Table Mountain is in the running to become one of the New7Wonders of Nature, but this South African attraction is falling behind!

Let's do it for the Mountain!

Table Mountain is one of 28 finalists in the New 7 Wonders of Nature competition, in which the world’s top natural sites are being whittled down to seven winners in an exercise in global democracy that is expected to draw over a billion participants.

The New7Wonders will be announced on November 11, 2011 and we need your help to ensure our place in the history books.

Vote for Table Mountain online, via MXit or via SMS as often as possible. SMS “Table” to 34874. Each SMS costs R2.

You can also vote via Facebook.

Table Mountain is in the running to become one of the New7Wonders of Nature, but this South African attraction is falling behind!

Vote for me!

The New7Wonders will be announced on November 11, 2011 and we need your help to ensure our place in the history books.

Vote for Table Mountain online or via SMS as often as possible.

So … what are we up against?

True, Table Mountain is a stunner absolutely deserving of a place as one of the New7Wonders of Nature. But our mountain is going to have to share the limelight with six other natural wonders, which are, in all likelihood, just as lovely.

Twenty-seven natural wonders are competing with Table Mountain for a spot in the top seven, and when you vote for our mountain online, you’ll be asked to tick boxes for all seven of your favourites.

Why vote for our mountain?

Table Mountain is a South African icon and the only natural site on the planet to have a constellation of stars named after it – Mensa, meaning “the table.” The flat-topped mountain has withstood six million years of erosion and hosts the richest, yet smallest floral kingdom on earth with over 1,470 floral species. Table Mountain boasts numerous rare and endangered species. It is the most recognized site in Cape Town, the gateway to Africa, owing to its unique flat-topped peaks which reach 1,086 m above sea level.

Vote now!!

Researchers at Stellenbosch University are in search of the anecdotes, stories, slides, diaries and photos of the mariners, construction workers, scientists, joiners, engineers and doctors who have been involved in South Africa’s research bases in Antarctica and on Gough and Marion Islands since the start of the previous century.

The same sources, articles and books are used over and over when any writing is done on the history, heritage and geopolitical aspects, and it is time for these sources of information to be supplemented and updated so that more comprehensive information is available.

A complete database is also being compiled on the people and institutions involved and further sources of information so that social scientists and historians can more easily compile a more complete picture of South Africa’s involvement in the region.

Engela Duvenage says “We are looking particularly for the stories about, among others, the people who helped with the building, logistics and maintenance of the various research bases, because without them it would not have been possible for the scientists to do their research work. We are looking for info as far back as 1948, when the Prince Edward Islands were annexed in a very hush-hush operation for South Africa, for instance. It would, for instance, be great if we could track down someone who was there at the time!

As it is difficult to say where the people who have been involved there over the years now reside, it would be great if you could use information about this project. Your help in spreading the word on this “memory search” would be great”.

The basics on the Antarctic Legacy Project:

• Researchers here at Stellenbosch University are compiling an electronic database cum archive of the diaries, photographs and personal anecdotes of South Africans’ time in the Antarctic region.
• We are asking mariners, construction workers, scientists, joiners, engineers and doctors who have worked in the Antarctic region in the past 60 years to contact our researchers.
• This includes Marion Island, Gough Island and Antarctica (SANAE base).
• The database will be open to anyone who in future would like to do research on the history, heritage and geopolitical aspects of the region.
• The Antarctic Legacy Project is run by the DST-NRF Centre of Invasion Biology (CIB) at Stellenbosch University, and funded by the National Research Foundation.

It was announced on Wednesday 28 July 2010 that Catalonia has become the first part of mainland Spain to ban bullfighting. A 135-member regional parliament voted to approve a ban proposed by animal rights activists.

The message sent out is that bullfights are not an intrinsic or untouchable part of Spanish culture and identity but a form of animal abuse.

Spain’s Canary Islands had already outlawed bullfights back in 1991, as part of a more general animal protection law, but that decision had gone largely unnoticed – the Catalan move, however, has ignited discussion and divided opinion across the rest of the country.

The official policy of the SPCA movement in South Africa is “opposed to the use of animals in any form of combat whether against man or animal.”

Photo credit: Wikipedia

FW de Klerk’s comments to the Fortune/Time/CNN Global Forum about food. Most of the world has become used to food security – but this is not by any means the normal condition of mankind: we need think only of a number of famines during the past two hundred years that have caused tens of millions of deaths.

Photo credit: Darwin Bell

Some of these have had their roots in natural causes: some have been greatly exacerbated by inappropriate trade policies – like the potato famine in Ireland; but some of the worst – including the famine that followed the collectivisation of farms in the Soviet Union and the Great Leap Forward in Maoist China – were caused by catastrophically inappropriate ideologies.

