Wednesday 3 September 2014

South Africa helps Europe or maybe not …

Earlier today I heard the news on the radio:
Ukraine buys 1 million tons of coal from South Africa.
Wow! It’s not every day that South Africa is helping out in Europe, but according to Bloomberg News this is happening.

Reason being the armed conflict in Ukraine. Ukraine is dependent on natural gas from Russia, but Russia cut off deliveries on June 16.

President Zuma just met Putin in Moscow. Did they talk about this. I don’t understand much.

But one thing is clear. Coal is not the best solution. At least not for the environment and therefore not for any living creature on this planet. Hence, not good for human beings either.

Who am I to judge. I think the Swedish company Vattenfall owns a lot of coal production plants I Germany. Greenpeace reports:
The Swedish energy corporation Vattenfall is planning to extract more than 700 million tons of lignite in five new opencast mines in Germany’s Lausitz region in order to secure the operation of its climate-damaging coal-fired power plants until 2050.
There is a long way to sustainability.

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