THOUGHT LEADERSHIP ARTICLE
100 SECONDS TO MIDNIGHT By Mark Dytor, AECI’s Chief Executive
AECI and climate change are the same age.
T
he history of AECI goes back to 1896; to the opening of the world’s largest “dynamite factory” in Modderfontein, 19,3 kilometres from the 10-year-old corrugated-iron town of Johannesburg, with its burgeoning population of 102 078 people! In the same year, a Swedish scientist by the name of Svante Arrhenius was the first to use the basic principles of physical chemistry to calculate the extent to which increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO 2) increase earth’s surface temperature through the greenhouse gas effect. These calculations led him to conclude that human-caused CO 2 emissions are large enough to cause global warming. 76 years later, the 1972 United Nations (UN) Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm was the first global conference that made the environment a major issue. Despite the early warning signs (and there were plenty), climate change barely featured on the agenda. Atomic bomb testing, chemical pollution and whaling were the priority. Fast forward to the 2021 UN Climate Change Conference (commonly referred to as COP26) in Glasgow, and the tables are turned. COP26 is described as “the world’s best last chance to get runaway climate change under control” with
Mark Dytor, AECI’s Chief Executive
FINANCIAL MAIL ESSENTIALS • GREEN ECONOMY 2022
|
9
