A rooster takes credit for the dawn

Time check, 10 seconds to midnight, 31 December 1999,countdown begins

with baited breath and ends…..nothing happened…there is two ways to look at it …having heeded all the warnings about the Y2K bug …forearmed we, together, took action and a potential catastrophe was averted…or the whole thing was a hoax..fast forward to 31,December,2050, global warming by all available,known measures is averted. Will we be  able to say for sure it took human intervention to reverse the trend or was it part of a larger trend unaffected by human intervention, that is to say, a part of life on a living planet?

Part of life in Uganda today is incessant power cuts that can last at least 12 hours a day in response to this more folks are turning to alternative sources of electricity and heat for their daily needs such as cooking, lighting, phone charging, Barefoot Power Uganda offers some affordable solutions to this end. The goal of 100% renewable energy by 2050 is of no consequence to ordinary folks looking to keep the lights on after the latest delay in Bujjagali coinciding with the GoU falling behind on its payments to electricity suppliers making load shedding necessary.

Inadvertently foil that plan(100% renewable energy by 2050) or enable it…but then how can anyone claim credit or apportion blame? Its easy to say that the developed nations,  US& Europe,the old world if you will and the developing nations, the BRIC countries,Brazil,Russia,India and China failed to agree on what collective action to take to combat climate change at the recent UN climate summit in Durban, South Africa, therefore impending disaster looms for all, as the news media tells it.

In criminal law, intent trumps motive in a murder case, in other words, what one's intentions are determine guilt rather than why? This is why euthanasia is a crime, Dr JackKervokian pleaded in his defense that  he killed his patient to put him out of his misery for he  was terminally ill and in agony. The judge sentenced him to 10-25 years in prison for murder  not because the good doctor wanted to kill his patient's pain but because he killed him, on purpose.

Idealism kills the deal, in the words of Gordon Gekko, what has, my need to warm my food, boil water to drink, turn the light on to do my homework at night;got to do with saving the world? So I need charcoal for my stove, if it proves too expensive I will look for a stove that doesn't use charcoal, maybe gas or invent one. I don't know and don't care for the world except mine.