So Unit 4 of the Medupi power station has blown up. Repairing the 800MW generator will cost an estimated R1.5-billion to R2-billion and will take two years. Following so shortly after the insurrection in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng, and the extensive hack of Transnet’s IT systems, one can’t help looking for saboteurs under the debris. But suggesting that engineers and other skilled workers would put life and limb on the line to cause a hydrogen explosion is as extreme as former public enterprises minister Alec Erwin’s suggestion in 2006 that the loose bolt that damaged a Koeberg generator was an act of sabotage.
First published in the Daily Maverick 168 weekly newspaper.
But there is one coincidence that we should not ignore: the explosion that ripped through one unit of the world’s fourth-biggest coal-fired power plant did so the day before the release of the heavily anticipated and undeniably influential sixth report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It lays out more starkly than ever before the reality of climate change. In a nutshell, the 4,000-page report tells us what everyone but the climate denialists knows already: global heating is happening.
It’s caused by greenhouse gas emissions (the ones…