The recent grounding of aircraft in Europe by the Icelandic volcano eruption illustrated how vulnerable our sophisticated societies are to the vagaries of nature.  But what would happen if there were a really serious eruption that led to poor harvests throughout the world for two or three years or longer?   The answer is that there would be famine – and those who would be the main victims would be citizens of poor countries that do not have substantial food reserves.

There is perhaps not too much that we can do to counteract the forces of nature.  However, there is a great deal that we can do in normal times to increase agricultural production to ensure food security and food self-sufficiency.  In particular, we can oppose ideological approaches that can easily lead to famine.

The first thing we must do is to make full use of developing technology to increase food production.
The development of high-yielding grain varieties;  the increased  use of pesticides, new kinds of fertilisers and the expansion of irrigation systems  have all contributed to what has become known as the “Green Revolution”.   The significantly higher yields in many countries have already gone a long way to ensuring food security in the countries concerned.   For example, in India a new variety of rice called IR8 increased rice yields by a factor of almost 10.

Secondly, we should not let ideology influence our approach to agriculture.   Some of the greatest famines in history – including those that followed the collectivisation of farms in the Soviet Union and the Great Leap Forward in Maoist China – were caused by catastrophically inappropriate ideological policies.

Similarly, and more recently, the ideologically driven land invasions in Zimbabwe have led to a severe drop in food production and to famine in some areas.

Ill-considered proposals for land reform in South Africa might seriously jeopardise agricultural production by seeking to break up the large farms that produce 80% of South Africa’s food.  They might unnecessarily undermine the property rights of productive farmers and discourage future investment in agriculture.  Most of the land reform schemes have thus far led to a cessation or serious decline in food production.  Land reform is essential – but it must be carried out in such a manner that it is fair to all parties and does not undermine food security.

Thirdly, we need to encourage fair global competition.  In 2004 OECD countries paid their farmers some $ 280 billion in subsidies.  This has led to massive distortions in agricultural markets – to the development of butter mountains and wine lakes in Europe – and to the dumping of agricultural exports in the markets of developing countries.  This often had a devastating effect – not only on African food exports – but on the ability of Africans farmers to compete fairly in their own markets.

Failure to reach agreement on the phasing out of farm subsidies has been one of the main obstacles to success in the post Doha negotiations on global trade.

We need to open up agricultural trade.  Producers in developing countries often find it very difficult to gain access to first world markets for their agricultural exports.  The much acclaimed US African Growth and Opportunity Act opened up trade between the US and 37 African countries – but specifically excluded dairy products,  cocoa, coffee, tea, tobacco, nuts and many types of fabrics.

Food production in Africa can be stimulated – not only by opening up access to African food exports in first world countries – but also by breaking down trade barriers between African countries themselves.  Tariffs between African countries are generally high – which might explain why only 10% of Africa’s trade is with other African countries.

In 2004 the World Bank calculated that liberalisation of agricultural trade between developing countries could lead to a benefit to them of $ 80 billion.

To sum up, there is not much that we can do about catastrophic natural threats – apart from building up our reserves as Pharaoh did during the seven fat years!

However, we can do a great deal to ensure food security and ultimate food self-sufficiency by

• making full use of developing agricultural knowledge and technology;
• avoiding – at all costs – ideological approaches to food production;
• ending unfair trade practices – especially agricultural subsidies; and by
• opening up trade in agricultural products.

From the FW de Klerk Foundation

What is veganism?

Although almost all of us know what vegetarianism is, veganism remains far less well understood. In fact, the majority of people have trouble distinguishing between these two terms and even some self-professed vegetarians are unsure of the distinction!

Photo credit: malias

Once you start going into more detail, it gets even worse – there are lacto-vegetarians (‘lacto’ means ‘milk’, or more generally, ‘dairy’), lacto-ovo-vegetarians (ovo means ‘eggs’), ‘strict’ vegetarians, ‘pure’ vegetarians, raw food vegans, fruitarians and even a group of people who call themselves ‘freegans’. To add to this mess, people often mix all these terms together into the single blanket-term, ‘vegetarian’.

Clearly then, vegetarianism can mean many things – from a diet that includes eggs and dairy (lacto-ovo-vegetarian) to a diet that avoids anything that hasn’t fallen from a tree (fruitarian)!

This is where the term vegan comes in.

The word comes ‘vegan’ from a shortening of ‘vegetarian’ and it’s inventor, the founder of the UK Vegan Society Donald Watson, explained it as meaning ‘the beginning and end of vegetarianism’.

Unlike vegetarianism, veganism can be conclusively defined as the pursuit of a diet and lifestyle as free from animal products as possible, for the benefit of people, animals and the environment. More specifically, vegans live on a plant-based diet (free from meat, milk, eggs, honey, gelatine or any other animal derivative) and do not wear leather, wool or silk.

Although this choice might seem extreme to some, it is relatively easy to pursue a healthy vegan diet.

Here are three very good reasons why you should give veganism a try!

