By Geoff Hill

There was promise in the air: a climate change meeting in Marrakech, Morocco, the same week as the White House was set to be won by Hillary Clinton and a team in tune with calls for a curb on coal.

In early November, more than 10 000 delegates and activists were in Morocco for the twenty-second Conference of the Parties, or COP 22, yet another round of the Paris Accord on global warming that became law on November 4, signed by 195 heads of State, including those of all Southern African Development Community countries.

To protect the world from rising carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, everyone agrees on cleaner energy. But, there is dissent on how to get there, with pragmatists saying it will need an evolution to new technology that allows fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal to burn with less smoke. The hardliners want to tear down those generators and replace them with wave, solar and wind.
In Africa, this was to be funded by the rich, and the Paris deal came with a kitty of $100-billion.

Barack Obama is on board, and so was Clinton, but at a rally last month Donald Trump made clear his position:”We’re going to put America first. That includes cancelling billions in climate change spending for the United Nations, a number Hillary Clinton wants to increase, and instead we will use that money to provide for American infrastructure, including clean water, clean air and safety.”

Luckily, according to polls and some of the world’s greatest newspapers, including the Washington Post and the New York Times, he stood less chance than a polar bear in the desert.

They were wrong, and if Trump holds the line he has peddled during the past two years, this may be the first President in decades who, instead of strutting the world stage, will focus on problems at home.

Delegates like those in Marrakech might have to do the same if no one pays their hotels and conference fees, fact-finding tours (Africa is a favourite in the northern winter) and air fares.

The meetings are known as a Conference of the Parties – unkind types say ‘continuous party’ – and this was C0P 22.
Yes, planes are among the worst when it comes to greenhouse gas, but how else do you get to a COP in Durban, Nairobi, Japan, the Cancun resort, in Mexico, or Paris, where the deal was finally signed?

The treaty agrees to limit emissions and keep a rise in temperature below 2 °C.

The wisdom of COP is simple: solar panels and wind farms are good. Mining coal is bad and we must stop using it to make electricity. But where does that leave South Africa, with some of the world’s largest coal reserves, or Eskom, which burns the stuff for 85% of its output? Botswana is the same, and Tanzania, Ghana and Nigeria talk of using more, not less.

The Obama government has opposed carbon fuel even though the US is the world’s second-worst polluter after China. The European Union (EU) is number three.

As polls closed and state after state went to Trump, delegates in Marrakech followed the news on their iPads, forgetting perhaps that data centres for Google and YouTube use more kilowatts than Zambia or Malawi, even Morocco.

Togo activist Kwami Kpondzo explained why: “Out of 1.2-billion people in the world without access to electricity, half of them, 620-million people live right here in Africa.”

By contrast, people in a town in Europe – with their heating, television in the lounge and each of the children’s rooms, washers, dryers and hot water on tap – can use more power than a country in the developing world. And much of Europe still depends on coal.

But Kpondzo, who is with Friends of the Earth, said closing the gap should only be done with ‘renewables’, and not with “dirty and harmful energy”. His organisation has been involved in antimining protests around the world.

If there is a giant leap, it is solar hot water. Simple and effective, it has changed lives for millions in Africa, India and especially Australia, where the system was perfected.

But Aussies still get two-thirds of their power from coal, also the biggest export after iron ore.

Like all of central Europe, Germany has long winters where heating can be a matter of life or death. And Energy Minister Sigmar Gabriel says coal generators “will on no account be switched off in the next decade; in my opinion, not even in the one after that.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel had promised to cut CO2 by 95% over the next 30 years. But, if Washington pulls away from climate change, it could set a precedent at a time when the EU is facing a financial hole with Britain’s withdrawal, or Brexit.

There is good news. An Anglo-Indian firm has pioneered a system where 97% of emissions from a coal-fired generator can be captured, and there is talk of the inventors being put up for a Nobel prize. They might also get rich because the Trump manifesto commits itself to America’s use of ‘clean coal’.

Renewables are part of the future, and technology is improving, but experts agree it is not there yet. Solar produces relatively low levels of current, stored in batteries for use at night or on cloudy days. For now, lighting even a midsize town is expensive, and a whole country could be decades off, longer for those where coal is plentiful . . . and cheap.

And, while Africa may be a low consumer, in some ways we are more dependent. Vaccines, HIV drugs and even snake-bite serum must stay cool. Hospitals cannot work without electricity and, where boreholes are deep, it is still the best way to pump water.

Everyone agrees on this, on the need to get more people connected to the grid, even power as a human right. But, for many COP activists, the echo chamber of their cause has boomed a single message: Trump can’t win.

Well, he has. And anger was hot in Marrakech.

Wilfred D’Costa, of the Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development, said there was “an unhinged climate change denier now in the White House”.

Friends of the Earth said “the global community must unite against Trump”.

Does that matter for millions of students doing homework by a paraffin lamp? Unlikely.

For now, closing the energy gap depends on cleaner ways of using what we have, including coal. Better distribution, fairer access, less people left out of the light.

On aid, Trump says: “Charity starts at home.”

For Africa, policies on mining and power may need to do just that.