Last year in December I went to London.  I had been out of the city for only a year, but I noticed some remarkable changes. The city of London was looking decidedly green.  Some of the underground  stations  proudly displayed signs explaining that escalators were switched off in the evenings to cut carbon emissions. Small boutiques tucked away in Coventry had window signs saying their door was kept closed to save on air conditioning. Buses loudly proclaimed signs encouraging citizens to go green. And citizens were indeed going green – from bankers in Notting  Hill to accountants in outlying Chippenham they had embraced recycling and buying local goods to save on carbon emissions. The fast pace of green change in London in the space of a year was remarkable.

Last month, I went to New York. I was pleasantly surprised to see the advanced state of green. Recycling is a done deal in many homes. Some of the huge neon signs in Times Square proudly state they are switched off at night to save on electricity.  A street restaurant in the fashionable Meatpacking District taunted its customers with two bins – one with the sign of Recycle and the other with a sign for Landfill.

On the way home from the big Apple,  I stopped off in Cairo. There wasn’t any green to be seen.  Sustainability is clearly not in mind in Cairo. The Nile aqueducts I saw were used as litter depositories. The ground underneath mid-city bridges were also landfill sites. Animals were generally not cared for and  considered; and neither were the people experiencing poverty or illness.  And all of this against the back drop of the truly majestic Giza pyramids and Sphinx.  I think the people of Cairo should ponder their legendary saying,  “Man fears time, but time fears the pyramids”.  

So which route will South Africans go?  Will the average citizen follow the mindless abandon of Cairo or the growing green mindedness of London and New York?