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Waterworks

WHILE we’re on the subject of hashtags (and despite deep sympathy with the need for ventilating inequality in education, I have to say if I see one more thing Must Fall, all hell will break loose…) how about the latest one? #ExxonKnew.

“Exxon was aware of climate change, as early as 1977, 11 years before it became a public issue,” reveals a story in Scientific American on 26 October 2015.

“This knowledge did not prevent the company (now ExxonMobil and the world’s largest oil and gas company) from spending decades refusing to publicly acknowledge climate change and even promoting climate misinformation - an approach many have likened to the lies spread by the tobacco industry regarding the health risks of smoking.

"Both industries were conscious that their products wouldn’t stay profitable once the world understood the risks, so much so that they used the same consultants to develop strategies on how to communicate with the public.”

And not just Exxon: “The 1995 ‘Predicting Future Climate Change: A Primer’ is remarkable for indisputably showing that, while some fossil fuel companies’ deception about climate science has continued to the present day, at least two decades ago the companies’ own scientific experts were internally alerting them about the realities and implications of climate change. The fact that these companies were fully aware of the realities of climate change is well established and cannot be denied.” (The Climate Deception Dossiers, Union of Concerned Scientists, July 2015)

I thought about that while listening to Dr François Engelbrecht (principal investigator at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, and a South African researcher with the deepest understanding of climate futures) being interviewed on 702 last week.

I thought about how amazing it would have been if we just hadn’t faced that kind of resistance to facing the truth over the last twenty years, when we really, really needed to be working against climate change with all our might. Because that resistance is complicit in this: “We are officially in a state of extreme to severe drought across most of the summer rainfall region of South Africa,” he said.

This follows two seasons of below normal rainfall. We’re in the middle of one of the biggest El Niños ever recorded, he said. And scientists believe that greater variability in ENSO (the El Niño Southern Oscillation), which is driven by the sea surface temperature, is linked to climate change – makes sense: the oceans, which have been acting as sponges for increases in temperature, are distinctly warmer now, as described in the USA’s State of the Climate Report 2014, and a warmer Pacific off South America is the trigger for an El Niño.

Now we face possible water restrictions in areas like Gauteng, and worrying impacts on crops. And on the economy: you try growing jobs in a country creaking under the strain of drought. You try doing business in the ‘normal way’ when workers and their families face real hunger.

What sort of advice is being handed out right now?

The old familiar verse: If it’s yellow/let it mellow/if it’s brown/wash it down, familiar from the droughts of my childhood.

And of course, the old faithfuls: Put a brick in the toilet cistern to reduce the amount you’re using to flush; Don’t run the tap while brushing your teeth or washing your face; Shower instead of bathing; Don’t wash your car; Water the garden sparingly and only when the sun’s not up; And of course, the ones loved by the household gadgets industry, invest in low-flow showerheads and dual-flush toilets.

Go for it. At 11.5% of usage, ‘urban and domestic use’ is slightly higher than ‘mining and industrial’ at 10.5% , so reducing your water use might very well help. But we might want to consider some other things, things that tackle systemic issues and make a huge difference: Demand tighter control of our water supply – last I heard, almost 40% of Joburg’s water supply is lost (to leaks, illegal connections and other factors). But we’re still better off than Ekurhuleni, Neslon Mandlea Bay and Buffalo City, which is closing in on 50%!

Imagine what we could achieve if we just cracked down on leaking pipes with vigour! Campaign against development that interferes with wetlands. Wetlands are (or used to be) everywhere – in Gauteng, wherever you see reedbeds, that’s a wetland. Ignored for far too long in the last century and more, many have been built over.

Wetlands are service providers – they are critical tools in maintaining our water table, they prevent flooding (damaging but also resulting in a loss of water that just rolls off developed land tars and concretes, heading for the sea) and they purify water remarkably efficiently.

Demand sewerage that works. Four billion litres of insanitary water pours into our water courses every day – in an already water-constrained country, this is just not on.

Campaign for efficient, real and effective policing of water pollution acid mine drainage and industrial run-off. (Apparently an announcement about a long-term solution to acid mine drainage is to be made soon. We wait with interest.)

And demand, loudly, that our government be proactive in efforts to reach a meaningful result at the Paris climate talks in December.

We are beginning to see the consequences of climate change in southern Africa, and they simply are not tenable.

*Mandi Smallhorne is a versatile journalist and editor. Views expressed are her own. Follow her on twitter.

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