Climate Change

So many things are polarised these days. Politics, in the West especially, is often split to left and right. Religion is the same, with people on either side of a certain belief or the other, or the debate centred around the the existence, or not thereof, of "God", in the first place. Tech isn't exempt from this either. Take cameras. We have the Canon vs Nikon wars. Before that, we had the Leica vs Contax. Now we have the Sony vs Fujifilm. It's an ongoing, apparently relentless battle. Look at the iOS (iPhone) vs Android fight which, in the early days, took on a religious/ideological fervour.

The issue of "climate change" isn't exempt from this. I don't think there's anyone that actually thinks the climate is not changing. We can empirically measure the changes, as compared to the records we have and retrospective inferences from the past. I think we are at consensus that the climate is changing.

Where the debate is, is what is causing it and whether or not we can or should do anything about it.

While this debate rages on, the weather continues to change and the devastating effects continued to be felt around the world. Worst hit, ironically and unfortunately, are those that have actually contributed the least to the factors causing the change.

Countries that are not fully "industrialised" use the least amount of energy and have the lowest "carbon footprints" compared to countries like Germany and the United States of America. Sadly, these countries are bearing the brunt of this global crisis. Drastic changes in rainfall are causing crop failures around the world. Many, often impoverished, communities are being hit by monumental floods which wipe away their entire towns and livelihoods. I've seen cities in Africa and Asia where roads have been turned into rivers with houses and cars half deep in water. Apart from the initial damage of the water to the structure of buildings and cars, there's the ongoing effect of diseases like cholera that devastate the populations even worse than the flood itself.

Even more ironic is that these communities are being pressured to become more "environmentally friendly" when, by default, they already are orders of magnitude more so than we are in the West. Ghana, for example, an up and coming west African nation which has been praised for ongoing peace and democracy, was pressured under the threat of sanctions to purchase "carbon credits" in order to become "carbon neutral".

Here in the UK we are seeing more of these "record breaking" temperatures almost on a yearly basis now. We are also seeing more floods in Europe generally but, since most European countries can print money with apparent impunity, we can outsource the consequences to the developing world. Last summer, at least one of the bridges over the Thames had to be covered in foil to reflect the sun rays, hence the heat, to regulate the temperature. The structure was under the danger of collapse otherwise. When these structures were constructed, there was allowance made for temperature variations as usual, but they never foresaw a time when this kind of sustained heat would come to this country.

I honestly don't know what can be done to halt this. Personally, as mentioned before, I think we may have passed the point of no return. Nature will do what nature has to do and nature really doesn't need us. I think we place too much importance on the existence of humanity. You can see it in the narcissistic way we refer to the extinction of humanity as "the end of the world." It really wouldn't be. We would end, like did the dinos, but the earth, and probably cockroaches and rats, will endure.

Peace & Love,

Adé