It’s time for a bit of a rant. I’m sick and tired of all the negativity. Especially from expats who seem to feel they need to justify their decision to emigrate by telling the world, and us, how terrible life in South Africa is. Now I’m the first to admit this country has problems to solve. Crime, poverty and 3-talk with Noeleen are just the start of it.
But these people talk as if the problems we have are not only insurmountable but some new and terrible thing unleashed upon us in the last decade or so. Have they all forgotten that the top-3 spots used to go to taxi-wars, oppression and the Felicia Mabuza Shuttle show  ?

This country is getting better. It’s getting better because we recognize the problems and keep working on it. We have had corruption problems for years, but the news about that in the last few months have been mostly about corruption being uncovered, and the perpetrators going to jail.
These days, when we see news of a horrific crime – within days we tend to see news of an arrest. Not long ago we used to complain that criminals almost never got caught, and even if they did they didn’t care because prison life was better than their life outside… now that’s not true anymore. Criminals are getting captured, they are getting tried and they are getting convicted – and if the desperate attempts by people like Donovan Moodley to appeal their sentences on technicalities are anything to go by – prison life is not all the nice anymore either.

It’s been quite a while, come to think of it, since we read about an audacious prisoner escape, not long ago that was an almost daily event. Things aren’t as good as they should be, but things are getting better every day.
I’m no fan of the DA – but the fact that they could claim an outright victory in a province, a first since the end of appartheid, shows our democracy is maturing and becoming more well democratic. There are still problems with it – especially with things like floorcrossing – but things are gradually getting better. South Africans are making things better.

As I write this, an outbreak of xenophobia not far from here has the country sitting up and taking notice. While I utterly condemn the idea of it, it’s interesting to note that when similar events happened last year – they happened country-wide and people died. It seems to have improved. I’ve heard it said that the problems we face with xenophobia is a result of the governments lack of effort to stem the tide of illegal immigrants, and it’s true that our borders are guarded by an already overworked police force rather than the military (whose job it is to keep our borders safe… else why are we spending such a fortune on having one in the first place ?). The government doesn’t want to properly close the borders however due to a sense of gratitude. Much of the cabinet were housed in those countries while in exile during appartheid.
That aside though, throughout the world and throughout history it has been the norm that borders were essentially open, where you contributed there you were welcomed, and throughout the world it has for quite some time now been expected of countries that are better off to accept and assist refugees fleeing oppression and disasters in their neighbouring countries.
South Africa cannot shirk this responsibility – though we can certainly do a better job of handling the refugees, getting them properly integrated into our society and turning them into taxpaying, contributing citizens rather than moochers – which instantly removes any sympathy towards those members of society who react with rage toward them.

Yep, we have problems – and some of them are bad… but things are so much better now than they used to be and they are improving every day. As we speak, the BRT in Cape Town is nearing completion, it’s route is such that it will most likely remove any need for me to travel with my own transport to work on all but the rarest occasions. Cheaper, greener, reliable public transport – here we see one of our biggest challenges being solved – despite attempts by an established (much worse) industry to derail (no pun intended) the project.

I was married to a girl of Asian descent. Have we forgotten that just 30 years earlier- my marriage would not have been recognized in this country because I’m a different race to her ? That we could both have faced prison sentences for sleeping with each other ? In this country, it used to be possible to go to jail for sleeping with your own husband/wife if the government didn’t approve of who you married !

In the South Africa of today, despite the conservative moral majority’s efforts – gay marriage has been legalized, and all it took was one single case in the constitutional court. The court didn’t ask “what does the public think”. It did not ask “what is the legal precedent”. It asked “are we treating some people different before the law”. The answer was yes. This is discrimination. Therefore – they forced government to change the law.
The power now exists in this country for a minority to ensure that their right to equality is effected in law. The balance is in place here to ensure the best virtues of majority rule, while tempering it’s worst shortcomings (because even if the majority hold wrong views, the minority can prevent them from legislative discrimination).

