Flood Trevor Manuel with green tips. Use the national budget as a way to reduce carbon emissions and climate change.

urban sprout has teamed up with Project 90 by 2030 , Activist! , forgood and 350.org in a campaign called ‘Cut Carbon Tips for Trevor’.

The aim of the campaign is to urge the government to show vision and leadership by presenting a budget on 11th February 2009 that reflects an urgent response to the evidence presented by climate change.

The ‘Cut Carbon Tips for Trevor’ campaign invites you to get involved by sending your green tips to Trevor, using the Tips for Trevor page on the treasury website Trevor is said to read every one of these personally. He takes them seriously, and has been known to get individuals to present their tip to Cabinet personally, when he thinks it appropriate!

The government has shown commitment to climate change and to engaging all levels of South African society with its process to investigate Long-Term Mitigation Scenarios (LTMS) between 2006 and 2008.

Representatives that included government, scientists, civil society, labour and business contributed to a series of findings presented to Cabinet last year in July, which clearly showed that without constraints our emissions might quadruple by 2050.

The recommendations by the LTMS team: to achieve what is required by science of a developing country – to reduce our emissions compared to 1990 levels by 80% to 95% by 2050, and by 25% to 40% by 2020 – were approved by Cabinet. In the words of Marthinus van Schalkwyk – “if we continue with business-as-usual, we will go out of business.”

The ‘Cut Carbon Tips for Trevor’ campaign calls on the government to show true commitment by supporting these recommendations in the country’s 2009 budget vote.

Three broad areas are key to mitigation in South Africa, says Harald Winkler in ‘Mitigation is an Energy issue in South Africa’ from the book the Bending the curve, edited by Rob Zipplies, Africa Geographic, 2008:

1. Energy efficiency is the obvious starting point in many ways, saving money over time. Greater efficiency can be achieved in industry, commercial and residential building and in the way we move around.
2. We need to change our fuel mix to be less dependent on coal. This means moving away from coal-fired electricity to other options.
3. We need to change our broken energy system by investing in renewable energy sources like wind and solar, training and re-training a whole generation of "green-collar" workers: skilled labourers to manufacture and install these everywhere and make our buildings more efficient.

It's time to invest in South Africa and invest in our future by moving away from coal-fired power and towards efficiency, clean energy and green jobs for all.

We are seeing proof of climatic predictions much sooner than expected – natural ecosystems are already showing signs of being affected by global warming.

In the past year there has been an upward trend in the release of methane into the atmosphere which can be directly linked to melting of the polar ice caps, severe weather events are more frequent and they are increasing in their intensity.

Members of the South African delegation reporting back from the international December 2008 Conference of the Party (COP 14) meetings held in Poznan, Poland expressed dismay at the inconsistency between scientific evidence and current global leadership in response.

The campaign believes that South Africa can show leadership in this area by introducing immediate steps to support and encourage energy efficiency in all sectors of our society.

Play a role in cutting carbon in South Africa. Send your carbon-cutting tips to Trevor Manuel, using the Tips for Trevor page.

Some ideas for green tips

Energy efficiency

• Provide bigger subsidies for public transport so that train and bus ticket prices can be reduced.
• Set up bicycle depots in major cities allowing one to hire a bike to get from a to b.
  Support local municipalities so that they can provide bicycle lanes on all urban roads.
• Support the development of a range of low-carbon public transport systems.
• Provide tax savings to companies instituting energy saving programmes.
• Ban any further sales of incandescent light bulbs in SA by December 2009.
• Ban electrical appliances that rate below grade A energy efficiency grading by December 2009.
• Increase vehicle import duties on components for the most polluting cars.
• Provide tax benefits for lift club formation/car pooling/car shares.
• Higher taxes on the sales of 4x4 vehicles.
• Make low-flow showerheads mandatory nationwide and ban any further sales in SA by December 2009.

Renewable energy

• Provide solar water heaters, guttering and rain water tanks on all new low income houses.
• Provide incentives for the municipal finance act to be changed so that local governments can enter into long-term contracts and assist with solar hot water geyser provision in their areas of responsibility.
• Provide tax savings to individuals and companies implementing renewable energy systems in their homes and businesses.
• Fast-track the Feed-In-Tariff so that independent home power producers can charge Eskom for surplus power produced.
• Ensure that the Feed-In-Tariff rate is at the rate of the cost of the most expensive electricity that Eskom makes or purchases.

Climate-friendly innovation

• Impose limitations on carbon emissions from industry and use the revenue to provide subsidies on domestic solar hot water heaters in middle-income homes.
• Make recycling mandatory for big business.
• Introduce mandatory returnable glass bottle deposits on all glass beverage bottle sizes (including 340ml beer).
• Allocate financial assistance for local governments to improve the drop-off and collection recycling services in their jurisdiction. Supporting this service capitalises on the potential for job-creation as well. The pilot recycling programmes introduced in Cape Town proved that demand is sufficiently high to justify large-scale provision of services.
• Support programmes for innovative water-storage and waste management in the nation’s rural areas.

Share your great ideas/tips with others, after sharing them with Trevor, by adding your tip as a comment below: