Mad Activists. 2012-07-19

To all my activist colleagues:

I humbly suggested that we activists are the stupidest people on the planet. Although we have the planet's well being at heart, we spend our hard one earnings and savings trying to help and most people just don't care, are myopic, are disinterested, apathetic, or worst of all, are simply in such a fossilised fuel mythology induced daze that they are simply dead people walking.

We put huge efforts into commenting on new laws; into commenting on newspaper articles; into being on the radio; into going to conferences free of charge; into giving; but what do we get out? And how much financial debt is worth all this exposure? And why do we allow ourselves to be used?

The government spends Billions on Consultants and then asks us activists to use our extensive knowledge to comment on what the consultants have said and written. We must be completely mad to do this for free. We are essentially doing the consultants work and filling in the blanks. Helping and giving without any sort of financial compensation. Yes, we feel good. We feel like we are helping. But we are putting a strain on our work and our families.

I believe now that we need to get together us activists, eg Muna, Marina, Jonathan, Mariette, Antony, myself, Ninette, and many others, and put ourselves into a team of people who trust each other and then offer our environmental services to people who wish to pay for these services.

So far I have spent R4 million of time and money on this venture over the past 5 years. I've had a lot of fun, spoken at many conferences in Cape Town, Joburg and Durban, including in parliament, and met political leaders and mayors. But I haven't made any new friends, amazingly. And getting to meet business leaders is proving impossible. I know not why, except I have a hunch that they want to be charged and we don't charge anything.

I look forward to working with you all on solving our planet's problems and at the same time earning enough to put food on the table without having to get further and further into debt.

Love and respect,
David.