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www.thevillagenews.co.za
20 November 2019
MY ENVIRONMENT
Twice a month, in partnership with PSG Wealth Hermanus and Sterling Private Wealth, The Village NEWS provides investment information on a range of topics to help you grow your wealth and save for the future. Is your money tree for the future growing? thevillagenews.co.za/is-your-money-treefor-the-future-growing/ As you dig deeper into investment options and strategies, and how to diversify and be more flexible, you will realise that there are quite a lot of opportunities, even when times are tough. Along the way, you want to be sure that tax efficiency is part of the mix. Get money advice from a professional thevillagenews.co.za/get-money-advice-from-a-professional/ There are a myriad of investment options available, even with as ‘little’ as R500 per month. The important factor is to start investing from an early age, and to increase the contribution over time. Individuals have unique circumstances, and everyone has different needs and objectives. A qualified investment adviser will assist in identifying the appropriate investment vehicle. How to spend your money mindfully this festive season thevillagenews.co.za/how-to-spend-yourmoney-mindfully-this-festive-season/ As the year ends and we start thinking about 2019, it’s usually a good time to consider the benefits of having a December spending strategy. It is easy to overspend during the holidays, especially if you’ve been lucky enough to receive a bonus.
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Impact of children on global warming By Dr Anina Lee
C
hildren born in 2019 have a good chance of living to the end of the century. They will probably see the year 2100. What will the world be like then? It is difficult to know – it all depends on what people are prepared to do about climate change in the next couple of decades. If we have any hope of keeping climate change within safe boundaries, global carbon emissions need to fall to zero by 2050. That was the message of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2018. Yet Daily Maverick reports emission gains of 6.3% in India, 3.4% in the US and 2.3% in China, showing the world's worst contributors to global warming. (Did you see the almost invisible smog-clouded cricket match in Delhi? It was estimated to be the equivalent of 50 cigarettes a day.) This depressing reading was revealed in the newly published World Energy Markets Observatory report. In addition to these increases, investment in clean emissions during the first half of the year fell 14%. Rising temperatures may not be entirely human-induced, but we, Homo sapiens, are certainly contributing massively to them and we can only control our own actions. An SA Government Report released last month looked at the effects of climate change in South Africa. Of the many resounding alarms raised in this report, threats to water security rank among the most pressing. The report says: A hotter world means changing movements in rainfall, with dire consequences for unprotected estuarine and inland wetland ecosystems. Nearly 99% of estuarine and 88% of wetland areas [in SA] are threatened, making nature’s most important pollutant-filtration systems the most vulnerable, yet least protected ecosystems of all. Fewer than 2% are “well-protected”. No living things can exist without water, nor survive the “water wars” that are sure to result from lack of water.
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All proceeds go to environmental education Booking essential: Anina 083 242 3295 or anina.wcc@gmail.com
We all know that climate change is “fuelled” by fossil fuels – coal and oil – that we are still burning at an ever-increasing rate. How can we prevent carbon emissions from getting further out of control? The answer is unexpected. According to a new study from Sweden that identifies the most effective ways people can cut their carbon emissions, the greatest impact individuals can have in fighting climate change is to have fewer children. The next best actions are selling your car, avoiding long flights, and eating a vegetarian diet. These actions reduce emissions many times more than common green activities such as recycling, using low energy light bulbs or drying washing on the line. However, the high impact actions are rarely mentioned in government advice and school textbooks, researchers found. Carbon emissions must fall to two tonnes of CO² per person by 2050 to avoid severe global warming, but in the US and Australia emissions are currently 16 tonnes per person, and in the UK seven tonnes. The study, published in Environmental Research Letters, sets out the impact of different actions on a comparable basis. By far the biggest ultimate impact is having one fewer child, which the researchers calculated equated to a reduction of 58 tonnes of CO² for each year of each of the parents’ lives. The figure was calculated by totting up the emissions of the child and all their descendants, then dividing this total by the parent’s lifespan. Each parent was ascribed 50% of the child’s emissions, 25% of their grandchildren’s emissions and so on. The warnings come thick and fast – just last week, The Guardian newspaper filed this sobering report: The world’s people face “untold suffering due to the climate crisis” unless there are major transformations to global society, according to a stark warning from more than 11,000 scientists.
“We declare clearly and unequivocally that planet Earth is facing a climate emergency,” it states. “To secure a sustainable future, we must change how we live. [This] entails major transformations in the ways our global society functions and interacts with natural ecosystems.” There is no time to lose, the scientists say: “The climate crisis has arrived and is accelerating faster than most scientists expected. It is more severe than anticipated, threatening natural ecosystems and the fate of humanity.” A key aim of the warning is to set out a full range of “vital sign” indicators of the causes and effects of climate breakdown, rather than only carbon emissions and surface temperature rise. “A broader set of indicators should be monitored, including human population growth, meat consumption, tree-cover loss, energy consumption, fossil-fuel subsidies and annual economic losses to extreme weather events,” they said. Other “profoundly troubling signs from human activities” selected by the scientists include booming air passenger numbers and world GDP growth. “The climate crisis is closely linked to excessive consumption of the wealthy lifestyle,” they said. We have heard these warnings before, but how many people are really prepared to change their lifestyles? Changes will only succeed if governments lead the way. Recently the government of New Zealand announced a new budget that shifts the focus from growing Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to growing well-being. This is being mirrored by others including Iceland and Northern Ireland. How long will the SA government still stay married to coal? Or will the year 2100 present the sort of post-apocalyptic world we see in fiction or the movies? A Mad Max type of scenario? Is it even a likely scenario? As a wise man once said to me: “I know it can happen, but I don’t want to be there when it does”.
