to be in the order of US$100 trillion by 2050. Although this is a staggering number, the benefits from damages that may be avoided by 2200 are estimated to exceed this number by a factor of five.”
While emissions-trade supporters believe that a “market solution can solve a market problem”, the carbon market is a “financial casino”, and once Brexit kicks in, the European market at the heart of the system could again collapse, says Bond.
WAVERING AGREEMENTS
UNIFYING ACTIVISM
However, the non-binding nature of international agreements on climate action make submissions such as Ramaphosa’s too flimsy to hold real promise of action or change, says Professor Patrick Bond, in the Wits School of Governance. “Ramaphosa’s commitments to the UN came after South Africa was prevented from speaking in the main conference, due to the government’s climate negligence,” says Bond. “That was a well-deserved name-and-shame, exposing Eskom’s commitment to the corrupt, mal-designed Medupi and Kusile coal-fired power plants – the world’s largest such generators under construction – as well as three new ones, including a 4600MW Chinese project at the Musina-Makhado Special Economic Zone, as well as intensifying offshore drilling for oil and gas from Durban to Hermanus, the KZN and Karoo fracking projects, and the planned export of 18 billion tonnes of coal through Richards Bay,” says Bond. He adds: “The Paris Agreement has no legally binding responsibilities or accountability mechanisms; inadequate stated aspirations for lowering global temperatures; no liabilities for past greenhouse gas emissions; renewed opportunities to game the emissions-reduction system through state-subsidised carbon trading and offsets; and a total neglect of emissions from military, maritime, and aviation sources.” He also warns that mainstream environmentalism is being co-opted by quick-fix fantasies, including biotechnology based on genetic modification, dangerous geo-engineering strategies (see page 42) and especially emissions trading, where South Africa’s pioneer project at a Durban landfill collapsed financially, due to a decade-long world carbon market crash that began in 2008.
In a country like South Africa, climate activists face severe contradictions. PhD candidate Mithika Mwenda and Bond write in their paper African climate justice: Articulations and activism that “while leftist trade unions increasingly propose radical versions of eco-socialism, they still defend carbonintensive employment with an understandable desperation. A burgeoning youth and ecologically-aware middle-class feint towards climate justice, but their stamina has not been tested. The mainstream climate action scene remains predictably tame and unambitious”. Bond says NGO and civil society efforts remain fragmented and not enough international collaboration exists between these civil society bodies to exert the kind of pressure to disrupt the business-as-usual model. His ideal type of international movement that could U-turn states and corporates is the Treatment Action Campaign, which gained access to free HIV medicines and thus raised life expectancy in South Africa from 52 to 64 years over the past 15 years. The intersection of complexities, contradictions and seemingly insurmountable challenges do make our climate crisis ever more explicit. And scary as it seems, now is not the moment to run; it is more the moment to act on former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s words: “Never let a good crisis go to waste”. C
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READ MORE ON THIS RESEARCH: Find the IPCC special report on Global Warming of 1.5º here: https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/
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