Unintended consequences

Autumn is here. The angle of light fall is different. The quality appears sharper perhaps because there is more moisture in the air.

Nature smells differently this time of the year. The fragrance of Table Mountain is unmistakably that of autumn.The smell is the sum total of all of natural olfactory molecules pumped out this time of the year by the varieties of fynbos. Add the smell of the earth and of natural decay. The most striking to us is the wonderfully medicinal aroma of buchu. The normal seasonal changes in their biochemistries prompt the expression of greater or lesser smells.

There is a website that gives instructions about how to make a house smell like Autumn. Take orange peels, marigold flower heads, dried apples, cloves, cinnamon chips, allspice and orange essential oils, cook them, dry them and stuff the stuff into sachets. I think it is safe to say that we are talking here of the smell of Autumn in North America.

So, there is as usual normal natural variation in the smell of Autumn. They all though signal to the human body to prepare for the coming of winter. As for all other organisms that must modify their lifestyles seasonally, our bodies respond powerfully and viscerally to these natural cues even though we may not be aware of them.

The coming of winter announces that we must get to making our nests warm, have heat conserving garments ready and store enough food to get us through cold times. In the north those winters are long and cold, depending on how far north one lives, because their continental landmass sits much further from the equator than do ours to the south.

I am told that the Cape’s winter will be colder. It will also be wetter, though the geographical locus of the rain will shift to the East. How we will cope with the winter depends almost entirely on our class position, which is to say how much resources we can bring to bear on keeping us warm.

For citizens who live in informal settlements the cold winter is as dreadful and forbidding as the hot summers. Spending time on the Cape Flats for the forthcoming elections exposes one to a circumstance that requires no words to describe, for the extraordinary vulnerability of people to extremes of weather klaps (hits) you in the face, as it should.

People deal with it by burning wood and fossil fuels. With temperature inversion we will all see it, as a brown haze that covers the Cape it will be like a dirty blanket. But the pollution is of necessity and for sheer survival. It is the inevitable emission of poverty.

It is but a fraction of what Eskom pumps into the atmosphere. The middle and upper classes use - and abuse - ESKOM to keep the wealthier citizens not all of whom are white, warm during winter. Sitting on large reserves of relatively cheap coal, we, like China, fuel our development by pouring stink into the atmosphere.

Eskom’s clients are all those who are connected, from the large mines, the small companies, to individual citizens. All of the clients must reduce their emissions by making their homes more energy efficient, installing solar heating systems what with our ubiquitous sunshine and pushing ESKOM to stop protecting its self-interest and aggressively develop alternative sources of energy.

Those who emit what is often referred to as ‘luxury’ emissions, the drivers of those large luxury cars and 4x4s, really need to wake up and do something about the poison they pour into the atmosphere. It is indulgent, unnecessary and harmful. The car industry, in deep financial trouble, needs to bring to market more energy efficient products. Here the north Americans really need to wake up.

There is useful concept in the energy fraternity called ‘convergence and contraction’. What it means is that the developed world (north America, Europe and Japan) – add China and India - must significantly contract their emissions and that the developing world (Latin America, Africa, Eastern Europe and Asia) should be allowed to expand theirs. The average though must measure as a decline.

We should apply the same concept at home: the middle and upper classes should cut emissions and the working class poor be allowed to increase their’s in order to reduce vulnerability to the terrible cold that is on its way.