South Africa Capping Greenhouse Gas Emissions. What Say You, India and China?
by Kristin Underwood, San Diego, CA on 08.14.08
Image source: author.
Bucking the tide of many developing nations, South Africa has chosen to set a limit on its greenhouse-gas emissions and to increase its use of renewable energy sources. South Africa's Environment Minister, Marthinus van Schalkwyk, said the country has a target to "stabilize" emissions by 2020 to 2025, "with absolute reductions in emissions...to begin ten years after growth was halted."
How will they meet this goal? Well, first by reducing consumption of cheap coal for electricity and requiring that all coal power plants use both carbon capture and storage technology. There will also be a greater emphasis on using energy from renewable sources. Other options include a possible carbon tax, as well as mandatory energy efficiency measures.
South Africa's emissions are currently among the top five highest for developing countries. While South Africa, like China and India, believes that the US should reduce its emissions between 25-40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, this may put pressure on India and China to consider some sort of emission reductions as this signals South Africa's willingness to meet in the middle on emission reductions. Van Schalkwyk admits that by 2050, greenhouse gas emissions from South Africa are predicted to quadruple unless they alter course.
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Wht Say you Super Power America ??
I commend South Africa for its efforts to stop emissions from coal, etc., to help humans, animals, etc., to continue to live on planet earth. I think it's about time for the leaders of other nations to get their heads out of the sand and do something to stop global warming. It's not going away. Do you remember the movie "Soylent Green?" I saw it many years ago and as I recall It was all about our planet in its last stages. You have two choices - buy stock in the company who manufactures gas masks or get off your butt and do something to prevent mankind's (and other living creatures) from extinction!!
Fortunately, for India and China to match America's per capita pollution, it will take many generations.
America should target itself annual reductions in per capita pollution. What say you, America?
WE CAN DO IT. Breaking dirty habits isn't easy. Try a website like http://www.greengroove.org to help you out. It's free and pretty fun too.
WE CAN DO IT. Breaking dirty habits isn't easy. Try a website like http://www.greengroove.org to help you out. It's free and pretty fun too.
How lame. Typical arrogant attitude, Kristin of California, America (also cap-less).
While you are all correct, clearly the US needs to curb its consumption and lifestyle, but we also all know that the 6+ billion people on the planet can't live at the US levels of consumption, clearly. The point of this article was to look more closely at how several "developing" countries are quickly biting on the heels of the US.
Many developing nations (India & China) have refused to agree to any sort of binding target or agreement, and yet they are emitting at levels equal to or higher than other "developed/tier 1" nations. Yes, they should be allowed to advance their countries, but at what cost? If they are emitting at levels equal to or higher than developed countries, then they are no longer completely innocent. For South Africa to agree to a target, it makes you wonder whether India and China will eventually be pressured to agree to some sort of target.
No one is saying that people in developing nations should continue to live in poverty just so that Americans can keep their Hummers and XBoxes. But if we are going to make a dent in climate change, then everyone (including developing countries) are going to have to consider their impact.
Until countries like the US and Australia shift their most polluting industries out of China and India and back onto their home turf, this whole petty finger pointing exercise has to stop. Developed nations have a duty to invest their funds in green technologies, but as long as we're still exploiting the cheap labour of developing countries, we have no right to expect them to cut back their emissions before we cut back ours. Plain and simple.
Thanks for catching this story. I didn't see a lot of media pick it up, but I just stumbled upon your post. Glad to see it got covered. I also did a post on it and provided some context: http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/jschmidt/south_africa_stakes_out_its_effort.html
WE, as in the people of planet Earth, CAN DO IT, achilles! Not typical arrogant attitude, but surprising optimistic ; )