Open Writing

In the 1960s, the Green Revolution was synonymous with India; and a sea- change in technology which allowed that country to massively increase its grain production by means of new high-yielding varieties of seed. But just as today’s younger generation wouldn’t have a clue what mum was talking about if she lectured “a stitch in time saves nine”, so too they attach an entirely different meaning to GR. For now we’re in the territory of saving the whale and the polar bear, recognizing that our wetlands are valued refuges for migrant birds (though at least one Knysna property developer thinks he knows better), preserving indigenous forests and .....oh yes, reducing our carbon footprints.

To the uninitiated, we all leave a carbon footprint in our wake. This is the amount of carbon dioxide we create through direct combustion of fossil fuel as we go about our daily lives (eg driving our cars to the beach or switching on our washing machines), or indirectly by buying virtually anything on the open market (as inevitably, the process of producing goods will have consumed energy at some stage). CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and increasing levels of this in the atmosphere are a prime cause of global warming and climate change (assuming you don’t subscribe to the loony Cornucopian view that these events are natural and everything will be all right on the night).

Fortuitously, there’s a lot of advice out there on how we can all help to minimize the dreaded footprint, that is, ameliorating the damage we do. We are urged to plant trees (preferably indigenous please), and to cycle or walk instead of driving short distances. We can car-pool (for commuting journeys), recycle bottles, plastics etc. None of this is too hard – honestly. For those of us still with an inexplicable urge to travel by air, we also now have the option to offset – that is to pay something extra into green Funds set up by companies charged with reducing carbon scores for you – though personally, I know of no one except Tony Blair who has done this, and even he was forced by pressure of UK public opinion following another of his large family’s excursions to the luxury of Cliff Pilchard’s Barbados mansion.

What else can we do to avoid imminent doom? Err...use energy saving light bulbs? Convert to solar power? (Yeah, sure. We have long known that only people will large bank balances can dabble with the latter). I fear all such efforts, while laudable enough, will make little or no difference to our inexorable descent into climate chaos, water shortage, and accelerated species extinction. It takes no genius to conclude the fundamental problem with the world is that too many people live in it, most of whom have aspirations to improve their standard of living, for which do not read quality of life (the end result of which means more cars spewing out noxious fumes, more unnecessary dish washing machines, more foreign holidays, bigger obnoxious houses, more noisy leaf blowers to jet debris into the neighbour’s garden). In another era, this was referred to as “the tragedy of the commons” – a phenomenon where everyone goes on consuming at a relentless and unsustainable rate, with no one (except possibly Knysna and Sedgefield’s hippy population, God bless ‘em), prepared to slow down for the greater good of society.

Here’s my easy to follow plan. If you want to make a genuine additional difference to carbon reduction, stop buying anything that has a “Made in China” label on it. Why? Because, after the Americans (who are already beyond redemption, and I’m glad to say we don’t do a lot of trading with them), the Chinese are the biggest polluters on God’s earth. And we in South Africa are partly driving that pollution by consuming willy-nilly, their cheap and nasty goods. Don’t even attempt to defend them please. Their tennis shoes fall off my feet after five games. I’ve known their hospital equipment to electrocute Tanzanian nurses. Gluten laced with melamine mysteriously finds its way into Chinese manufactured pet food and kills hundreds of dogs world wide. Cadnium tainted fertilizer imported from China had a devastating impact on our Eastern Cape pineapple industry, forcing suspension of exports. Chinese plumbing parts are made from dodgy metal and explode in your new bathroom walls. Their cars and vans....., well, stop me on that one. Nuff said. And God help the oceans and our skies as supertankers and jet aircraft no longer seem to pose a problem for the nation with a limitless source of cheap labour and a fistful of half baked designs. In short, China is a nation devoid of manufacturing standards.

Admittedly, adhering to the “Nothing Chinese Please” strategy will take a great deal of will power on the part of everyday consumers, so all-enveloping and insidious is the nature of the beast. Last week in George for instance, I went from shop to shop looking for a pair of shoes that did not originate in the sweat shops of Chongching. It took two hours to find something made here in SA!
By feeding the Chinese Heath Robinson manufacturing industry, we threaten to let loose a monster. One point five billion “economic miracles” who no more care for the environment than a dead brick (to use a Monty Python comparator). If this alone doesn’t persuade you of the need for extreme caution every time you part with your hard earned cash, here are five other reasons why we should boycott Chinese goods and services:

• their Government, arguably, has one of the world’s worst human rights records. It executes at least 2,500 people each year; and if they don’t kill ‘em, they flog ‘em.

• the poor old Dalai Lama and China’s invasion of Tibet (remarkably similar to USA’s theft of California from Mexico)

• China’s burgeoning prison population is marched daily to factories, to fabricate goods, which, added to everything else produced at near slave labour rates of pay, are dumped on world markets, making it near impossible for other nations to compete. That is why, for instance, South Africa’s wonderful textiles are fast disappearing.

• China is currently at the head of a new “Scramble for Africa” using any method at their disposal to secure the natural resources they need to fuel their filthy industries. Guinea-Bissau, to take just one case in point, in return for “investment”, has had strangled out of it, an agreement that the Chinese can walk away with 85% of income derived from a new cadnium mining operation.

• China offers succour to the Sudanese Government (in exchange for oil) and actively impedes initiatives to bring an end to genocide in Darfur. Should we be surprised that they care about Africans dying in a remote part of the continent, when there is money to be made? Don’t be fooled by their propaganda and “cooperation agreements”. They are no more our friends than next door’s rotweiler.

If the above is still not enough to persuade you, then remember this. The Chinese habitually butcher puppies and cats and turn their fur into coats and toys which then appear in Western markets (with the fur disguised by labels claiming the products are “fake”). Against this background, it is curious that our own Minister of Agriculture is reported (last weekend’s Sunday Times) to be considering a special dispensation which would allow South Africa’s growing Chinese population to slaughter and eat dogs (man’s best friend). Perhaps boycotting action should be extended to Chinese restaurants as well, for who knows what we might soon be eating if our thoughtless, fawning Minister, gets his way?