Things aren’t as good as they should be yet… but they are a damn sight better than they used to be. Think Jacob Zuma isn’t a very good president ? Have you all forgotten P.W. Botha ?!?!?!

Perhaps the real reason why so many expats have absolutely nothing good to say about South Africa, except to declare how “pretty” it was… well maybe it’s because they are ashamed that they couldn’t face up to the challenge of helping to solve them and build the country we want – at least now, we have the power to do so. Or maybe, it’s because many of them haven’t forgotten P.W. Botha, and actually long for the days when this country let them (because let’s face it, almost all of them are “white”) get wealthy on the suffering of others, when it discriminated rampantly and kept all the best jobs and all the power for them. Maybe it’s because, though they will never admit it, they are so entrenched in their sense of racial and cultural supremacy that they cannot handle living in a country where they are a minority – and cannot expect to reasonably get the majority of… well everything.

To put it bluntly – maybe they complain so much, not because South Africa is so bad, but because in South Africa – they can’t get away with racism anymore. There’s a reason so many expats choose Australia, it’s a country not all that different in it’s concervative, racist government than South Africa was a few decades ago.
The difference is just this: there you can get away with racism, because it’s essentially a monoculture.

Well, South Africa is not by any measure a monoculture and any pretense to the contrary is pretty much doomed. I like our multiculture. I like it’s facets and it’s different forms of expression and it’s varied arts. I think that is what is the real secret “worst thing” about South Africa for them, well I think it’s the best thing about living here. So maybe that’s why I think South Africa is better now than it used to be.
If all else fails… at least I can remember when walking into a wimpy-bar meant a good chance of having your legs blown off by a limpet-mine. I remember what that was like. And the people whose parents planted them, they do too – and most of them, like most of us, prefer the world today – where we can go to a pub together and have a beer together. Where nobody is planting limpet mines, because nobody feels the need to, and nobody gets blown up by them either.

I still like the new South Africa.

A few years ago, a major scientific experiment began. It was called biosphere2 (biosphere1 would be the planet we live on) and it’s purpose was to study ecological balance and sustainability. Biosphere2 was an absolute and complete failure. Yet, not without value, scientific experiments can sometimes teach us more when they fail than when they work.

In this case, the reasons why Biosphere2 failed is crucial – those reasons shed enormous light on the issue of climate change and how we should address it. Now before I continue the story – a few baselines need to be established. Firstly – there is no doubt that living organisms can and do change the atmosphere: we wouldn’t be here today if plants hadn’t started pumping it full of one of the most reactive, corrosive and toxic substances on the periodic table – something called  Oxygen. Instead of wiping out life, life changed, and now virtually all species depend on it ! This change was not minor, the amount of free oxygen in the atmosphere before the evolution of photosynthesis was about 0.3% – it’s been at around 21% for many milions of years now.
To get an idea of the impact this had – imagine if we pumped flourine into the atmosphere to 21%, every animal species alive today (including us) would die instantly. On the other hand, life would survive, new animals would evolve – and they would use the flourine to live on, just like our distant ancestors did with oxygen.

So let’s get one thing clear – plants changed the atmosphere once, and we’re changing it now. We can’t destroy life, it’s survived far worse than us a million times over.  If we nuke the planet, new lifeforms will arise that *want* highly radioactive environments. Life evolves everywhere it can… life evolves everywhere it can’t. What won’t be around – is us. Climate change is not about saving the planet. It’s about saving ourselves.
Of course, there’s another catch: the average lifespan of a species is 5 million years – a few made it to 10, some made it barely past 1, most are almost exactly on the average: and humanity is halfway through our time. We got abstract thought though – we could beat the odds – we have a shot – will we do anything with it ? If we are going to, we gotta get emotions and good intentions out of our efforts, listen to scientists and follow good advice – not stuff that sounds good or look fashionable.

