Tag: Nigerian Newspapers

In the 1960s, the American black author James Baldwin wrote a book about the future of American race relations and entitled it “The Fire Next Time” which was an attempt to re-echo what God allegedly told Noah that He would not destroy the world by water as he did in Noah’s time but that He will destroy it by fire when man’s cup is full, to put it Biblically. Some people when they think about the possibility of nuclear war always feel that it is the way the old prophecy of destroying the world by fire would be fulfilled. It is of course clear to everybody that in the event of a nuclear war, nothing will be spared. The late President J.F. Kennedy said that in the event of nuclear war, “the living will envy the dead”, meaning those who survive the immediate incineration will die painfully of radioactive fallout. Perhaps man may avoid this if we play our politics right. That is , if the nuclear arms states can somehow manage universal nuclear disarmament. This is provided for by appropriate United Nations protocol. Whether this will happen remains a moot question.

But there is the possibility of the world burning out through anthropomorphic activities by which human beings have sought to dominate the environment since time immemorial through agriculture and animal husbandry and the modern life styles of man such as industrialization and other appurtenances of modern existence. It is obvious that human activities of production and existence have led to unprecedented and unparalleled emission of greenhouse gasses into the environment causing global warming. Experts have now warned that the world must not only reverse global warming but that it cannot afford an increase of more than 1.5 Celsius in temperature.

Read Also: Anambra students, others protest global warming

I remember attending the climate change conference in Copenhagen some years ago and it was then decided that the world must not only reverse greenhouse emissions but should even go back to the level of 1970 or there about. The argument common among those of us from developing countries was that the polluters must pay for all abatement measures that needed to be taken to clean the global environment. Since most of the polluters were countries in the industrialized North of the world namely Europe, America and Japan, they should bear the brunt of the measures needed to be taken to reverse environmental abuse of the world. The developing world reasonably argued that they needed to be developed before joining those concerned with global warming. This meant huge polluters like China and India would continue to use dirty fuels like coal in their industries. Countries in OPEC like Nigeria are always very defensive when the consumption of hydrocarbons like oil and gas are flagged as polluters. This struck at national economies of many countries in Africa, the Middle East, Latin American countries like Mexico and Venezuela and even Russia that depends on its export of gas and oil to Europe. The campaign designed to save the environment has not been easy because there are many complex issues and interests involved, yet this is a task that must be done if man and his environment must survive.

The vagaries of national and international politics have also not helped the campaign. The work of a UN experts group that toiled for years to establish the scientificity of global warming leading to the Paris protocol on global warming is being undermined by politicians like Donald Trump, the current American president joined by his Australian counterparts who have refused to accept the unarguable facts of global warming. The manifestations of global warming can be seen in the unseasonably high temperatures and other extremes of weather all over the world. This current year is regarded everywhere as the hottest in recorded history. Many people especially the aged, infirm and children have died as a result of extreme heat not only in Europe and America as the world press tend to publicize, but in Asia and Africa as well. Perhaps the most alarming effect of global warming is the regular forest fires in America in particular and now in the Arctic, Alaska, Canada’s northern territories, Norwegian and Swedish northern territories and Russian Siberia and the Arctic. The fires in the arctic circle has been burning since June and because of the inaccessible nature of the areas to mechanical fire fighters, they are being left to burn themselves out thus causing damage in terms of the spewing of carbon dioxide into the environment leading further to global warming. Added to this is the burning of the peat and bog in the Arctic and releasing even greater carbon dioxide into the air. On top of this is the melting of the icecaps thus leading to eventual rise in sea rise and coastal flooding. The reduction of the trees which act as carbon sinks further reduces the ability of the global environment to recover. The huge emissions of carbon is also damaging global oceans whose ability to absorb more carbon has been reduced because there is only a limit to how much carbon the seas which are getting saturated can absorb. The emissions of automobiles and the entire industrial processes had primarily been responsible for greenhouse gasses but the problem has been compounded by our agricultural processes. For example, the rearing of millions of cows all over the world and their emission of green house gasses like the methane they belch into the air has led to calls for a change of diet away from consumption of beef and eating more grains. In this regard, Nigeria must begin to think about what we are going to do to the millions of cows whose methane emissions is adding to global warming. The world may be moving to a point where there might be international protocol about the number of cattle people and countries can hold.

What is to be done? The automobile industry is at least doing something about automobiles’ emission by planning to replace cars and autos powered by hydrocarbons with those powered by electric batteries and liquefied hydrogen with zero emissions to the environment. Industrial processes are also receiving same attention of moving away from hydrocarbons as sources of fuel. The problem in some countries like China, India and some parts of the USA like West Virginia is that electricity is still being produced from coal instead of from renewables like tide, wind, thermal and at worst nuclear energy sources. Even though Trump and his co -travellers in some countries may not be environment friendly, sub national authorities like California, Colorado and several cities in the USA are taking measures to ensure that they are environment compliant. The same thing is being done in most of Western Europe and Japan where as in the case of Great Britain, the government hopes to have zero emission by 2050. Most of the European Union countries are even targeting earlier years for environment compliance. The rise of Green parties in these countries has put pressure on their governments to do the right thing. In order to make whatever measures being taken in all these countries to be effective, same measures have to be taken globally because the global environment is one. You cannot pollute somewhere and clean in another place and expect positive global results.

The fight for saving the common global environment has become an imperative recently because of the Arctic circle fires and the gradual denudation of the Amazon forest in Brazil , the Guyanas ( Dutch and French) and the former British Guyana now an independent country. But the global eye is on Brazil where the new president, Jair Bolsonaro, the so-called Trump of Brazil who does not believe in the evidence of global warming, has opened the Amazon forest of Brazil to capitalists who are interested in logging, agricultural and animal husbandry to cut trees in the basin thus removing the forest providing carbon sink for substantial global carbon emissions. Not only that, the Amazon basin is responsible for substantial amount of the oxygen in our air and if the basin were to disappear, the world will be in trouble. The slash and burn agriculture in the Amazon basin and in places like the Congo basin and the tropical forests of Indonesia  as well as our own rain forest are inimical to global environmental wellbeing.

What then must be done to avoid global calamity. This will require radical changes in the way we live and even what we eat. But to begin with, countries with vast rain forest like Brazil must be assisted to preserve the rain forest for the world and the indigenous people who live there. These countries would have to be compensated through the GEF (Global Environmental Fund) which will have to be substantially increased to take into account what the countries owning the tropical forests would be losing by not allowing whole sale exploitation of their forests. Where the forests have been already cut as in West Africa, efforts at afforestation must be assisted through financial transfers from the OECD counties that were responsible for global warming. All oil exploration in the Arctic would have to stop and what is causing fires to flare up there must be examined and an end must be put to it. The world cannot continue to dilly dally on the issue of climate change caused by global warming.