Source: Daily Maverick - South African news, opinion and investigations

Articles from this source (9)

Government action is needed if we are to reduce our demands on Earth’s resources and sustain life

  2024-07-31 by in Daily Maverick - South African news, opinion and investigations

We are running down our natural capital. Each year ends with the Earth having less forest, less biodiversity, less healthy soil and water, fewer fish in the sea, more pollution of our fresh water and more greenhouse gases blanketing the planet, heating it and destabilising the climate.

  Tagged under: Capitalism | Water Resources | Activism | Legislation

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Earth overshoot day: Humanity now lives on resources borrowed from the future

  2023-08-02 by in Daily Maverick - South African news, opinion and investigations

Wednesday, 2 August marked a devastating reminder about the severe imbalance between the current use of Earth’s natural resources and that which the planet can produce in a year. In less than eight months, we have arrived at Earth Overshoot Day.

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DAYS OF ORWELL: DMRE issues ‘media monitoring’ tender, including a warning system for ‘media-launched attacks’

  2023-03-10 by in Daily Maverick - South African news, opinion and investigations

The Department of Mineral Resources and Energy (DMRE) has issued a questionable tender for a media monitoring service that seems oppressively Orwellian and uses the terminology of war. It will include an early-warning system to provide alerts of ‘incoming media-launched attacks on the department’ and monitoring of the ‘tone’ journalists take.

  Tagged under: Minerals

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OPINIONISTA: Fossil fuel multinationals can never pay Africa enough compensation – the price is life on Earth

  2022-10-24 by in Daily Maverick - South African news, opinion and investigations

Many Africans live close to the land – as subsistence or small-scale farmers, or from fishing in rivers, lakes and coastal waters. When the oil and gas industry trumpets the jobs it will create, it never mentions the jobs, the land and the water it will destroy.

  Tagged under: Africa | Fish | Rivers

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HELL ON THE HIGHVELD: Illegal miners started Mpumalanga coal mine fire weeks ago – it’s still burning today

  2022-05-18 by in Daily Maverick - South African news, opinion and investigations

This is what it looks like when unregulated, illegal mining meets governance failure – a fire in a coal mine that has been burning for weeks, leaving nearby communities choking in the fumes. Perhaps most worryingly, nobody knows the extent to which fires may be burning underground.

  Tagged under: Coal

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BATTLEGROUND ANTARCTICA: ‘Gentleman’s agreement’: Despite mining ban, Russia scours Antarctica for massive fossil fuel deposits

  2022-05-17 by in Daily Maverick - South African news, opinion and investigations

The Kremlin’s mineral explorer says it has found a stunning 500 billion barrels of oil and gas below the Southern Ocean’s climate-threatened waters. Tapping these mooted reserves would not only hamper global efforts to fight the climate crisis. Known for flouting major agreements, a defiant Russia in the Antarctic could destroy the decades-long protected status of Earth’s last unmined frontier.

  Tagged under: Oceans | Minerals | Antarctic | Russia

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OPINIONISTA: The mind of every Ogoni person is imprinted with what Shell has done to our land

  2021-12-07 by in Daily Maverick - South African news, opinion and investigations

I was born in Bane, a coastal village of the Ogoni people. My family bears testimony to what Shell does to the environment. I saw my grand-uncle’s fishing business come to an abrupt stop and my father relocate to the periphery of the city where he spent the rest of his life as a fisher around the city.

  Tagged under: Shell | Fish

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Our Burning Planet: Op-Ed: End-of-life anxiety and finding meaning in a collapsing climate

  2019-11-19 by in Daily Maverick - South African news, opinion and investigations

Staring the reality of climate collapse square in the eye means confronting the shattering truth that many of us might not die of old age or natural causes – and will witness untold suffering we feel powerless to stop. Everyday psychotherapy may not be enough to contain the emotional crushing that comes with accepting that we – as individuals and as a species – are in a hospice situation. End-of-life healthcare may gain a new role.

  Tagged under: Health | Collapse | Climate Anxiety and Grief

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BUSINESS MAVERICK OP-ED: Who will make the energy transition just?

  2019-05-26 by in Daily Maverick - South African news, opinion and investigations

The power cuts South Africans endured earlier in 2019 were a vivid reminder to all of us of the defining role that a reliable, constant supply of energy plays in our daily lives. But like addicts who depend on a ready supply regardless of the crushing cost, our current systems for delivering energy are killing us.

  Tagged under: South Africa | Africa

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