I'm not one for drama, nay-nay. This is true for both my personal relationships and my opinions, and, more importantly, the opinions of others. And, oh, OH, the opinions of others (I might enjoy a touch a pizazz in my writing though, I won't lie to you). So, something like the alarmist-denialist onslaught of the climate change pashionistas really grates my goat. The alarmists believe in apocalypse, so understandably they're a little vociferous. If I believed the world was about to fade to black, I too might be tempted to embrace and espouse doomsday adjectives. The denialists are no better. Their eye-rolling and condescension for naive greenies wafts from the steaming piles of their discursive flotsam with the power of a thousand dirty black jet engines. The militancy of both camps offends me.
Usually, however, this offense doesn't translate to more than a mild annoyance and a disinclination to read anything environment-related. And it's not that I don't love the environment, I do. However, I don't love it for the same reasons that the alarmists do. But back to that in a moment.
Why has my usually latent frustration at the climate change debate translated into my current non-latent frustration? Because of this whole Philippi Horticultural Area development shebang. For those of you who haven't been following the news (you should) there has been ongoing discussion as to what to do with the PHA. Cape Town gets its veggies from here, and not just the Woolies shoppers of Cape Town, the shoppers who frequent the bakkies on the side of the road and in the corner of parking lots, bakkies with a canvas stretched out over boxes of fresh produce and you can buy a bag of those small yellow plums for R5. Or hells if you go to Epping you can get boxes and boxes of veg for next to nothing. Point is, fruit and veggies from PHA are cheap. There area lies on an aquifer, and if my high school Geography can be believed, this means that there's water there, and lots of it. It's proximity to the Cape Flats (it's on the Cape Flats) brings down transport costs. So you have a farmland that can produce nutritious food at a cost that isn't prohibitive. Gold star for food security.
The PHA also has a bunch of minerals and useful sands beneath the surface, of these I know nothing more than what I've read in the various reports on the area. Mining these goodies is another gold star. It's gold stars all round really, for employment, small business, consumers, and people who like to look at green spaces. However, the housing backlog in Cape Town is such that the City needs land on which to build houses, and land that isn't out in the middle of nowhere. They don't often get this bit right, what with their plans for the Wescape mini-city they want to build next door to Koeberg. But in this instance, they seem to be holding the map the right way up and have identified a piece of land that is actually in the city. And parts of the PHA have already been taken over for housing, and did I mention that there's a huge demand for housing in Cape Town?
Hence, the problem. You've got to balance food security with housing. Jobs with shelter. Cauliflower with sanitation. As though this isn't a complicated enough issue as it is, the environmentalists--on both sides of the spectrum--have also come to the party. They like coming to parties. Some might call it gate-crashing. Some might call it a takeover. Because invariably, whenever the environmentalists--again, both sides-- start their musing, everyone else is forced to shelve their interests and listen. In save-the-world terms, green really is the new black.
I have no opinion yet on the PHA situation. I do however have an opinion on the environmentalists; all the above was really a bit of a self-indulgent elaborate tangent. I'll admit that it is very likely an ill-informed opinion, given my reticence to spend much time engaging with them, but what are blogs for if not ill-informed opinions? They way I understand the discourse, is that I am asked to look after the earth because if I don't, bad things will happen. I must abandon my car to save the ozone layer [ozone layer seems a bit 90s, and I'm sure there's a more vogue term for it now, but y'all know what I mean]. I must recycle to save the soil, I must not flush my toilet unless totally necessary in order to save the lesser spotted green-winged albatross. However, to me, these seem like terrible reasons to care.
Care because of impending doom!
Care because the world's about to end!
Care out of fear. No. No, no, no.
How about I care because things like excess, destruction, exploitation of resources, unnecessary consumption, and waste are intrinsically bad? They're bad because they're bad, not because of their consequences. They're bad because of what they tell us about human behaviour and human relationships. They're bad because of how we define ourselves in the world, how we dominate weakness whenever we can. They're bad because production, consumption and the money that symbolizes it all is equated with power, power that can lead to abuse. So they're not bad because of what they result in, they're bad because they're a result of bad human action.
I do care about the environment. I love the earth. I'd be a hemp-wearing hippie if I could and my soul is so interwoven with the Oak Tree I grew up with that hugging trees is like a fist-bumping a posse of my bestie pals. But NEVER EVER will I recycle a single damn bottle or tin out of fear, or anxiety, or some self-endowed sense of responsibility.
Ok, takesie-backsies, sometimes my opinions are a little dramatic, but I've only had one cup of tea this morning so I'm less diluted than usual.
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