DO you ever see something that seems so obviously wrong, but when you say so, everyone looks at you in surprise? That was the experience I had some years ago while walking to a pub with workmates on a chilly winter’s evening and saw for the first time those giant outdoor “terrace heaters” on a hotel stoep. “Good grief! That is crazy.
What are they trying to do? Heat the sky? What a waste of energy. Haven’t they heard of climate change?” My choms looked at me askance. Well, they said, it was nice to sit outside in winter and still be warm. “But at what cost? How much carbon are those things pumping out trying to heat the street?” I can now tell you how much, thanks to the alternative energy association called Negawa. A 75 square meter terrace, with five gas heaters in use for 14 hours a day over four winter months, would emit 13.6 tons of carbon. That is equivalent to the amount of carbon dioxide a car would emit if it drove around the Earth three times. And for what? So some patrons can sit outside in the dead of winter? So I was delighted to hear France’s Environment Minister Barbara Pompili announce this week that France would ban outdoor heaters as part of the country’s move towards a low carbon economy. Pompili was quoted saying France was “ending ecological aberrant practices that lead to totally unjustified energy consumption.” Estimates are that there are about 12,500 heated terraces in Paris alone. Because restaurants were hard hit when they were forced to close during Covid-19, France will not enforce the terrace heater ban until next year, after the European winter, giving businesses more time to recover. South Africa should do the same. Terrace heaters may seem like a small thing, so why bother, especially when many governments like ours are not solving the big issues, but are still using carbon-intensive, coal-fired electricity generation? I think the answer is that if we are going to avoid the worst of global climate change, we have to take every measure we can, however small, to cut our carbon footprints. Turning off unnecessary lights, switching geysers on only for an hour or two a day, using public transport, cutting down on flights – the list goes on. The problem is that carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere for 100 years or longer, so the carbon we are generating now by that that overseas flight, will be up there long after we are all dead and buried. Up there and contributing to global warming. And just to make you feel a little bleaker: June this year was the planet’s third-warmest June since records began in 1880. Siberia experienced a heat wave with temperatures more than 5°C above average, causing permafrost to melt and wild forest fires. And the Arctic is warming faster than anywhere on Earth. As young Greta Thunberg says: We already have the facts and solutions. All we have to do is wake up and change.
