LETTER: SA’s energy policy is not helped by populist polemicists

SA’s energy policy is not helped by populist polemicists like Patrick Bond ("‘Red card’ the environment? Rather apply full-cost accounting”, February 15). Though he has not found an appropriate rhyming slogan to add to the usual “keep the coal in the hole, the oil in the soil”, he now supports efforts to block SA from producing the gas that it will need for a “just transition” to a low carbon future.

Many countries recognise that gas is an important fuel for a low carbon transition. SA will have to use it as and when coal plants are closed down and the proportion of electricity generated by intermittent renewables increases. But Bond abuses environmental economics to ask whether, if SA produces the gas, “society is being properly compensated for valuable hydrocarbons from sovereign wealth”.  Presumably he means that though we have gas and it is valuable, we must import it; the emissions are OK as long as South Africans don’t benefit and their hydrocarbon wealth is left in the ground.

This is as unhelpful as some of his previous “advice” on natural resource matters. I recall that he led opposition to the “unnecessary” Lesotho Highlands Water Project and encouraged Capetonians to block the building of the Berg River Dam.  Township dwellers were encouraged to “smash the meter and enjoy the water” and, bizarrely, in the mid 1990s, Bond advised then water affairs minister Kader Asmal to increase farmers’ water tariffs to subsidise urban water supply, which would have closed down most irrigation farms.

Fortunately, his advice was usually ignored. So Gauteng still has (just) about enough water, Cape Town’s supply did not run out completely, and SA’s irrigation agriculture is one of the few economic sectors that is growing both jobs and production — ask the US lemon farmers! Unhappily, the one group that did heed his advice were populist politicians who encouraged many poor communities to disregard discipline in water use, which has left their taps dry.

But even if SA eventually gets around to using its sovereign resources, much time, money and job opportunities will have been lost and too much hot air generated. The best rhyming advice to critics like Bond is thus perhaps to “keep your gas up ...  well, where it belongs”.

Mike Muller
Wits School of Governance

JOIN THE DISCUSSION: Send us an email with your comments to letters@businesslive.co.za. Letters of more than 300 words will be edited for length. Anonymous correspondence will not be published. Writers should include a daytime telephone number.​