THE announcement of a green-light to Karoo fracking couldn’t have come at a worse time. The very same week, saw the world pummelled by kill the environment ideologue Donald Trump, who two days ago, scrapped Obama climate change policies. Thus Mineral Resources Minister Mosebenzi Zwane was merely walking in the footsteps of Trump’s anti-Earth agenda on Thursday when he made the announcement that could see a less than 10 year resource opened to exploitation by international gas companies at the same time that it jeopardises future generations.

Agriculture and water resources will be affected far longer than the short-term gains to be had. The sudden surge in development projects of dubious origin, but with major environmental consequences, alongside the rush to strip away environmental protections under NEMA, itself watered down by a Ministerial override, is an insult to the guarantees of Earth rights in our constitution, and can be seen as short-term business interests being put ahead of sustainable development goals.

This week also saw strange announcements by Eskom that it was contemplating revisiting its failed PBMR programme which had already gobbled up some R10bn of taxpayers money with nothing to show except a few fat physicists. As the townships remained underserviced and households in Cape Town were being told to save water, the Minister was encouraging the abuse of precious water resources in the Karoo, while Eskom, the national power utility was getting ready for another bout of atomic spend without so much as concern for consumer safety.

The Trumpist drumbeat appears to have taken the Zuma administration by storm, as if suddenly the mantra of ‘ecological sustainability” crucial to South Africa’s unique development path, was no longer so relevant. Does this mean there is now a Planet B? And those melting polar ice sheets are nothing to worry about? The sudden dash back to a previous age of coal and steam, oil and gas guzzling consumer excess is what is most attractive to the likes of Zuma and his neoliberal agenda. Time to start talking in earnest about ecocide?

SEE Ivo Vegter’s Rampant Denialism

Tag: Fracking