Big news day. Big. Apparently the malevolent Chinese conspiracy to kill American children and/or their pets is still in full swing, with the news that a million or so Chinese-made prams sold in the United States during the past ten years ”are being recalled following reports of young fingers being amputated in the hinges.” Yep, there’ve been 12 reported fingertip amputations in the US thanks to these prams. Not funny if you’re a parent, of course.
And then there’s the glee with which the SA social media sphere (if it is a sphere — sometimes I think it’s more of a boomerang shape) greeted the ”news” that the SA government is cracking down on a blogger. Finally, they’re taking us seriously! What does it take to get oppressed around here!
Alas, the heinous oppression of the moron who runs a blog called I Suck So I’m Going to Whine About It.com will turn out to be the usual drab infighting and petty criminality that always characterises right-wing idiocy. Possibly involving identity theft, although that’s going to be hard to prove given the vacuous nature of the personalitites involved. Still, for one brief, shining moment, it meant something to be a blogger in this country. Now it’s back to talking to ourselves.
And Eskom. Lots of load-shedding going on at Eskom. Bobby Godsell on why he resigned, Jacob Maroga on how he didn’t resign. Neither of them blame saboteurs with bolts, but that can’t be far off. Ah, Eskom. Never a dull moment. Well, obviously plenty of dull moments, but they’ll fix that as soon as we give them the megatrillions of rands they need to subsidise their ”volts for dolts” programme.
And from the UK, a whistleblower at the International Energy Agency claims that ”the world is much closer to running out of oil than official estimates admit … The senior official claims the US has played an influential role in encouraging the watchdog to underplay the rate of decline from existing oil fields while overplaying the chances of finding new reserves.”
So they’ve been lying to the world, or at least that’s where the story sits now. I’m sure there’ll be some creative rebuttals from the Americans, possibly along the lines of ”We never said that”, and ”no, YOU resign.” And as South Africans, we can take comfort in the fact that there seems to be an international conspiracy of energy dunces. We are not alone in our energetic idiocies. Cold comfort indeed, especially when we can’t turn our heaters on.
We’re also not alone in the climate of fear, mistrust and general bullying that characterises the latest Eskom soap opera. According to yet another IEA source, ”a key rule at the organisation was that it was ”imperative not to anger the Americans” but the fact was that there was not as much oil in the world as had been admitted. ”We have [already] entered the ‘peak oil‘ zone. I think that the situation is really bad,” he added.
”Really bad”, huh. That’s putting a positive spin on it. No, Ladies and Gentlemen, and Eskom board, we are doomed. Possibly even doooomed. To an impartial outsider, the Eskom brouhaha is fascinating. It has it all. Racist allegations, boardroom politics, possible government interference, and sexual shenanigans. Although the latter only in the sense of the SA public getting screwed again.
As the Eskom website tells us, ”Electricity is different from the other services we find in the home. Unlike air or water that can be harvested from nature, electricity must be ‘manufactured’.” Now is it just me, or are those quotation marks a bit of a giveaway? And I’m not going to analyse what they’re revealing, because it’s obvious.
Who knew that those damn hippies would be right after all. While two men in business suits, identical in every meaningful way except possibly their choice of ties, bitchslap each other on the national stage, the world winds down its merry way into an alternative energy future. A future where we won’t be able to rely on a steady supply of Chinese deathtrap prams, where the petty racist vitriol of right wing bloggers will mercifully fade into non-existence, and where we won’t have to read about the maundering of Eskom ever again. Now that’s a bright side.
Follow Chris Roper on Twitter @ChrisRoperZa