Veganism and health

Contrary to ‘popular belief’ (or more accurately, ‘old wives’ tales’) a balanced vegan diet provides all the protein, calcium, iron and iodine required by our bodies. Vitamin B12, once the bane of vegans as it was exclusively animal-sourced, is now readily available in vegan-friendly supplement form and is also used to fortify many vegan products such as soy-milk and meat substitutes. Even the short and long chain Omega-3 fatty acids traditionally found in fish oil extracts can be obtained from canola, hempseed, walnuts and leafy green vegetables.

In fact, a growing number of nutritional specialists support the conclusion that veganism is in fact healthier than either a vegetarian or meat-based diet – potential benefits include lower levels of saturated fat, low cholesterol, lower risk for cancer and heart disease, higher levels of carbohydrates, fiber, magnesium, potassium, folate, antioxidant vitamins C and E and phytochemicals, and even, according to some new research, a higher IQ!

Another advantage of veganism is not having to indirectly consume artificial substances like growth hormones and antibiotics which are often given to farmed animals; yet another is not having to consume cows’ milk, a powerful allergen for many humans which has been widely misrepresented by the dairy industry as an essential part of a growing child’s diet.

In summary, a vegan diet is at least as healthy, and likely healthier than, either a vegetarian or a meat-based diet. Health alone, however, is not why most vegans make the choice to change their diet.

Veganism and ethics

Photo credit: The Gifted Photographer

Clearly, for any rational person, there is unspeakable, unavoidable cruelty inherent in the production of meat and dairy products. The picture of happy cows and sheep grazing in idyllic meadows and filling wooden pails with offerings of creamy lactate is utterly fallacious (even though it is images like these that continue to sell hamburgers and cartons of milk) – a world away from the concentration camp-like conditions of suffering, disease, overcrowding, torture and slow, miserable death captured so powerfully in films such as Peta’s ‘Meet Your Meat’ or the profoundly affecting ‘Earthlings’ (www.isawearthlings.com), a new documentary that examines how, just as they can be sexist or racist, humans can also be ‘speciesist’ in their utter disregard for other sentient beings.

But, while ethical considerations are the primary motivator for most vegans, little has to be said about this, so strikingly obvious is it to any person who cares to consider the contingencies of a meat-based diet that abusing other creatures for our own inessential gains is entirely unjustifiable and bespeaks a pathological violence, one that emerges in other domains of human activity.

In the words of Leo Tolstoy, ‘as long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields.’

Veganism and the environment

Photo credit: Davichi

Towards the end of 2006, the Food and Agriculture Organisation, which is part of the UN, released a report entitled, ‘Livestock’s Long Shadow’, an alarming expose of the farming industry that confirms, for many, what environmentalists have been saying for decades: a meat-based diet is killing the planet!

Before you dismiss this bold statement as ‘hippie propaganda’, consider that this is a carefully researched scientific report released by none other than the United Nations. Now consider what the report and others like it are saying:

* The farming of livestock and livestock feed releases so much carbon, methane, ammonia and nitrous oxide into the atmosphere that it has become the single leading cause of anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming!

* A meat-based diet requires 10-20 times more land for food production than a vegan diet; a dairy-inclusive vegetarian diet requires 3 times more.

* Vast quantities of chemicals, excrement and corpses are released into the environment by the meat and dairy industry every year, finding their way into the atmosphere and into our water supplies.

* The thousands of species becoming extinct in the Amazon every year owe their fate primarily to the deforestation that accompanies livestock production.

* It takes up to 100 000 (yes, one hundred thousand) litres of water to produce a single kilogram of beef, as opposed to a couple of hundred to a couple of thousand litres to produce a kilogram of potatoes, wheat, corn or rice!

* According to a recent estimate, over 70% of the world’s fish species are either fully exploited or depleted due to overfishing for human consumption. Some people say there might be no fish left in the oceans in 40 years

* According to some studies, animal protein production requires more than eight times as much fossil-fuel energy than production of plant protein.

There are countless other ways in which a vegan diet can contribute to both the environment and our well-being as a species.

Popular excuses

Given all the above reasons for the pursuit of a vegan diet, there are still some who, due to vested interests, lack of conviction or fear of change, choose to defend their habits with a number of tenuous excuses. Here are some common ones, along with rebuttals:

* I cannot be a vegan because of my blood type.

Response: The idea that you should ‘eat for your blood type’ is now widely regarded as inaccurate, faddish mis-information. Anybody can pursue a healthy vegan diet, regardless of blood group.

* I tried eating vegan food for a week once, but I felt really weak and light-headed so I stopped.

Response: Clearly a sudden shift in diet will not come without some transitional symptoms, although in the case of a move from meat-based to vegan such symptoms are usually mild to unnoticeable. Persistence is certainly rewarded, however, as many vegans attest to the perceived increase in well-being and mental clarity accompanying a balanced, long-term vegan diet.

