The “window to avert catastrophic climate change is now”, was the message of Extinction Rebellion Cape Town during a picket held along Main Road in Kalk Bay on Sunday 10 April.
Extinction Rebellion started in the UnitedKingdom (UK) in April 2018.
Judy Goldman, organiser of the event, said given the dire warnings in the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report released on Monday 4 April, there’s a tiny window to avert catastrophic climate change.
“We are trying to draw people’s attention to the catastrophe that we are facing. There was an important report, it comes out every five years and in the third part of that report it tells us that we have a very small window to avert catastrophic climate change, reaching tipping point where for instance there will be ice-caps melting that we cannot reverse in the future.
“So, we are trying to draw people’s attention to that and ask them to join us in calling on the governments to tell the truth about this climate catastrophe and to act now.”
The environmental activists handed out flyers to motorists and pedestrians to urge the public to stand together and take action.
“We are asking people to join us when we take action, we are trying to spread the word. We have been seriously protesting the fact that not only is South Africans not taking action to reduce emissions, but they are actually very actively going around in the deep sea along the coast, looking for more sources of oil and gas when the Internation Energy Agency and many other organisations say we cannot burn anymore oil and gas. We are on the reserves already without causing catastrophic climate change.”
She added the more the government tells the truth about climate change the more people would invest in solutions.
Ian Goldman, who joined the picket, said South Africa is the 12th largest emitter of carbon emissions.
“The most critical thing in the energy space is that South Africa is the 12th biggest emitter of carbon emissions and our energy mixes are heavily coal dependent – we have to cut back.
“The IPCC report says that we must, within three years, drop from the peak of carbon emissions that we are in at the moment. So the biggest issue is moving to renewable energies in a very big way and very fast.”
He added that another big area is to reduce emissions from agriculture, particularly for lifestyle beef farming.
“Beef farming produces a lot of emissions, we have to move really quickly. Although there have been some renewables, they are not enough and not fast enough.”
A protestor, who preferred to remain anonymous, cycled from Wynberg to Kalk Bay in a bid to reduce her carbon emissions.
“We should not support fossil fuel simply because it’s supporting the war in Ukraine and capitalism is actually really shoddy, it should be dismantled and this is what I strongly believe because war is just the fruits of the fossil fuels and the arms trade running in the human world we are living in at the moment.
“If we don’t give it up now there will be more wars, more destruction and people being killed. We are co-responsible for the war and this is why I would have never come to a protest against fossil fuels while driving in a car, even though I do own a car.”
