GLOBAL warming made a welcome return to Paarl this past weekend when the temperature climbed into the 30’s.
Personally, I am all for a cool, temperate climate, but the unusually cold and damp Spring made me wonder about how some of our very distant “Viking” ancestors ever survived those long, dark winters.
Most depressing; even without the prospect of escalating Eskom tariffs.
The Vikings had an easy remedy. Climb into your longboat and row like fury for warmer climes (even England and Greenland were warmer then).
You can then clobber the hell out of the locals and seize whatever they so patiently acquired through thrift and hard work. The world has not changed much since then.
Even in Africa, everyone seems to be out for a bit of plunder, murder and mayhem or just plain graft.
Sometimes we call it failed service delivery or just luxuriating in the country’s best hotels.
Well, global warming has long since morphed into “climate change”, the latest “gogga maak vir baba bang” cataclysmic scare tactic that has taken the world by “storm”.
In the Western Cape, we often experience four seasons in one day and in the rest of the country at least four times a year.
In my lifetime, the climate has never stopped changing, but whether we can blame it all on CO2 has yet to be proved.
The experts warned of a coming ice age in the 70’s and their predictions a decade ago of world-wide disaster by this year were hardly fulfilled. Now they are saying that global warming will put an end to the Cape wine industry and we only have 50 years in which to save the planet! Who knows?
African countries claim they are responsible for only 8% of emissions of greenhouse gases, but will suffer the most. Therefore, the West must compensate them in advance for their anticipated losses.
Meanwhile, China continues to build one new coal-fired power station every week.
Let us stop pollution and energy wastage wherever we can, but far more cogent is the warning on World Food Day that food production must increase by at least 70% in the next 40 years to feed a world population that will grow from 6,7 billion to 9,1 billion by 2050.
Already, one-sixth of humanity is starving, more than 265 million in sub-Saharan Africa.
Is it not time that we paid more heed to the experts who are urging developing countries to increase their investment in agriculture by at least 50% within the next 40 years?
Instead of a plethora of wine shows, we might be advised to follow the example of Carrbridge in Scotland where a World Porridge Day is organised annually to help feed starving children in Africa.
The French Huguenots may have come here with a Bible under one arm and a vine in the other, but our Scottish dominees brought with them, not only a Bible, but an exemplary work ethic and a respect for good Scottish oatmeal “parridge”.
In England they feed oatmeal to horses, but in Scotland they feed it to men, with a very salutary effect, as our schools, colleges and engineering enterprises still testify.
We cannot grow maize in the Western Cape, but we should grow a lot more oats on our less fertile soils. That can only happen if we start paying our farmers a fair price for their grain.
Their share in the price of bread and meal is insignificant when compared with what hard work and a bowl of nutritious porridge can achieve.
A recent survey in England revealed that most ordinary folk are now blissfully unaware of the origin or the effort that goes into producing what they expect on their plates each day.
Almost half did not know that bacon, sausage and porridge came from farms.
In Paarl we are not yet that blinkered by the bright dazzling lights of the supermarkets, but the disconnect between town and country is becoming increasingly apparent.
Perhaps, like the Swiss, we need to say: “Thank God for our hard-working farmers!”
