#MicroblogMondays: Climate Change

This post is brought to you from my bed, which is hardly surprising, as it's 2:03 am. I am listening to the wind.

 

Doesn't seem like five minutes since our first storm with a name blew through. It was, I am convinced, named after my granddaughter, Abigail, who frankly, deserves to have a storm named after her, and this is a compliment, as a little further down the alphabet, Storm Mary will breeze in. Thank you, storm namers, I accept the accolade.

 

I shouldn't be taking this lightly. I doubt I would, had Desmond wreaked the havoc here in the South West, that it did in Cumbria.

 

Years ago I read reports that the reality of climate change would be extreme events at more frequent intervals. And here we are, Desmond not yet cleaned up after, and Eva whistling in the wings.

 

Estimates of anywhere between 60 and 200 million refugees from climate change - men women and children forced to leave their homes because of drought or deluge. Where will they go? Will you, or I be among them? It's not beyond the bounds of probability.

 

In 1988, in London, I was awakened by The Great Storm that flattened forests and raised roofs across much of southern England. I have some enduring memories of that night. Me, checking out the bible, Ray, my husband, eyeing up the insurance policy; the Anglia Windows promotional caravan tipped over onto a Porche; frightened dogs cowering under cars; extortionate prices charged by unscrupulous builders for emergency repairs. Above all, I remember the outbreak of neighbourliness as communities pulled together to help those who suffered most.

 

We're going to need a whole lot more of good- neighbourliness with that many people to take care of.

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#MicroblogMondays: A Change Of Mind

I wish I could draw cartoons. I'd have a go at one of those of a bearded guy in a long robe and sandals carrying a placard that reads, "REPENT! THE END IS NIGH!" He'd have a smug look on his face that says, 'I told you so!'

Yes, I've been reading Pope Francis' Encyclical, 'Laudato Si' which speaks powerfully of the globalised industrial machine, powered by greed, turning our planet into 'a pile of filth'. And in doing so, destroying the biosphere. Mass extinction, irreversible climate change, inhuman exploitation of the poor, to whom he acknowledges an 'ecological debt' ... Here's a Bishop of Rome who won't fiddle while the world burns. Perhaps by giving strong moral leadership he will have an impact. At least 1.3 billion Catholics no longer have the option of denying both the reality of man-made climate change, and a responsibility towards the people losing their homes and livelihoods because of it. Will it make a difference? We shall see.

I discovered recently that 'Repent' is a translation of the Greek word 'metanoia', which has nothing to do with sackcloth and ashes. It means to 'change your mind'. Pope Francis calls those who deny responsibility for the catastrophe we may not even be able to avoid, to do just that. While there's still a chance to salvage something habitable.

 

 

 

 

 

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We're Doomed!

Not entirely voluntarily, I used to watch 'Dad's Army' a 1970's sitcom based on the Homeguard - the band of plucky men who were our last line of defence in the 1940's should the Nazis invade and take over. So like we Brits to turm mayhem into pantomime. 

My favourite character was the strereotypical Scot, both penny-pinching and dour, whose catchphrase was' We're doomed. We're all doomed!". Well Fraser, take a bow, you were right.

I'm sorry to be such a wet-blanket, especially on such a beautiful Spring morning, but I am going to out the inner ostrich and tell what I know. 

If it proves impossible to keep the global temperature rise to below 2C, the world's climate will be so changed that food production will fall year on year by 10%. It's already happening isn't it? Food prices are rising - a drought here, a flood there, a late frost, an early snow ... Confident predictions that technology would make up for the population rise and subsequent increased demand, are  proving over-optimistic. We have food banks in the UK  and the demand for them is growing, God knows how the desperately poor elsewhere are doing.

It is going to prove impossible to keep the temperature rise below 2C, because somehow, we the people, just don't seem able to grasp that science cannot be trumped by wishful thinking, and that ignorance is not a defence against catastrophe. 

I heard a smooth-talking highly persuadable US Politician trumpet the building of the Keystone Pipeline as the magic wand to cure his nation's ills. 

I read British tabloid stories about the benefits of fracking. Setting fire to underground coal seams is on the table too. Polluted water sources and fires we can't put out? Really?

 I used to think not. I had this equal and opposite resort to ignorance - a sustained and stupid belief that by now, humankind would have cottoned-on to the fact that we are in real and imminent danger of wiping ourselves out. 

If our political leaders are planning for food shortages, growing poverty, incipient unrest, we know nothing about it. They should be. Here in the UK, uncertain weather, highly disruprive to food production, is becoming the norm. I meet hungry people out on the streets. Yes, really hungry people, ( and the mal-nourished too, who are even more invisible because they're fat) and I wonder how can this be happening in the world's fourth largest economy?

I guess I always thought, of the Four Horseman of the Apocolypse, it would be War that led to the end of our fragile civilisation, I had not noticed how closely Famine was on his heels. 

Why am I so exercised today? I listen carefully to less sensational news items, and learned recently that to keep the global temperature rise to below 2C Exxon would have to leave 80% of its oil and gas  reserves in the ground. Other companies have not disclosed their figures, but I bet this is typical.

That was my epiphany, my Damascus Road experience. Because global corporations can do what they like in pursuit of profit, we are doomed. They will leave 80% of their profits underground when hell freezes over, and in the current climate, that ain't going to happen.