We should be protecting nature, not allowing developments that damage it

WORLD Environment Day on June 5 stirred some thoughts in my mind, which I feel I have to share. Firstly, I feel that it should be World Environment Day every day.

We live on and off her. Surely we should protect her like a true mother, nurturing and caring for her.

In the Port Elizabeth and Eastern Cape area alone there are some calls for less than ideal industries, which in truth are sure to poison our environment and us, our children and future offspring.

� The first is the aluminium smelter proposed for the Coega IDZ and by all accounts will be the “anchor tenant”. Are we to poison ourselves and the earth for the financial gain and benefit of shareholders, with no interest in us, their only interest being their back pocket and bottom line figures?

Why do you think the likes of Alcan are looking to put a smelter as far from Canada as possible?

� Regarding the proposed nuclear power station in the Oyster Bay area, whilst major countries are shying away from such volatile techniques to produce and provide power to their nations, it is a worrying and an alarming step in the wrong direction by national government. For that matter why even look at endangering any of the other sites if Oyster Bay is not the final location for the station?

Are there not alternative safer and sustainable methods to powering our nation into the future without the possibility of destroying her?

I Googled hemp and found an abundance of information. Referring to the website: www.hemptons.co.za and an article written by Derek Bielby, he notes.

“A further crisis for hemp arose in America during the 1930s due to propaganda created by companies with vested interest from the new petroleum-based synthetic textile companies and the large and powerful newspaper and lumber barons who saw hemp as the biggest threat to their businesses (they created the confusion between cannabis indica (marijuana) and cannabis sativa (hemp)).”

Hemp is a sustainable alternative crop, producing varied products, food, textile, building materials, pharmaceuticals and, most importantly, biomass (used to produce biofuel, a cleaner, environmentally friendly option to fossil fuels and one which could put to an end to our dependency on imports and the current world crisis on depleting fuel reserves, global warming and greenhouse gas emissions).

Deforestation could be to a large extent curtailed due to paper demands if hemp were to be grown for harvest in its place. Cotton could be substituted with hemp fibre (interestingly, cotton farms are America‘s largest user of fertiliser, causing major land problems and toxic runoff into waterways).

Hemp however requires none of this to grow successfully, and can be planted every season on the same ground as the crop before it.

“Hempwood” for use in low cost housing could be grown and manufactured locally. There is no lower cost than that of growing a sustainable, ground enriching commodity.

Bielby further notes: “The future of hemp is only restricted by an awareness of its true potential as the environmental benefits of hemp are outstanding.”

Are we here in South Africa going to pander to the whims of external forces or are we going to show the rest of the world the southern attitude and strike our own path for our own interests, and for the good of firstly ourselves and secondly the world and its current social, political and environmental problems?

There is a huge global movement for sustainable resources, why don‘t we focus on this too? Let us be leaders and not followers.

Al Gore has a great argument in his book and movie, An Inconvenient Truth. Let us take note and do something positive.

Richard Branson is looking to invest in biofuel development and sustainability.

Let‘s put a green refinery into Coega IDZ instead of an industry that for very short-term benefits will in the long term cripple our environment and us.

This letter is one of awareness, not one person‘s view. Let‘s read up and rethink our position, and become compassionate capitalists with ethics and social consciousness at the forefront of it all.

Bryan Moulang, South End, Port Elizabeth