Just when we should be scaling down, as the end of the year approaches, and gearing up, as the Christmas season starts, we get hit by the double whammy of a record murder rate and residential and street flooding, the likes of which we have not seen before.
Neither of these pretty disastrous realities had to happen, but they did, because we created the circumstances and the environment in which they could occur.
The outcome of COP27, the global climate conference that ended in mid-November in Egypt, was nothing if not extremely disappointing. It showed how divided we are as world citizens when it comes to deciding what really matters.
There was a cleavage between those wanting firm temperature-level limits set, above everything else, and the others focused on compensation for countries damaged by climate change induced by first-world industrial development.
In the end, despite Barbados' PM Mia Mottley’s forceful earlier argument that a 1.5-degree temperature increase was a death sentence for small island states, COP27 ended with no clear commitment to end the use of fossil fuels any time soon.
A more powerful argument emerged from Pakistan, one of the world’s poorer countries, which was able to leverage the bold evidence of the spectacularly ravaging 2022 floods that did billions of dollars' worth of damage.
Although that lobby extracted an agreement that poor countries like Pakistan should be financially aided for “loss and damage,” it attracted, reportedly, only a miserly commitment of US$260 million from “rich countries” for “poor countries,” which technically include China. It is an embarrassing handout that will probably end up – after the decision is made about who gets how much/little – in some corrupt politicians' bank accounts.
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Much better if the blame game had not been adopted, on the one hand, and the rich countries, on the other, had a sense of fair play when it comes to the existential threat to the planet and all the life it supports. We need a proper plan for helping all countries to adapt to climate change – cash alone does not solve problems – and for international trade to favour green technologies that investors globally should be pouring their money into.
In the Caribbean, where rising sea levels and coastal erosion are real issues, we need particular knowledge and equipment to enable us to combat it. Massive amounts should also be earmarked for educating inert populations like ours who do not seem to understand the relationship between the choices we make and the consequences we suffer.
Yes, the industrial revolution and every other leap forward for mankind has taken a toll on our environment, but we are part of that single world and also harm the environment.
We should consider the specifics of what we do that make our lives more difficult than necessary at the local level. We seem not to equate the unprecedented week-long floods in Trinidad with our actions, both direct and indirect. Our Minister