* It’s okay because I support Free-Range or ‘humanely farmed’ meat.

Response: Terms such as these are no more than meat and dairy industry propaganda. The only regulatory body governing the use of the term ‘Free Range’ is the industry itself and although some Free Range providers might attempt to be truly ‘humane’, Free Range sometimes means little more than a small window in the factory wall and 20 minutes of outdoor grazing time.

Then again, even if a particular provider is pursuing truly ‘humane’ farming, the very notion thereof is logically and ethically questionable – is it possible to be humane in world genocide? How about humane capital punishment or humane rape?

Clearly such terms as these are an affront to human intelligence, not to mention the total inability of such ‘humane’ farming techniques, given the vast expanses of land and resources they require, to service anything larger than a tiny niche-market.

* I protest against the use of fur and foie gras and I campaign for animal welfare, so I’m doing enough already

Response: If you protest against such things, you almost certainly do so because they are cruel and because you wish to mitigate the suffering of animals. If this is the case then surely it makes sense to also protest the use of animals for food and clothing in a broader sense. Why focus solely on niche issues that affect less than 1% of all exploited animals when you’re still complicit in the exploitation of the other 99%?

* It’s too difficult / expensive to be vegan where I live.

Response: A balanced vegan diet is almost always cheaper to maintain than a meat-based one. Unfortunately though, people assume veganism is pricey because of the high cost of inessential luxury items like dairy free cheese and vegan ice-cream. If your diet consists of such novelty items then sure, it might be costly going vegan; it would be an ethical travesty though if your need for a low price vegan toffee custard outweighed the right to life of another living being, don’t you think?

But isn’t vegetarianism enough? Isn’t veganism just a radical fringe group?

Almost everybody knows a couple of vegetarians – people who don’t eat meat but usually still eat eggs and cheese, drink milk and don’t worry too much about things like ‘E Numbers’ or leather shoes. Because vegetarianism has been around for thousands of years, forms the dietary basis of several ancient cultures and belief systems and has hundreds of millions of practitioners around the globe, it is widely accepted and catered for in modern society. Few people would be confused, or even ask you questions, if you said you were vegetarian and most supermarkets, even in countries like South Africa, have a wide range of branded vegetarian products available.

And when you consider that many vegetarians, when asked, will explain that they’ve stopped eating meat for the same ethical and health reasons as vegans, it’s easy to see how people can be confused into thinking that vegetarianism is ‘far enough’.

However, there is no substantial difference between vegetarians and meat-eaters.

While vegetarians might not eat meat, they still consume either dairy products (lacto-vegetarians), eggs (ovo-vegetarians) or both (lacto-ovo-vegetarians). If this sounds okay to you, consider that the life of a dairy cow is still a horrific life and that to keep dairy cows pregnant (and thus giving milk) you have to produce young male calves, almost all of whom are turned into veal at the ‘tender’ age of roughly 6 months. Eggs come from hens and, for every female chick born into a life of egg-laying, the law of averages dictates that a male chick will also be born. These male chicks are killed almost instantly as they serve no purpose in egg-laying factories.

In other words, dairy and egg-farming are abhorrently cruel and vegetarians are still directly responsible for the deaths of cows and chickens when they choose to consume these products! When you also consider that vegetarians aren’t usually all that fussed about leather or wool, it becomes clear that all vegetarianism amounts to is a choice to exploit animals in different ways.

Indeed, even though vegetarians might cause a few less deaths than meat-eaters, ‘ethical vegetarians’ could hardly justify such frivolous, inessential consumption of eggs and dairy when confronted with the facts.

So, while many people, even some vegetarians, inaccurately label vegans as ‘extremists’ or ‘fundamentalists’, veganism is in fact a courageous and dedicated lifestyle choice that is not hypocritical about how it manifests its own ethics; it is the only lifestyle consistent with a desire to live without inflicting unnecessary cruelty on members of other species.

Conclusion

If we are to survive as intelligent, compassionate stewards of a sustainable, living planet, it is essential that we change some of our habits in our own lifetimes.

Of all those bad, destructive, nihilistic patterns of behaviour that we have accumulated as a species over the last few thousand years, consuming meat, dairy and other animal products is perhaps the easiest to break and indeed, thousands more people are electing a cruelty free diet every year. We owe it to ourselves and our fellow Earthlings, especially those to come, to make an informed and honest decision about our lifestyles.

Further information

For more information, visit the following websites:

• www.vegansociety.com
• www.vegweb.com (for thousands of vegan recipes)
• www.peta.org (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals)
• www.animalrightsafrica.org

“Until he extends the circle of his compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace.” – Albert Schweitzer

Earth Day is held yearly on 22 April to promote awareness of and appreciation for Earth’s environmental issues.  It is an opportunity to celebrate Planet Earth.

