Tony Leon

This blog is about practical changes that you and I can make in our daily lives to tread more lightly on the earth. It is not about broader environmental issues and policies. Still, I can’t help digressing a bit to touch on the explosive comments made by Tony Leon at Oxford University yesterday:

Rich people are good for the environment: they have fewer children, they can afford cleaner, efficient technologies, they use resources more efficiently, they don’t chop down trees for firewood, they don’t kill wild animals for food, and they have the time and the money to enjoy and protect nature.

I feel a little bit sorry for the Democratic Alliance leader. He has taken a lot of flak for the comment, and it was not in the context of arguing for the nerve-gassing of South Africa’s squatter settlements. He was pleading for business investment to uplift the poor of Africa. If you look at the rest of what he had to say, there was much to agree with.

Climate change is perhaps the greatest challenge that my generation and yours will need to grapple with in the 21st century.

The possibility of an increased incidence of extreme and massively disruptive weather events have the potential seriously to undermine the developmental goals of my country and the continent.

Yet we require rapid economic growth to meet the challenges of the Millennium Development Goals.

Does growth for us mean greater carbon emissions?

Almost certainly yes, at least in the short to medium term.

Does it mean we must not be mindful of our current, admittedly small, contribution to climate change? No. . . .

. . . I am not arguing that the developing world must aim for the ecological footprint of, say, the United States. That would compound the impending climate catastrophe, and hasten our collective demise.

Naturally, as we aim to improve the livelihoods of those in Africa, we must not bypass the goals of sustainability, and enter into the path of what is termed “overshoot”. . .

. . . South Africa now gets most of its electricity from coal, but in the future there is no reason why the whole of Africa could not get all of its electricity, and have much left over to export to Europe, without burning one ounce of fossil fuels.

It seems rather clear from these, more complete, quotes that the South African media once again has been quoting out of context. The only thing I can disagree with in these comments is the part about South Africa’s “current, admittedly small, contribution to climate change.” South Africa ranks 10th in the world for greenhouse gas emissions on a per capita basis.

But I cannot ignore Leon’s comment about the rich, not because it is so extreme, but rather because it is so commonly held. I have heard it all before, from rich, complacent South Africans who believe that because they never directly snare antelope, shoot rhinos, or chop down trees, they are innocent of any environmental damage. There are several other variations of this pass-the-buck mentality: “I can’t do anything about the environment because its the big corporations that do the polluting;” or “It’s the Americans;” or the latest variation, “It’s the Chinese.”

I would love to show these people, just for one day, what South Africa’s air would look like if each poor person riding in a bus, train or minibus taxi was suddenly driving a Range Rover instead. And where would there be room for forests and animals if every shantytown dweller on a 6m x 10m plot was moved onto a half-acre garden? How many rivers would run dry when they started to water their lawns year-round? How many fynbos plants would wilt in the greenhouse heat after all those former shanty-dwellers switched on the electric underfloor heating in their 250 m2 houses?

Yes, the rich have the potential to tread very lightly. Their wealth allows them to make choices about how they get around, how they eat, and how they heat their homes. The problem is that they rarely make the right choices.

To twist these facts into an argument for keeping down the poor for the sake of the earth would be even more ridiculous than Leon’s statement that rich people are good for the environment because they don’t eat wild animals. We must help the poor escape poverty not to save the earth, but to save our humanity, to save our souls. And we must create a world in which wealth and waste are no longer synonymous.