Cheap, Dirty, Addictive

Everyone is wining about the Eskom tariff hike. But cheap electricity has done more harm than good.

At approximately 21c/KWh, South Africa's electricity price was one of the lowest in the world. Cheap electricity may sound like a blessing in a country where large segments of the population are still not supplied with power at all, but cheap electricity has encouraged bad energy habits that may be much, much more costly in the long run than we realise.

A brief look into the secret history of South Africa's cheap electricity shines some uncomfortable light onto our current energy practices, and demonstrates the importance of nationwide, systematic change.

Fact: we are supplied almost exclusively by coal-produced electricity

Economic sanctions placed on the Apartheid government lead to an urgent desire for energy independence. Taking advantage of our rich mineral supplies, we developed a highly productive coal-based electricity production system. Because coal and cheap labour were both so readily available, this system was able to produce a large amount of electricity for a very low price. However, this came at an enormous human and environmental price.

Today, nearly 80% of our electricity is produced through coal-powered steam turbine generators. South Africa now produces 224 tones of marketable coal every year, making it the fifth largest coal-producing country in the world (and the third largest exporter).

The under-pricing of electricity has caused South Africans to become addicted to habits of energy wastage.

Fact: the real cost of electricity is higher than you think

Ash, sulphur, nitrogen oxides, organic compounds, heavy metals, radioactive elements, greenhouse gasses ... creating electricity out of coal results in more forms of waste than any other energy source.

Burning coal to make electricity releases large volumes of Carbon Dioxide, one of the main greenhouse gasses. South Africa is the 11th highest emitter of CO2 in the world, and is responsible for 40% of Africa's greenhouse gas emissions. Coal pollution not only contributes to global warming, but it also has disastrous local environmental effects: contributing to land degradation, acid rain and smog. Communities living close to coal power stations are at a high risk of health problems like respiratory diseases.

The cost of electricity that used to appear on our electricity bills was deceptively low. To get an accurate reflection of the cost of electricity, we should have been taking into account:
- the loss of agricultural revenue due to land degradation resulting from coal pollution
- the cost of healthcare for people affected by coal-pollution-induced respiratory diseases, and coal mining accidents
- the likely international tariffs and trade barriers currently in the pipeline for countries that do not comply with international environmental standards
- the loss to our economy is our energy usage continues to outstrip our supply, resulting in continued blackouts
- the possibility that South Africa's coal reserves could run out in the next 50-150 years

The increased cost of electricity will not only fund Eskom's new build programme; it will also bring it some way closer to accurately portraying the real costs of energy production.

Fact: we are not yet doing enough to cut back on energy wastage

In 2007, South Africans were warned that we needed to start saving 10% of our electricity usage every year for the next five years, or our energy supply would be threatened. In early 2008, periodic blackouts demonstrated to us all with no uncertainty that our reserve margin was unsustainably low. But by October 2008, we had only managed to generate a measly saving of 0.4%.

Over the long term, South Africa needs to invest in clean, renewable sources of energy. Our green technologies already lag far behind those of other emerging countries. Brazil has been extremely successful in developing solar home systems in rural areas, wind farms, biomass power and photovoltaics. India has set up an entire ministry of New and Renewable Energy, which is successfully co-ordinating government investment in renewable energy technologies. China has become one of the world's leading investors in renewable energy, and in 2005 invested US$6-billion in renewable energy solutions.

Fact: we are faced with an unprecedented opportunity to alter our energy addiction

South Africa has never been in a better position to change its energy habits. Because the true cost of electricity is finally being made real to us, we are beginning to take pro-active steps to curb our addiction to cheap, polluting electricity.

We can easily reach our 10% target simply by making small changes to our homes and habits. From there, the opportunity is ours to explore the renewable energy sources of the future.

Poem: Postcards from Canada

My mind affixes to this image I have of you
Drawn years ago now, penciled in over countless meetings:
The shape of eyebrows, the curve behind ears,
The meeting places of skin - knees and underarms,
Stray hairs on thighs, the arrangement of moles.

Notes that assembled into something that became
You:
your skin,
your eyebrows,
your thighs.

But since it all ended, I have been assembling you
Out of words cramped into postcards from Canada
You tell me only the general now - you tell me:
I've dyed my hair blonde and bobbed it short
I've lost my tan, I've bags under my eyes from lack
of sleep, I'm smoking again, but I'm going to they gym,
Things that scare me, unknown things,
Not additions to my sketches but erasings -
Not news, but things I no longer know about you

Reminders, two or three every month, that you are gone
In the most essential way; that you are dissapearing
Day by day, even in my mind. A long, slow departure

To a Skylark

Shelley's famous "To a Skylark" begins:

Hail to thee, blithe spirit!
Bird thou never wert-
That from heaven or near it
Pourest thy full heart In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

The Romantics wrote countless songs about similarly unpremeditated bird-poets. The bird was thought of as the ultimate untrained artist, who sang whatever its "full heart" prompted it to. This notion is premised on the idea that birdsong is individualistic, random and fully innate.

The terribly un-Romantic truth, though, is that bird song is far more a learnt behaviour than one would imagine. Bird song is actually pre-set for each species, and very little individualistic variation goes into it. Baby birds that are raised away from any other birds of their species never learn to sing "properly", and end up unintelligable to other birds of their kind. These birds might be the only "unpremeditated" singers - but their song is more like the ungrammatical speech of feral children than like the creativity of the artist.

Actually, it all boils down to two messages that the bird might actually be saying: "fuck me" or "fuck off" - as birdsong generally relates to territoriality or mating (or, in fewer cases, warning of predators). The cynical side of me might suggest that most poets are expressing one of the same messages - but never mind ...

Quitting

Imagine a pill was invented which contained all the nutrients, vitamins, proteins and starches that one needs for optimal health. One takes the pill once a day, drinks water, and one is guaranteed a healthy body. However, only half of the population takes this pill; other people still eat food. Life, they argue, is about quality, and they take great joy in the religion of food.

Of course, there is a powerful correlation between food-eaters and younger mortality (they die of heart disease, they get osteoporosis, are a lot more likely to develop cancer because of food-additives etc.), which leads the pill-takers to characterise the food-eaters as suicidal, stupid, as well as unattractive (eating carries with it a range of aesthetic problems: it stains clothes, it destroys teeth, it can cause halitosis and so on).

So, some food eaters attempt to become pill-takers, but they find that even though their bodies soon adapt to not needing food, they still crave it. Their friends go out for meals in restaurants and they feel excluded. They miss the physical satisfaction of putting things in their mouths and chewing. They miss the ritual moments it marks in their day. They miss food as a crutch when they have a bad day, and as something basic they can rely on to make themselves feel good. They miss celebratory meals and religious feasts.

In short, they feel they have lost something intrinsic to themselves. They are healthy, but they feel like they have sacrificed something important in order to be so, and they feel hollow.

This is what it feels like to give up smoking. The only difference is that people are born needing to eat, and learn to need to smoke. But I promise you, the need becomes no less intense.

W H Auden and the eternal anxiety of the poet

"Whatever his future life as a wage earner, a citizen, a family man may be, to the end of his days his life as a poet will be without anticipation. He will never be able to say: 'Tommorow I will write a poem and, thanks to my training and experience, I already know I shall do a good job.' In the eyes of others a man is a poet if he has written one good poem. In his own he is only a poet at the moment when he is making his last revision to a new poem. The moment before, he was still only a potential poet; the moment after, he is a man who has ceased to write poetry, perhaps forever."