Photo credit: Satoru Kikuchi

Earth Day is celebrated around the world by people of all backgrounds regardless of race, gender, nationality or faith. It is an occasion for the world’s citizens to commit to building a safer, healthier, cleaner, sustainable world.

Earth Day is a global movement to highlight and address environmental issues. These are just some of the major environmental issues our planet faces:

• the greenhouse effect and global warming;
• destructive energy sources versus sustainable alternate energy sources;
• toxic waste and ways of effective, efficient responsible waste management;
• groundwater contamination, abuse of water resources, wetland destruction, and pollution of waterways and the oceans;
• the impact of litter on our water resources and on ecosystems;
• overfishing and unsustainable fishing of our seas and oceans;
• destruction of rainforests;
• expanding deserts.

Because we humans caused the problems Earth now faces, it is our responsibility to find solutions.

Earth Day is a platform to conscientise citizens on what we can do to make a difference and to encourage people to get involved and do something to make a difference. If we each do something the collective effort will make a big difference not only to South Africa but worldwide.

Content from Greenworks

The problem

On 24 Feb 2010, NERSA approved Eskom’s MYPD2 (Multi-Year Price Determination 2) with increases in Eskom’s nominal tariffs of 24.8% for the 2010/2011 year, 25.8% for the 2011/2012 year and 25.9% for the 2012/2013 year. The average electricity price will rise from a current R0.33/kwh to R0.415/kwh this year, then go up to R0.52/kwh in 2011/2012 and finally to R0.65/kwh in 2012/2013 thus doubling the average rate in the next 3 years.

Photo credit: e³°°°Flash!

NERSA also issued guidelines to prevent municipalities from passing on the full nominal amount of the increase as buying the electricity from Eskom only represents approximately 67% of the cost of providing electricity by the municipalities. The three years of municipal increases were approved at 15.33% effective July 1, 20l10, 16.03% effective July 1, 2011 and 16.16% effective July 1, 2012. The result of this will be to level out what end user customers pay for electricity as many current municipality tariffs are significantly higher than Eskom’s direct to the customer tariffs.

Finally, in a real blow to the domestic segment, NERSA announced the long awaited “residential inclining block tariff structure.” In simple terms, the more you use the higher your tariff.

• Very small household users, less than 50 kwh/mo, will see a 10.59% reduction in 2010 followed by increases of 5.4% and 5.5% in the succeeding 2 years.
• The next level up, households using 51 – 250 kwh/mo will see a reduction of 5.2% in 2010 followed by increases of 13.23% and 13.5% in years 2 and 3.
• Households using 351 – 600 kwh/mo will face a much larger increase of 21.95% in 2010 followed by increases of 25.8% and 25.9% in years 2 and 3.
• Finally, larger households using 601 or more kwh/mo face a punitive tariff increase of 35.82% in 2010, followed by increases of 25.8% in 011 and 25.9% in 2012 which ultimately brings this tariff to R1.32/kwh in 2013. This is in stark contrast to the average domestic tariff of R0.7862/kwh in 2013.

These residential block tariffs will be carried over to the municipalities so all residential customers will be subject to these tariffs. The average consumption of all households in South Africa is 1100 kwh/mo according to Eskom. This means that hundreds of thousands, if not millions of individual homeowners will see their electricity bill more than double over the next three years.
With rising energy costs and a volatile energy future in South Africa we all need to find ways of cutting down on electricity consumption which ultimately affects our finances. Eskom is building new power plants, but these are years away as it takes 5 – 6 years minimum from the time construction is started until a new power plant comes online. The first of South Africa’s new power plants are only scheduled to come online in 2013 if, and only if, there are no delays in costruction.

The solution

For the individual homeowner there are a number of things you can do to reduce your electricity usage immediately and at very low cost. There are also more significant things with commensurate costs. Let’s look at where your electricity goes.

First up is your geyser or geysers for those who have more than one. In fact, do you know how many geysers you have and where they are? Geysers are the number one consumer of electricity in the home and can use up to 50% of all the electricity you consume. What can you do?

• First, look at your geyser usage. Some homes have multiple geysers and one or more may be in areas of the house, such as guest quarters, that are only used infrequently. If so, turn these geysers off at the DB board and only switch them on a few hours before guests are due to arrive then switch them off after the guests leave. Our motto at Electro Sense is, “There is no more efficient than off.” so turning a geyser off if it is not necessary is the most efficient thing you can do.
• The next easiest thing to do is to be sure the geyser temperature is set to no higher than 55 C. Many geysers are set much higher which is wasteful. The amount you save will vary based on how high the temperature is before you set it down to 55 C.
• The third thing to do is to insulate every geyser with a geyser blanket. This can reduce electricity consumption by the geyser by up to 27%. Even if your geyser is SABS approved and says it is insulated, it is only common sense that if you put your hand on the outside and it feels warm then heat is being lost and more insulation in the form of a geyser blanket will save energy and money.
• Not as easy to do but also very effective is to insulate the hot water pipes leading from the geyser to the taps. In some cases this will not be possible as they may run inside walls but even the pipe run in the ceiling where the geyser is mounted will help.
• Another thing that can be done is to install timers on the DB board which turn the geyser circuits off when they are not needed. For example, the timer might turn the geyser on at 4 am and allow it to run until 8 am (or whenever everyone who uses it to shower, etc would be done and gone). If there is no one home during the day then it might stay off until a couple hours before it is needed in the evening then go off again until 4 am. Again, there is no more efficient than off and if the whole system is insulated then the water will stay warm while the geyser is off and will not take long to heat up when needed.