So back to our story, why did Biosphere2 fail – and what can it teach us ? Biosphere2 was built and designed to be a perfect, self-sustaining ecology. It had plants, animals and people. A lake and a small desert and a bit of tropical forest. They made one small mistake early on: nobody weighed the carbon they put in (this would be very hard though since you need to estimate carbon from the wet weight of plants… ouch).

And almost immediately, the ecology was in trouble, they had to keep adding more oxygen. Was the plants not photosynthesizing enough ? Well.. they seemed to be, and the carbon dioxide level was stable, it’s just that oxygen kept disapearing…
We only found out where it went… some time after the project shut down in faillure. The carbon dioxide was never stable, and it wasn’t the oxygen that was disapearing. Concrete absorbs carbon dioxide while it cures, for a good ten years actually, any architect knows this – but they don’t really care. Ecologists, usually don’t. The curing concrete in the walls were sucking out carbon dioxide as fast as the humans and animals made it… the plants were producing oxygen – but that oxygen was being breathed in, and the carbon dioxide from that was being sucked into the walls.

So wait… the system was losing carbon-dioxide but the oxygen levels dropped ? Yep – because carbon dioxide is C02. In other words, for every atom of carbon in there, two atoms of oxygen is lost. Or to put it even more simply – if we burn a ton of carbon, we use up two tonnes of oxygen – and pump 3 tones of carbon dioxide into the air.

Carbon credits won’t help us squat. We can’t just put in oxygen instead, it’s a losing battle. We can’t see carbon and oxygen as a debit credit thing – carbon is good, carbon dioxide is a problem, and that is mostly made out of oxygen !

The problem here isn’t getting more oxygen out there, and you can’t offset carbon-dioxide with oxygen either. Emisions are not the major issue either. What we need to do – clear and simple: is burn a lot less carbon.
Carbon that isn’t being burned, can be used for useful things, like laying asphalt for roads, or printing books on – or heck, making babies out off. Carbon that’s burned is no longer there for any other use, it’s now stuck up in the atmosphere trapping inside it a whole lot of oxygen that we could also have use better (you know for stuff like *breathing* perhaps ?) – and trapping heat.

So how do burn less carbon ? Our single major burning activity is energy production – we need to stop burning oil and coal. Some of it we can replace with solar, some with wind, some with water – but none of that will come close to producing enough energy to supply our survival needs – where can we get the rest ?
It turns out, there is an energy source available that can do the job – it’s called nuclear energy. Modern nuclear energy is clean energy. It produces no polution at all (no it does not produce radioactive waste, that was old technology – modern breeder reactors use the waste from one reactor to fuel the next, what you get after that – has a radioactive life measured in decades, not in millenia).
No emissions, and no oxygen being turned into carbon dioxide.

All a good start right ? And finally, the worst thing about the carbon credit thing is that people think they cano offset their carbon usage by protecting rainforrests. There are many, many good reasons to protect the rainforrests but airpollution is not one of them, the two are unrelated. Rainforrests are not oxygen producing areas. Rainforrests produce C02 at night, and thus their actual net oxygen output is zero, they make it, and use it again themselves.
Plants only produce positive O2 when their soil is so rich that they don’t need to burn any carbon again – and that’s not rainforrests. Rainforrests have some of the worst soil in the world for growing plants in. Topsoil only a few inches deep – and that has all the minerals washed away by continous torrents of rain. The plants there survive by reusing their own oxygen production.

So no, saving an acre of amazon does not make up for pumping a ton of carbon dioxide into the air. By all means we need the acre of amazon so save it, but we need you to not pump the ton of carbon-dioxide either. Trading it won’t work. If you can only do one, do the C02 reduction because that helps all of us – but don’t try to pretend that doing the easy one makes up for not doing the hard one…

PS. There is one way the amazon clearing is affecting climate change. Clearing forrests for farmland generally involves burning them – that means a lot of living carbon being turned into carbon dioxide and sucking up a lot of the nearby oxygen while you’re at it. This is not the major form of forrest clearing, it’s a much smaller  CO2 source than most power stations, but it should be mentioned for completeness.