“The Elites Don’t Care”: People on the frontlines of Coal, Covid, and the Climate Crisis

Google+ Pinterest LinkedIn Tumblr +

This report follows on from Down to Zero, the groundWork 2019 report on the politics of an (un)just transition. It looks at the impacts of the pandemic from global to local level, in particular reporting on the research of community activists in each of South Africa’s active coal fields. It also examines government’s actual climate response, as it bets on a fossil gas bonanza to deliver economic redemption and still punts the so called clean coal, even as Eskom abandons that myth.

The climate crisis is part of the broader ecological crisis created by global capitalism and its devotion to profit and growth. The Covid crisis emerges from the rent in the web of life and, while climate change is a slow motion wreck, the impact of Covid is synchronised across the world and compressed into weeks, months and a year or two. It does not merely foreshadow climate change. It is an instance of the disruptions that follow from wide scale ecological disturbance – including climate change. And the baleful fires of the pandemic have illuminated and widened the fault lines of the global economy – exposing rank inequality, poverty and hunger.

Link to full report HERE

Author: Bryan Groenendaal

Share.

Leave A Reply

About Author

Green Building Africa promotes the need for net carbon zero buildings and cities in Africa. We are fiercely independent and encourage outlying thinkers to contribute to the #netcarbonzero movement. Climate change is upon us and now is the time to react in a more diverse and broader approach to sustainability in the built environment. We challenge architects, property developers, urban planners, renewable energy professionals and green building specialists. We also challenge the funding houses and regulators and the role they play in facilitating investment into green projects. Lastly, we explore and investigate new technology and real-time data to speed up the journey in realising a net carbon zero environment for our children.

Copyright Green Building Africa 2024.