photo credit: Arsel Özgürdal

• Higher initial cost but much lower running costs over many years will come from installing an SWH (Solar Water Heater). Capital costs for SWHs are coming down as more are sold. You can buy an SWH for as low as R12,000 and can spend up to R40,000 or more depending upon the size and type. In addition, Eskom offers a rebate depending upon which specific unit(s) you buy. If you manage your hot water use effectively, solar heating can virtually eliminate your cost of hot water.

If you implement all the above, you can save more than half of you total cost for running your geysers. Since geysers account for 30 – 50% of your entire home electricity bill, this could reduce your total electricity bill by up to 25%, a considerable savings.

Photo credit: Jan TikAir

The second area to look at is HVAC (Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning). HVAC is typically the second highest user of electricity in the home and if you have underfloor heating becomes far and away the largest cost in winter. Unless you are building new or doing extensive remodelling, your options are more limited here and are mainly related to the temperature settings you choose. In general, your electricity usage will change by about 6 – 15% for each degree you raise the temperature of the air conditioning in the summer and lower the temperature of the underfloor heating or heat pump in the winter. Also, you may not know that turning the air conditioning to less than 18 – 19 C provides no extra cooling but wastes a significant amount of electricity and therefore money. What can you do?

• Set the temperature a degree or two higher in the summer to reduce A/C costs.
• Set the temperature a degree or two lower in the winter to reduce underfloor heating costs.
• Seal up all windows and doors. A huge amount of heat and cooling are lost through improperly sealed doors and windows. There are many types of foam strip insulation available that can cut these losses greatly. The amount will vary from home to home but the cost of installing it is generally very low so it is worthwhile.
• Not as easy but very effective is to add insulation to the attic areas. There are many types of insulation that can be laid on top of the ceiling. These can save up to 20% or more of your heating and cooling costs and will make the house feel more comfortable as the temperature will be more uniform throughout the house and throughout the day.
• If you are building new or doing extensive remodeling then consider solar hot water underfloor heating. Rather than a resistance coil burning electricity, tubes that circulate hot water are installed in the concrete floor. Solar panels heat water that is circulated. In addition, an insulated storage tank holds hot water to keep the system running at night. This is relatively expensive to install but, again, compared to the cost of running electric underfloor heating over a period of years, it can be cost effective.
• On the air conditioning side there are also options that are more major changes but have significantly reduced operating costs. One is to install a heat pump system in place of a conventional A/C system. Heat pumps can reduce operational costs by up to 30%.
• A second A/C alternative is a solar powered absorption chiller system. This system uses solar energy to heat water. The energy in the hot water is then used to make cold air through an absorption chiller unit. Somewhat expensive upfront, these systems are very inexpensive to run and can reduce energy use for air conditioning by up to 80%.
• Finally, there are evaporative cooling units that use the heat absorbed by water as it evaporates to cool the air. Again, there is the upfront cost but the operating costs are a fraction of conventional A/C.

In summary, there are many options to reduce your home energy consumption. The capital costs and running costs vary from solution to solution. How much you can save, how much will it cost you and what is the optimum solution for your home will vary.

You can contact Electro Sense via their web site or by phone on 011-708-3835.

Although the warnings of impending environmental catastrophe were hotly contended a few years ago (most tellingly by high-paid corporate lobby groups), few people now deny that many of the essential natural systems that sustain all life on Earth are threatened by human activity.

Among countless other horrors, vast expanses of richly biodiverse Amazon rainforest have been decimated to make way for crops planted for biofuel and livestock feed, use of non-renewable energy resources is at an all time high, the world’s oceans are fast being depleted of fish, global food supply is threatened by overzealous promotion of unsafe and inefficient genetically modified wheat, maize, rice and other staples and the atmosphere itself is thick with pollutants, affecting the climactic stability of our entire planet.

Even if we ignore the fact that some ecologists are calling this unfolding event and its consequences the Sixth Great Extinction Crisis, the effects on humans alone are alarming: global political instability and conflict, displacement, famine, loss of basic income, an increase in exploitation of the poor in developing countries and a rapidly increasing gap between the rich and the poor are just a handful of the direct and indirect effects of the short-sighted Industrial Revolution mindset that seeks to endlessly exploit the whole of nature for human benefit without recognising the complete unsustainability of this approach.

