parties, and local residents' outcry against the facility – Chlor Chem chlorine manufacturing plant went up across the road where my grandfather grazed and dipped his small herd of Jerseys.
Melvin, a nice enough man who owns the truck stop, represents the much vaunted South African entrepreneur. He must be relieved that, somehow, his trucking business was not subject to “the process.” And, if it was, it flew so low under the radar that we – right next door living lives that eschew the entrepreneurial spirit that digs into, dumps upon, fills, burns, and sucks dry the land – knew nothing about his truck stop's imminent arrival. Melvin dreams, not of shongalolos, penny stinkers, and guinea fowl but of his 32 trucks speeding along the nation's roads. He worries, not about flora and fauna, but that his cargo – perhaps plastic bottles filled with syrupy liquid, or reams of paper from many pulp and paper mills, or kids' toys imported from China – arrive on time and on budget at Makro, Super Spar, Click's and Game.
Truth is, my grandfather could have been Melvin. He, too, was an entrepreneur, out to make a buck, feed his family, and leave something by which to remember him. He believed in owning land and he bought as much as he could afford from someone who'd bought and sold it from someone else, all the way back to the English king's land grant to George Cato. Back then wild creatures abounded: Duiker and other buck, leopard, civets, lynx, snakes, chameleons, fowl, frogs, thousands of species of birds, beetles, mantis, grass hoppers, spiders, ants.... My grandfather dug up a portion of the land, conveyed it into a rock crusher, graded it according to the formula of his day, and sold it to spec housing developers.
Indeed, entrepreneurs like my grandfather and Melvin – decades apart in how they conduct business – are the global norm and follow the multi-generational mindset to dig, build, trade, promote, and bequeath plots of land despite the loss of indigenous flora and fauna.
It just so happened that King Shaka's tactics in this region had left the area underpopulated at the time the English king's land grant displaced indigenous communities. Nevertheless, as I walk around to photograph the last of the thorn and corral trees, stroke the veldt grasses, and warn the guinea fowl to find safer ground, my heavy heart reminds me that I share these feelings of loss, and anger, and impotence, and sadness, and fear – with millions of others who have seen their histories disappear under the mindset that admires tar and macadam, brick and block, smoke and smog. I haven't seen a wild Duiker for years while chameleon and mantis, sensitive to environmental pollution, disappeared long ago.
This is how people the world over lose that which few of us recognize as the only human heritage worth working to maintain: our natural environment. As they say, lives ends not with a bang but a whimper.
This time next month the unique veld grass that only grows on this plateau, in this part of the Valley of a Thousand Hills, in this section of KwaZulu Natal, will be replaced by tar and macadam and encircled by a high brick wall. The thorn- and corral trees will be gone, chopped down, roots dug up, and hauled to a waste dump to rot slowly among discarded papers and toys, food scraps, and plastic bottles.
I worry about the weaver and Hoopoe birds and the flock of four adult guinea fowl with two new chicks that live in the scrub and bush among the razor wire under the electric fence that, until this week, separated Thor Chemical from our land.
It is not as if this was a pristine environment. For decades, Assmang – called Ferralloys during my youth – belched smoke most days and flared most nights on the western horizon. Despite the black dust that cakes our buildings that facility is as familiar and as annoying as an old relative puffing a pipe on the back porch.
It was a shock when Thor Chemical arose on what was also once my grandfather's land...and a further shock when it contaminated the region with toxic waste. Then, three years ago and despite “the process” required when a new facility is built – the EIAs, meetings to gather input from Interested and Affected Parties, and local residents' outcry against the facility – Chlor Chem chlorine manufacturing plant went up across the road where my grandfather grazed and dipped his small herd of Jerseys.
Melvin, a nice enough man who owns the truck stop, represents the much vaunted South African entrepreneur. He must be relieved that, somehow, his trucking business was not subject to “the process.” And, if it was, it flew so low under the radar that we – right next door living lives that eschew the entrepreneurial spirit that digs into, dumps upon, fills, burns, and sucks dry the land – knew nothing about his truck stop's imminent arrival. Melvin dreams, not of shongalolos, penny stinkers, and guinea fowl but of his 32 trucks speeding along the nation's roads. He worries, not about flora and fauna, but that his cargo – perhaps plastic bottles filled with syrupy liquid, or reams of paper from many pulp and paper mills, or kids' toys imported from China – arrive on time and on budget at Makro, Super Spar, Click's and Game.
Truth is, my grandfather could have been Melvin. He, too, was an entrepreneur, out to make a buck, feed his family, and leave something by which to remember him. He believed in owning land and he bought as much as he could afford from someone who'd bought and sold it from someone else, all the way back to the English king's land grant to George Cato. Back then wild creatures abounded: Duiker and other buck, leopard, civets, lynx, snakes, chameleons, fowl, frogs, thousands of species of birds, beetles, mantis, grass hoppers, spiders, ants.... My grandfather dug up a portion of the land, conveyed it into a rock crusher, graded it according to the formula of his day, and sold it to spec housing developers.
Indeed, entrepreneurs like my grandfather and Melvin – decades apart in how they conduct business – are the global norm and follow the multi-generational mindset to dig, build, trade, promote, and bequeath plots of land despite the loss of indigenous flora and fauna.
It just so happened that King Shaka's tactics in this region had left the area underpopulated at the time the English king's land grant displaced indigenous communities. Nevertheless, as I walk around to photograph the last of the thorn and corral trees, stroke the veldt grasses, and warn the guinea fowl to find safer ground, my heavy heart reminds me that I share these feelings of loss, and anger, and impotence, and sadness, and fear – with millions of others who have seen their histories disappear under the mindset that admires tar and macadam, brick and block, smoke and smog. I haven't seen a wild Duiker for years while chameleon and mantis, sensitive to environmental pollution, disappeared long ago.
This is how people the world over lose that which few of us recognize as the only human heritage worth working to maintain: our natural environment. As they say, lives ends not with a bang but a whimper.
Published on Monday, January 25, 2010 by CommonDreams.org
The Seamy Side of Coal-Fired Power by Susan Galleymore
The Seamy Side of Coal-Fired Power by Susan Galleymore
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
HIV/AIDS and Global Arc of War
Two recent articles published in CounterPunch
Still Killing Millions- (December 2, 09)
African Realities in the Wake of World AIDS Day
The Casualties of Toxic Warfare- (December 1, 09)
Global Connections and the Arc of War
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)