South African billionaire heir Jonathan Oppenheimer warns of climate tipping point

Jonathan Oppenheimer, heir to one of South Africa’s oldest mining fortunes, said the world may already have reached a tipping point on climate change, and urged scientists to do more to convince the public that conservation matters.

“We are, I believe, very close, if not at, a tipping point in terms of what happens going forward,” Oppenheimer, executive chairman of the family’s investment group Oppenheimer Generations, said on Wednesday as he opened the 15th Oppenheimer Research Conference in Midrand, near Johannesburg, Mining Weekly reported.

Oppenheimer told a full house at the Randjesfontein Cricket Ground that scientific research moves slowly while the public expects quick answers. “As we know, in science nothing happens overnight,” he said. “We live in a world that is looking for instant action.”

Selling science to the public

He argued that researchers who become ever more specialized risk losing the ability to reach a wider audience. Conservation, he said, will only gain broad support if it is made relevant to ordinary people, who drive public opinion.

“I don’t need to persuade you here in this room that conservation is the way we ensure our species’ survival, but I do need us to find a way to carry that message beyond these two and a half days,” he said.

“What they want is an Instagram post for 30 seconds,” Oppenheimer added, describing the challenge of turning years of research into a message that can reach “100% of the public in the world.”

His father, Nicky Oppenheimer, the former chairman of De Beers and Anglo American, said in a joint program document that the conference encourages collaboration across scientific disciplines and brings African voices into global debates on the environment, conservation and sustainability.

Africa’s choice

The conference’s keynote speaker, Professor Guy Midgley, director of the School for Climate Studies at Stellenbosch University, said the outlook for global warming has improved since the Paris climate agreement. Before Paris, the world was heading for about 4 degrees Celsius of warming, he said, while projections are now much closer to 2.5 degrees. “Not good enough yet, but a huge advance,” he said.

Midgley said Africa faces a choice as its young, fast-growing population drives rapid urbanization, with the continent’s cities expected to add a billion people by mid-century. Roughly three-quarters of the infrastructure Africa will need by 2050 has yet to be built, he said, and artificial intelligence could help plan growth without destroying wild landscapes. “In Africa, we mustn’t receive it; we must shape it,” he said.

Professor Stuart Pimm of Duke University said Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Zambia have all met the global target of protecting 30% of their land, but South Africa remains far from it.

A family’s long bet on conservation

The Oppenheimers made their fortune through Anglo American and De Beers, the diamond company the family controlled for decades before selling its 40% stake to Anglo American in 2012 for $5.1 billion. Since then, the family has put much of its wealth and attention into private investment and conservation through Oppenheimer Generations, which funds ecological research on the family’s land, including the Tswalu Kalahari reserve in the Northern Cape.

The conference comes as Anglo American is reported to be in talks to sell De Beers, the business the Oppenheimer family ran for most of the 20th century.