Sometimes in 1963, the American controversial black writer, James Baldwin published two long essays in a book called The Fire Next Time using God’s words for attention and publicity of the biblical prophecy of God that He would no longer destroy the world as in time of Noah with water but that it will be with fire next time. He got the attention he was looking for because of the publicity that surrounded his effort. The book was not a religious book but a book that analysed the racial conundrum of America and prophesied doom and destruction if nothing was done to change and correct the corrosive problem eating American society from within.
Shortly after this book was published, the rioting by black youth from the inner cities of America broke out with cries of “burn baby burn”. Black youths like Stockley Carmichael and Rap brown and leaders of the Black Power Movement took control of the black rage that was prepared to tear America down especially during the presidency of Lyndon Baines Johnson and Richard Milhouse Nixon. This was also the time of the civil rights movement of Martin Luther King jnr. of peaceful nonviolent protest. America was then presented with either nonviolent change or change as a result of violence. The Civil Rights Act of 1965 appears to have been a response to the fundamental request for change by desperate sectors of American society including the suffering black Americans. All this has no connection with what I am about to delve into in the next paragraphs of this piece.
Throughout most of July and August, bush fires were raging almost uncontrollably in Ontario, Canada and in the western Canadian provinces of Alberta and British Columbia. The fires in Canada blanketed the skies of many American cities in the North East. Serious fires broke out in American states of Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada and even Texas. Where there were no fires, serious flooding affected states like Mississippi, Missouri and Indiana. Some of the people in those states would be right to see their problems in apocalyptic dimensions.
While this was happening in America, many parts of Europe were on fire. Fire was at the gates of great Spanish and French cities. Temperature rose to the highest degree ever recorded. The Danube and Rhine rivers draining most of Central Europe were drying up. Nuclear power plants that need their water for cooling had to be shut down in Romania, Hungary and Austria. Good old Britain which escaped from the raging fires also was hit with heat wave along with most of Western Europe. A small bushfire probably caused by an arsonist broke out in Essex, England. The continent of Asia was not spared because bushfires broke out in Japan and South Korea. Perhaps by divine design, Africa has been spared at least for now despite the fact that deliberate bush burning is part of our primitive traditional way of bush clearing for agriculture. Australia’s season of bushfires is during their summer months of December to March and bush fires are a yearly experience there too like the rest of their industrialized counterparts in the West.
What is causing this unseasonal weather of heatwaves, bush fires, flooding and heavy snowfall? There have been scientific studies by experts charged by the United Nations with the responsibility of finding out what is wrong. A body of literature exists to explain what is wrong. Human activities since the industrial revolution of the 19th century are responsible for warming up the earth. The radio carbon emissions associated with industrial processes, transportation especially the use of automobiles and aerial vehicles of planes and helicopters, agricultural production especially cattle raising and use of fertilizers, energy generation and consumption unrelated to non-renewable sources, air conditioning especially the use of HFC gas among other reasons, have damaged the environment and created greenhouse conditions heating up the environment.
Studies upon studies led the world to assemble in Paris France in 2015 to sign the Paris protocol to reverse the hitherto industrial processes and other non-environmentally friendly ways of human existence. Since then till the time of my writing in August, almost every UN member has signed the Paris Agreement of Conference of Parties to the UN Convention on Climate Change. Most countries have taken small but incremental steps towards cleaning the environment and reversing environmental abuse. The success of the environmental campaign depends on major countries like the USA and Europe which through their industrialization were historically responsible for environmental pollution, taking decisive steps to ameliorate the abused environment causing climate change. The ranks of countries responsible for climate abuse have been joined by China and India which using the “polluter pays principle” argues that the onus to lead the way lies with those largely responsible for the problem.
The problem has now been compounded by the oil producing economies which largely depend on encouragement of radio carbon consumption on which their economies depend. To make matters worse, the campaign for action is bogged down by the political changes in a country like the USA which under President Donald J. Trump is challenging the science of the cause of the problem arguing that the problem of climate change is natural and cyclical and that nature will take care of the problem. President Trump for the second time withdrew the United States from the global agreement on January 27 having pulled out the USA for the first time In November 2020 during his first term. It is sad that the Republican Party that controls the presidency, the Congress and the judiciary in the USA is quiet about the existential issues of climate change due to human activities and is going along with their president who places more consideration on material well-being of his nation than global human survival in the face of the certitude of scientific evidence on the consequences of environmental destruction.
I agree that America alone is not guilty of environmental abuse but if it decides to lead the battle of environmental amelioration, things will change for the better and the various annual jamborees of conferences of parties to the convention will not be in vain. The 17th of these COPs (conference of parties to the UN Convention on Climate Change) is scheduled for Mongolia. One hopes it will not be too late before the world wakes up to its responsibility.
The various steps being taken to enhance the environment and preserve the climate such as converting transportation from carbon driven to electricity is making some impact but the problem of how the electricity is generated remains a serious challenge. To make the change meaningful, we must go to near pre-industrial level of greenhouse gas emission and then hope for the best. Time is a healer and human beings have a tendency to forget easily. The incidence of heatwaves and bushfires once they subside can easily be forgotten and life goes on. It would require persistent political pressure to make the world reverse from its perilous ways of doing things before the world can breathe so that the only habitable planet yet discovered can be handed over to children yet unborn in near pristine liveable conditions.
We need to interrogate why the continent of Africa is currently safe from these global apocalypse. It seems to be because our immediate environment is different from the tinderbox of the environment in the industrial world with its emissions of inflammable gas ready to ignite at any moment of a spark. The pine trees and other trees and the leafy autumnal leaves on the ground provide available fuel for these fires. The individual wastes which litter some environment constitutes direct sources for starting some of these fires. The roles of arsonists in the cause of these fires cannot be underestimated. The kind of forests in the tropics in Africa and perhaps in South America do not burn easily and when there is bushfires, the heavy tropical rain easily provides antidote for these bush fires. There needs to be scientific study why Africa is largely spared while the rest of the world is on fire. If the situation continues, there is the possibility of migration from the places afflicted by these fires to areas that are relatively safer and this scenario will not be peacefully done but possibly as a result of conflict.
On a personal level, I have reasons to panic during this current bushfires. I have some members of my family in Europe and North America in a world which whatever the likes of Trump says has become a global village in which human beings restlessly move from one part to another. During this summer, two of my grandchildren living with their parents in Canada were on trips to the wilderness of Northern Ontario and the Rockies in Alberta. They were undergoing leadership and survival training with their teenage colleagues when these fires broke out. Naturally I panicked when I realized that my grandchildren were in some kind of trouble. Their parents did not panic and were sure all will be well but I as grandpa remained inconsolable until the children returned home to tell stories of contacts not conflicts with wild killer Canadian bears. I tell my experience perhaps to illustrate how personal the issue of the environmental problems can get. Many children during this period suffer from serious asthma and other respiratory diseases as some adults do. Perhaps when leaders of countries realize that this problem is an existential problem and that the problem of the environmental abuse leading to climate change and its consequences require their attention, they will begin to take note and lead the world to preserve the human habitat.
NOTE: Views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Theliberationnews
