Baking Earth!
About 200 people in Switzerland were forced to flee their homes in an Alpine village, land temperatures hit 60C in Spain, more than 100 million Americans were under extreme heat warnings, parts of Canada were on fire, heatwave in China, and extreme floods in Japan and India.
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This is the summary of the weather conditions in the week of July 22. Meteorologists, environmentalists, and climate experts were united in their call for swift climate action, if the future generation was to have a home called Earth.
Now, if you consider the heatwave and floods as portrayed by all the major media outlets, there can be only one conclusion: climate risk is real.
The only unusual situation is thermometers soaring to more than 60C in some parts.
The desperate faces of the fire crew fighting to bring the burning homes and bushes under control also symbolised the battle yet to come, if the fight against climate risk is not taken a notch up.
With an average temperature of about 48C, Europe is now the world’s fastest-warming continent.
In fact, according to available data, over 60,000 died from heat waves last year in Europe, and with the temperature expected to be hotter this year, many fear the worst.
And this can’t be the new world order.
Commenting on current happenings as far as climate risk is concerned, Gaia Vince, a freelance British environmental journalist, wrote the following in the Guardian: “Where are you at with your five stages of grief for the Holocene?
That’s the geological epoch we were living in for the past 11,700 years – the period of time when humans invented agriculture, built cities, invented writing, [and] became “modern”, essentially.
All of history occurred in this epoch, marked by its congenial, relatively predictable climate, in which ice sheets retreated from Europe and North America, and atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were high enough to enable the flourishing of grains, like rice and wheat.
Now we’ve left those Holocene conditions for the uncharted Anthropocene, an age brought about by human activities and characterised by global climate chaos and ecological degradation”.
The words ring true, and l have also had cause to address climate risk along similar lines.
“Indeed, we are fast running out of time because we have, it appears, over-populated the world, turned the land into the desert with our crude methods of farming, production, pollution, destroyed the animal insect and are, therefore, exposed to diseases, and destroyed the plant life that sustains us.
We have, ultimately, turned the climate in the worst direction”, is what l stated in the referenced edition.
As l have repeatedly said, dinosaurs lasted for millions of years, and records also show that Neanderthals, which became extinct between 40,000 and 28,000 years ago, were said to have existed for about a quarter of a million years, but homo sapiens have existed barely 100000 years, and is fast running out of time.
Ecological degradation, especially those to do with poor human activities and global climate chaos must be addressed. Take the case of corporate greenwashing, for example.
Companies can make misleading or unsubstantiated claims about climate credentials, even though there are new standards and norms introduced by the Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) standards, and disclosures adopted by companies.
Thankfully, the European Union (EU) is moving beyond “self-reporting” under certain global standards, to crack down on inflated claims by firms about products’ environmental “credentials” but there is no time to lose.
There is a need for human behaviour to be redirected to sustain the environment because climate risk is real.
In effect, there is a need for sustainable and accountable behaviour that will not compromise the life of the future generation.
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The fight against climate risk is not enough, says Ban Ki-moon, the former UN Secretary-General, stressing that “the world’s largest fund to help developing nations weather the climate crisis remains an ‘empty shell’, despite decades of promises by rich nations”.
“We need to see a massive acceleration in mobilising trillions of dollars needed to keep the world from climate collapse,” Ban stated in March.
International climate finance from rich to poor countries is between five and 10 times short of what is needed, according to the UN.
The report, which was filed in 2020, stressed that US$340 billion was needed by 2030 to help poorer countries adapt to climate breakdown, but money set aside amounted to only $29 billion.
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“Some government and business leaders are saying one thing – but doing another. Simply put, they are lying. And the results will be catastrophic,” said UN Secretary General, António Guterres, in reference to claims by some governments and businesses for the fight against climate risk to be on track.
Last year, for instance, multiple reports suggested that most countries in Europe and the USA experienced heatwaves that also threatened livelihoods. It now seems that every year will be a record-breaking year, as far as rising global temperature is concerned.
Environmental degradation has consequences, and the time for pussyfooting about the real challenges should be over, because the heat is real, and we all feel it now.
“According to a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which was released last year, temperatures could soar to more than 30C, with catastrophic consequences, unless there was a massive effort by governments, businesses, and individuals to reverse the tide.
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In effect, policies and actions are urgently needed to make the changes needed”, I wrote in the March 4 edition.
“Our Earth-dominating predecessors, the dinosaurs, didn’t have the time – or brains – to grieve a passing epoch.
Their world crossed instantly from one geological boundary to another, courtesy of a massive asteroid impact that extinguished three-quarters of all animal and plant species.
Our own period of dominance will also show up in the future fossil record.
The stamp is on everything from the accumulation of plastics and concrete to an explosion of manipulated life forms, like domesticated chickens and corn seeds.
We’ve changed the planet’s landscapes, river flows, the chemistry of the air and oceans, created cities and reservoirs, and reconfigured nature.
Today, just four per cent of the world’s mammals are wild; the rest we have modified to feed or serve us”, Vince wrote.
Scary, isn’t it? Well, that is the reality. It is up to you and me to do our best to save the planet.
botabil@gmail.com
