Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a high profile figure in the effort to end Apartheid in South Africa, we need to follow teenage climate activists to achieve a tipping point which will lead to the global outlawing of fossil fuel.
Climate change is the apartheid of our times
Boycotts, sanctions and divestment proved effective in South Africa, but that required a mindset shiftCorporations, financial institutions and socially conscious citizens must pull us back from the climate change abyss. They have the muscle to make renewables mainstream and reposition fossil fuels as the tobacco of the energy industry.
At last week’s UN general assembly, more than 60 world leaders announced new climate targets, with 66 countries pledging to reach “net zero” carbon emissions by the middle of the century. But the US, Japan, Australia, Saudi Arabia and Brazil were not among them.
UN secretary-general António Guterres is counting on the leadership of young activists to pressure governments to do more to address what he rightly calls the “climate emergency”. We agree that forward-thinking young people are the change agents for tomorrow. But corporations and financial institutions must act today. They should join the more than 1,100 institutions with $11tn in assets who have announced that they are divesting.
The campaign to divest from fossil fuel has two legs: participants agree to divest from fossil fuel and invest in renewable energy. Many have divested (and many more must still do so) but relatively few have reinvested in renewables. This second step is critical to make clean energy more affordable, push us to the tipping point and lead to the outlawing of fossil fuel use.
Back in the 1970s and 1980s, one of our most important levers in overcoming apartheid was the support of global corporations that heeded the call to divest. Apartheid became a global enemy; now it is climate change’s turn.
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Read more: https://www.ft.com/content/9e4befae-e083-11e9-b8e0-026e07cbe5b4
I’m shocked and saddened at what I see as the betrayal of poor people in South Africa, of poor people across the entire world, by one of my heroes.
Archbishop Tutu knowingly calls for fossil fuel to be attacked, divested, discouraged, even though he knows there is currently no affordable renewable alternative to fossil fuel.
The one hope poor people in Africa and elsewhere have of a better life is that their lives will be touched by industrialization. There is no other path to improved living standards.
By attacking investment in fossil fuels, Desmond Tutu is knowingly attacking the welfare of poor people, using his influence to turn poor people away from prosperity, gambling their hopes of a better life on affordable renewable technology which currently does not exist, which might never exist.
Nobody can be certain what will happen in the future, not even climate modellers. But we all know what is happening right now.
For shame, Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Answer the cries of your people for deliverance from the misery and hopelessness of extreme poverty, and have a bit of faith that if you right the wrongs of today, the future will take care of itself.
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Curiously similar to the fossil fuels disinvestment policy of the Synod of the Church of England led by His Grace the bishop of Salisbury. What’s with these churchmen? I mean, I can understand but not condone the CofE’s attitude towards the poverty of brown skinned peoples, but to be joined by them is bizarre.
What is a fossil fuel?
Is methane that is found throughout the solar system a fossil fuel?
There is good methane and bad methane:
– if it is derived from the decay of organic matter over geologic time, it is fossil fuel, so bad methane.
– if it comes from the decay of organic matter from a municipal garbage landfill, it is good methane.
– if it comes from inorganic sources in the universe, we’re just not sure.
Now, hope is it all clear for you.
sarc/off
Let Desmond, his family and his followers start their fossil-fuel-free lives now. There should be no delay. He deserves great credit for fighting discrimination and apartheid. That doesn’t excuse him using his fame to destroy human society, and prevent his compatriots from seeking a better life.
I try to contact him via his official website.
Let us see what happens/
I expect the web site should be done now and you will be forced to communicate telepathically as he most certainly won’t be using any electricity or modern conveyances hence forth. Most probably he will attend all speaking engagements in future by flying astride a rainbow flying unicorn.
Dear Desmond, the only thing that has brought you up from a 3rd world s**thole IS FOSSIL FUELS. When you make statements such as these, we wonder if you are even fit to speak and influence anything. Sad.
Dear Desmond and Greta, please read this:
http://www.roadmaptonowhere.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/RTN-Jan-11-2018.compressed.pdf
The arch bishop is obviously unfamiliar with the main earnings of his country and with it’s primary source of domestic electricity; outlaw coal and RSA goes even more deeply down the toilet than corrupt government has already acheived.
Oh STFU you idiot leftist pig!
The ArchBishop is the founding member of this website…more hardworking climate money at work…
http://www.upfsi.org/members/
So will Tutu burn bullshit for fuel as a replacement like the poorest of South Africa have to so they can eat and stay warm despite the risk of chronic lung disease, or just simply talk bullshit like all the other virtuous rich activists with no clue of reality?
“Apartheid became a global enemy; now it is climate change’s turn.”
Essentially, with apartheid gone activists need a new bogeyman to fight. And this fight will last as long as profits and share prices continue to rise, then there will be a new ‘crisis’.
A well known fact is:
Different subsets of fauna tend to different IQ.
Human subsets belong to fauna:
Human subsets tend to different IQ.
That’s evolutionary heritage.
____________________________________
OTOH:
About 100 years ago IQ tests were carried out in various European countries, the ability to read shouldn’t make a difference.
A typical question was:
Prerequisite – there is a North Pole / at this North Pole live bears / these bears are white.
– question to city residents: what color are bears at the North Pole.
Answer white.
– Question to rural people: what color are bears at the North Pole.
Answer brown.
____________________________________
City residents know zoological gardens, there are shown white polar bears.
Rural people know bears from circuses or from the fairs. They’ve never seen other bears than brown bears.
And thats cultural heritage.