Saliem Fakir - Low Carbon Future
AI and the collapse of truth
By: Saliem Fakir 22nd May 2026 South Africa is in the throes of the Madlanga Commission, established by President Cyril Ramaphosa to investigate corruption and malfeasance in the... →
Of wars, fossil fuel and the clean energy revolution
By: Saliem Fakir 17th April 2026 The situation in the Gulf has moved from epic fury to epic crisis. Wars reveal, with great clarity, the shape of the world when something is no... →
Decarbonisation with development in mind
By: Saliem Fakir 20th March 2026 That developing countries need growth is unquestionable, and the construction of housing, roads, manufacturing, hospitals, schools and many other... →
Action counts, not declarations
By: Saliem Fakir 20th February 2026 An offhand remark caught my attention in the last stages of the Brazilian presidency of COP30. Ambassador André Corrêa do Lago, the lead... →
Good State and community-based development
By: Saliem Fakir 23rd January 2026 One must be guided by several precepts when considering community-based development. The first is that if you do not know something, do something.... →
From nativism to society’s chains
By: Saliem Fakir 12th December 2025 Most of what we see in life comes from the way we organise life. As humans are social animals, the way they organise society can determine their... →
Justice in the transition
By: Saliem Fakir 14th November 2025 German Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch once noted that while the idea of utopia is something we must dream about, we need to pepper it with... →
Hallucination traps and knowledge gaps in policy
By: Saliem Fakir 10th October 2025 Policy-wonking can at times be a crude endeavour, and reality is not reached directly but through untested internal beliefs. Without direct... →
Decarbonisation: State-led versus market-led solutions
By: Saliem Fakir 19th September 2025 The view of mainstream financiers is that the market mechanism is the only solution for the scaling of climate solutions. Public finance from major... →
How geopolitics is changing the climate action landscape
By: Saliem Fakir 1st August 2025 Reality sings a different tune these days: hard power has thrown out the soft power model of the late Joseph Nye. Hard power now decides the terms,... →
