Spier and Strikes!

[Michael Alexander]

Well this morning, I heard the company jet depart our shores, after doing a bit of research, I was utterly astonished to hear that apparently the top echelons of the mine jetted off to Spier Estate in the Cape for a team building type thingy..... Gee! Rumblings of a strike, Seawall just repaired, Carat call below forecast and the hierarchy go off to SPier for a bosberaad , Those cash strapped days of the recession seem such a distant memory, those were the days when we had teambuilding meetings down at the Yacht Club.

Did'nt some of the top dogs just recently return from a course down at the Piekeneerskloof pass lodge on how to balance home life with work life.....

There was a time when I thought that the recession had caused the mine to realize that the mine was wasting dosh on a grand scale and this was a reason to cutback and skimp..... I thought that this was going to make the mine more sustainable and profitable..... but it appears I was wrong and I guess big corporations are always going to do what big corporations do, Spend!

Just my opinion.....

[Dalene Steenkamp (Coetzee)]

Yep ....  have been asking the question myself how the big brass boys can decide on what my profitable rate should be, while peeping over the barrel of a hunting rifle at a game lodge and sipping Chivas or while on a yacht in the sun on a team building thing in Cancoon, Mexico ??? 

[RIP]

Oh contraire.....far from being a teambuilding exercise, it was a much anticipated,planned and prepared for wake-up call on the topic of sustainability that management jetted off to.  And I don't mean "how can we mine diamonds until infinity" type sustainability question either.  I for one am rejuvenated with hope at this bold and forward thinking step.  Hope for Oranjemund, for Namdeb and for the contribution to Namibia that we must still make.  These are exciting times, but strikes, seawall collapses and failed carat calls are just insignificant ripples if we cannot ready ourselves for the tsunami approaching in the long run.  Kudos to management for prioritizing, for taking time-out from crises mode to reflect on the bigger picture, for focusing on the future on a level that most of us never think of...and doing it rather well, methinks.

So, on that note, what will you do today to ensure a sustainable future - a planet with clean water, clean air, jobs, economic growth, health services and sufficient food - for your children?  Any suggestions?  What does sustainability mean to you?

[Bob Molloy]

Economic growth, is not only unsustainable, it needs to be reduced from its present level and quickly. That doesn't mean poverty but it does mean a much reduced life style, little or no travel (car,air, sea etc), longer work hours and simplified entertainment (buy a piano and sing around it with the family in the evenings).

We also desperately need a drastic population reduction, certainly an absolute limit of two children per couple or less.

A joke? No, serious reality. As the Australian commentator Michael Bond has pointed out the design of the global economy demands that by 2019 the economy will be twice the size it was in 2000. At its present rate of growth, by 2059 the global economy will be ten times its 2000 size. But Earth cannot  sustainably support a global economy the size it was in 2000.
Even if the economy slid along at a minimal 3% growth it would still be 10 times its 2000 size by the year 2080.

So in order to survive, the global economy is compelled to keep growing like a cancer, at an unsustainable rate that will kill its host. This self-destructive design is a direct result of the flaw in the global money system.

For the original, Google "Economic Growth is unsustainable" and "Money - deadlier than plutonium."

You can of course pull a John Vorster and say that your children will solve the problem while you carry on riding the gravy train. In his case it worked, for him and his generation. Today's generation is still carrying the can for that.

However, a much lighter can than the one we are currently handing on to our children and - if the planet survives that long - our grandchildren.

If you response is the normal one when reading this kind of gloomy prognosis, you will put your head back under the covers or crack another beer, turn on the telly and forget it.

And that, mes amies, is what has been happening since Rachel Carson rang the first alarm bells back in the early Forties in her book "Silent Spring".

But now there are some hopeful signs. While most of us are still in John Vorster mode, some have been challenged to action. In the West at least the Green vote is growing stronger and, certainly in Germany, has been challenging the status quo. Here in clean, green New Zealand it attracts barely ten percent of the vote but that is changing fast.

[Alfred Boehme]

and there was some sort of team building at Port this past week end

[SandyB]

Bob  that post rings true to my heart ,, there are times  on a quiet weekend , I have to go the the office  to collect something and  always do a walk through the now silent factory , and yes all my muses and guides are talking to me  at  those times and they literally scream  saying  " look at all this stuff we ripping out of the earth to make fancy packaging  it cannot go on forever ,  we have to simplify life " 
Now  producing packaging  is my lifeblood ,, its plastic  but no guilt from my part as  the main component   of  most plastics  are polymerised gases from the oil refining process ( they represent  something like  2 % of the  total oil / coal  cracked to make fuel )  these gases   ethylene , propelene , butene , hexene  etc  would normally be vented off into the atmosphere  as " greenhouse gases  or burnt off  into carbon dioxide ( the flare  that one sees at any refinery )  so yes a byproduct is turned  inyo something useful , even a lot of the pigments we use some from  oil refining  byproducts , but then there  are other  ripping out of the earth  for  other needs ...
But yes the model is unsustainable ,, growth  as you put is as a cancer  is very apt ... we as humanity need to scale down long term .. dont know how  , but the voices say so ..