It is therefore no exaggeration to say that the next 20 years might offer humanity both its greatest opportunity and its greatest threat. How we choose to respond, as a global community, to these and other pressing issues, will have immense consequences for our shared future and the lives we are able to lead on this planet.

Concerningly however, it seems as though the Great Green Revolution, our defining moment of global solidarity, currently amounts to little more than ineffective posturing.

The problem

Photo credit: pfly

Should we then feel guilty when we’re told that none of these measures will have any noticable impact, even if every last one of us drove a Prius and had a solar geyser?

The problem is threefold: first, spectacularly greedy business interests have seen a new gap in the market to exploit and have attached all sorts of green rhetoric, aka ‘greenwash’ to their products and PR; second, most of the spokespeople for green ‘activism’ are married to the idea that market forces alone will suffice to save us, strengthening the drive of the green marketeers and illegitimating any more radical actions; third, some of our habits are so deeply entrenched that few have actually realised that they can and should be changed. All these factors combine to give us an entirely false sense of how we can really make a difference.

So what can we do if we are serious about living ethically and reversing the tide of ecological devastation? The environmental movement has several different answers to this question.

Light green environmentalism

photo credit: Christa Richert

For instance, given the fact that the global livestock industry is the single largest cause of human-made global warming (bigger even than the entire global transport industry according to the 2006 United Nations report, ‘Livestock’s Long Shadow’) the LG’s insist that we should eat either very little meat or no meat at all as a vegetarian or (even better) vegan diet uses as little as 1/20th of the natural resources a standard meat-based Western diet does. In fact, changing to a vegan diet is probably the single most responsible consumer commitment an individual can make to saving the environment and will make much more of a dent in the average ecological footprint than almost anything else currently on the cards.

LG’s also advise us to use our consumer power to boycott companies (or even nations, like China) that are damaging our environment by not buying from them and instead trying to support local and eco-friendly industries wherever possible.

Bright green environmentalism

Photo credit: law keven

Going one step further than the LG’s, BG’s recognise that what we consume is important but also attempt to tackle the problem from the other end. BG’s ask the important question of how we produce what is consumed; they thus tend to be enthusiastic about things like renewable energy, hybrid cars, nanotechnology and other ‘small footprint’ technologies. Some BG’s have even proposed a novel, if somewhat hare-brained solution to the old ‘methane belching cow’ problem: a machine that is connected to cattle and captures their methane emissions for use as clean energy!

In essence, BG’s assert that through new technologies and sustainable living practices we can stem or even reverse the tide of ecological devastation.

Dark green environmentalism

Like the LG’s, the DG’s believe that we should consume in an ethical, responsible way and, like the BG’s, they believe that innovation in the way we produce is crucial, but they take both of these positions one step further by questioning why consumerism has so fully permeated our lives and our values.

DG’s believe that environmental problems are caused not just by what we buy and how it is made, but also by how we live and function as a society. They see the dominant political and economic ideology of globalised industrial capitalism as fundamentally flawed in that it promotes shallow and unsustainable values based on greed, mindless consumerism, alienation from nature and rampant exploitation of resources. Not content to leave the analysis there, DG’s go on to state that the basis of all this is an illogical emphasis on perpetual growth at the expense of all else. They call this drive ‘growth mania’ and advocate in its place an egalitarian, anarchist society with a more nuanced value system irreducible to capital, pursuing development and refinement of ideas and technologies in place of growth for its own sake.

photo credit: Sea Shepherd

Even darker green environmentalism!

At the most extreme end of the DG spectrum are what can best be termed ‘primitivists’, people who work towards the complete abolition of industrial society, including even agriculture. On the surface this looks like a somewhat fanatical, almost escapist approach to the problems we face as a technologically advanced society but, while hardly any of us would like to go back to living in caveman times, it is worth pausing for a moment to ask the question of exactly what we want and what makes us truly happy before we dismiss the idea of living more simply as absurd right off the bat.

After all, psychologists are telling us that for all our flashy gadgets and cheap sweatshop clothes we’re no happier now than we were several decades ago and are in fact becoming more anxious, more self-absorbed and less capable of meaningful and fulfilling interpersonal relationships. Few of us enjoy the mundane and often meaningless slog of the 5 day work week, the long and congested daily commute in our empty 5 seater cars, the mad rush to spend our hard-earned pennies on shiny but ultimately unsatisfying trinkets… instead, we enjoy, almost every single one of us, leisurely time spent with family and friends, long walks through green expanse where we can marvel at the majesty and complexity of the natural world and simple time spent engaging our creative impulses not as a means to some fiscal end but as an entirely satisfying ends in itself.

