In days of yore, we looked to soothsayers for a glimpse of the future. They, according to the prevailing custom, rattled their bones or peered into the entrails of a sacrificed animal, and then pronounced in guarded and elliptical terms what the future held.
Scientists have taken on this role in modern times. This is a good thing, even though the language of science is just as guarded and difficult to understand as that of the soothsayers of old.
Science is more rationally grounded than soothsaying, despite the tendency of some environmental scientists to use science to build a new religion. Science is, after all, meant to be evidence-based. This makes good science more open to critical analysis and thus more accurate than soothsaying, which is a very good thing.
It is in this spirit that I approach the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (“IPCC”). I do so not to deny the impact of anthropogenic impacts on our climate and ecosystems, but rather as a reminder of just how difficult soothsaying, even science-based soothsaying, is, and how vulnerable the process is to influences that have nothing to do with science.
I am pleased to see that those responsible for this report are similarly aware of this risk and the difficulty of predicting impacts on a system we have only recently begun to comprehend.
The IPCC adopts a cautious consensus-based approach to soothsaying. For me, this makes its findings persuasive and in some instances compelling. I, therefore, differ from John Kane Berman and some of my far better qualified scientific friends in that I accept that our behaviour is resulting in systemic changes to earth systems that we rely on to sustain human health and wellbeing. Climate is one of these.
But I also part company with some of my more activist-minded green friends who think that this makes people inherently bad as well as their “capitalism is the root of all evil” perspective on the issue and how to deal with it. I am not a fan of the Christian concept of original sin, especially when it is used to pervert science.
I also think that we must not confuse what we at the bottom of Africa can or must do with the responses required of those living in more developed countries.
You see there is an interesting paradox in the findings of this latest IPCC report on Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. It is pretty obvious when you think about it, but the closer your life and livelihood are to that mythical ideal that environmental dogma calls nature, the more vulnerable you are to climate change and the more difficult it will be to adapt in ways that mitigate its adverse consequences. Conversely, the more developed you are the less vulnerable, more resilient, and thus more adaptable your country will be.
System change
I see this perverse incentive to develop, and perhaps even if this accelerates system change, as a major challenge to dealing with climate change.
Developed economies who are major contributors to earth system changes already know that they will fare better than undeveloped communities. They also know that less developed economies need to develop to adapt to climate change. But development will very likely accelerate earth system changes and thus climate change. There is thus a clear incentive for developed economies to stop less developed economies from developing in ways that do not further stress earth systems
So it makes sense for developed economies to switch to gas, for example, as a cleaner energy source than coal, while at the same time encouraging less developed economies to jump into the unknown and favour alternative energy rather than gas.
This means that undeveloped economies need to be persuaded to eschew development strategies that are known to work, in favour of ones that are at best untested or at worst still unknown. Undeveloped economies need to be persuaded to engage in an act of faith that developed communities are frightened to try.
I believe that this is what Gwede Mantashe was alluding to when he likened the attack on gas prospecting off South Africa’s coast as a modern-day call to follow the thinking of 19th century Xhosa soothsayer Nongqawuse.
It follows that discouraging the kind of initiatives in less developed economies, like South Africa, for example, that are accepted as part of a just transition in developed economies is easily justified as a form of mitigation. The only question is cost and in that regard, it is much cheaper to fund the efforts of environmental activists in a country to do your bidding than pay the reparations that would be necessary to persuade a country to remain voluntarily in harm’s way. This is an ugly thought, but the realpolitik that dominates international relations is ugly and is likely to remain so.
Everyone is brought along
Scientists tell us that our response to climate change must be a global one, where everyone is brought along. But every political indication points to the opposite happening. The response to climate change, like so much else, is going to be a game of winners and losers.
Worse still is that there is every indication that South Africa is being set up as a loser. This is not just because we are African. Our propensity to choose solutions that do not work, our tendency to sell each other down the river for personal gain, the lack of faith we have in our own economy, and our stellar track record of failure in recent times, all set us up to be the perfect loser.
I suggest that the primary response to climate change should focus on curbing this appetite for failure and developing a resilient forward-looking economy that includes doomed backwaters such as the Wild and West coasts.
This will be a huge challenge, not just because the self-sacrifice and cooperation required of such an endeavour are contrary to the dominant political ideology, but also because they are contrary to the “what’s in it for me” instinct that dominates South African culture.
It is thus encouraging that ideologues of our economic decline such as Gwede Mantashe and Cyril Ramaphosa are beginning to try out different tunes. I think that they should be encouraged in this rather than vilified as old men who have run out of ideas.
Human health and wellbeing
Likewise, we should not ignore the message of environmentalism. We do need to learn to work within the limits of the earth systems that sustain human health and wellbeing. This requires a concerted scientific rather than pseudo-scientific approach to the problem, that is corroborated by the efforts of engineers and others versed in the practical business of discovering by doing.
We also need to accept that eggs, including environmental ones, need to be broken in the process. We should strive to do this wisely.
Put differently, the soothsayers of modern science have given us a reasonably reliable glimpse into our future as South Africans. They have told us that we have a better chance of dealing with that future if we have a resilient developed economy rather than an underdeveloped one.
The only real question that remains is: what are we going to do about it?
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR
If you like what you have just read, support the Daily Friend