Conclusion

So, even though we have sent camera equipment to Mars and now know enough about the quantum world to build a simple computer in a glass of water, even though we have almost perfected the artificial eye and the bionic heart, even though we can buy (if the unequal distribution of the world’s resources is biased in our favour) high-definition televisions, 160GB mp3 players and phones that recognise spoken commands, perhaps we have forgotten, in our mad rush towards some fictitious goal post, how to ask some very simple questions.

What is an individual human life? What could living consist in? How do we define ourselves as a species and how do we measure our worth? Is this really the best it could be? Are we really acting in the interests of ourselves and the planet? What is the value, intrinsic or otherwise, of other species? What is it that drives all of us to act in such facile and self-destructive ways and can this be changed? How?

Maybe, just maybe, if enough of us are brave enough to confront these questions honestly and with all of our being, the very changes in living brought about in answering them will suffice to save us, along with all the other life on earth that we have dis-empowered and claimed dominion over. Until then, the old adage is surely true: our reach exceeds our grasp.

After two years in intensive care, Hartbeespoort Dam is already showing visible signs of a recovery in progress. According to the Department of Water Affairs (DWA) this is directly attributable to the Harties Metsi a me Integrated Remediation Programme.

Mr Petrus Venter, DWA leader for the programme, yesterday claimed that the improved results can to a great extent be ascribed to the actions undertaken by those involved in the remediation plan. These include the continuous removal of algae and hyacinth, re-establishment of the shoreline vegetation, manufacturing of floating wetlands as well as progress with restructuring the food web in the dam.

One visible sign of the current pristine condition of the Dam was the report by a monitoring team that there was clarity of water depth of up to five metres below the surface in some areas of the Dam.

Prospects for further improvement is good because of the continuous removal and control of algae and hyacinth; between January and August this year 4460m³ of algae, 7277 m³ of hyacinth and 169 tons of debris were removed from the Dam. “These actions have reduced the deposit of organic material to the bottom of the Dam,” Mr Venter said, “organic material acts as the fuel to mobilise more nutrients from the sediments.”

The fishing project
Despite continued damage to the contractor’s nets and equipment, the fishing project is also making good progress. The purpose of the fishing project is to alleviate the negative impact accompanied by eutriphication (nutrient enrichment) of the Dam and its aim is to restructure the presently unhealthy aquatic food web.

Fish species which re-introduce nutrients to the water column are targeted for removal. They include: bottom feeders such as catfish and carp. Also targeted are zooplankton feeders which reduce the uptake of algal to the foodweb such as the canary kurper.

Fishing efforts have been renewed and there has been a remarkable increase in the fish catches between 4 and 14 August 2009 with 3.956 tons of fish netted.

Fish have mainly been caught in the areas of Meerhof, Oberon, De Rust and Kommando Nek. From February 2008 to date a total of 45 530.95 kgs of fish have been removed. Long lines will also be used over the next few months for targeting catfish as this species will soon start feeding with increased intensity in preparation for the spawning season.

Shoreline rehabilitation
With regards to the shoreline rehabilitation, teams are busy removing exotic plants in order to start planting in spring. The manufacturing of floating wetlands is progressing well and they produce on average about 50 x 20m² units per month. A number of estates have indicated their desire to participate in the floating wetlands project by purchasing, installing and maintaining them on their own immediate shorelines. This is especially relevant where the shoreline has been irreparably damaged due to various factors.

The earthworm project
The vermiculture (earthworm) project is making progress with about 800 m³ of compost which is currently in process and 25 m³ of pure vermicast at the damwall.

The Vermi-compost produced is of a high quality and algae and hyacinth are used in this process. Three other composting sites were established at Schoemansville Oewer Club, Ifafi Conservation area and the inlet of Saartjiespruit. The total stock of earthworms now stands at 2 300kg.

The information centre
The information centre is open during the week for school groups by arrangement and staffed on Saturdays between 9:00 and 14:00. It’s situated just west of the tunnel.

The public and especially schools are encouraged to visit the centre. Schools are welcome to contact the Harties metsi a me offices to arrange for visits to the centre as well as visiting other aspects of the programme.

The Resource Management Plan
The Resource Management Plan for Hartbeespoort Dam has been developed and made public for comment. Although the review period
ended on 30 April 2009 various requests have been received for a further meeting to discuss the draft RMP.

This will be done as soon as the comments received have been incorporated into the document (planned for the end of November 2009).

For further information contact the “Harties metsi a me” office at either telephone 012-207-9911 or e-mail harties@dwaf.gov.za. You can also visit the web site at www.dwa.gov.za/harties

Worth noting:
What a pleasure to publish the occasional good news story for a change.
In reporting on a water bird count around the Dam in July conducted by WESSA for the Animal Demographic Unit of the University of Cape Town, Mr John Wesson of WESSA remarked that the number of birds counted in July nearly doubled compared to the count in January. Does that mean that the word is spreading among the water birds that Harties is now a salubrious place to be? – Editor.

Thanks to the Madibeng Pulse for this article.