We have our own Caribbean way of treating emergencies, mainly skeptical about weather warnings, yet always surprised when we get hit hard and just ‘feeling sorry’ for others when we escape unaffected.
So that, while Governments may take early steps to ensure sufficient levels of emergency preparedness, there’s also always a higher level of lower expectations than should have been expected.
We knew Beryl was coming a ‘a BIG ONE’ but when it razed coastal areas and broke jetties across the islands hit, everyone was ‘surprised’ and/or ‘never expected’ it to be ‘like that…’
We’ve seen and heard what Beryl did to the Caribbean and the task now is to not only start taking hurricane warnings more seriously, but also to understand how and why she came so-big and so-early in the 2024 Hurricane Season.
We have to pay more attention to the issues relating to Climate Change and the Environment and not just cling to phrases like ‘1.5 To Stay Alive’, without even understanding 1.5 of what, or how it will happen.
What we are facing already – and not only now – is the accumulated effects of Climate Change caused by the rich countries clouding the skies with bad gases that scar Planet Earth and enrage Mother Nature.
They clear the world’s forests to dig for oil, gold and diamonds and other Rare Earths, not caring about the ultimate effects.
Their actions make the sea warmer, resulting in everything from Flying Fish flying from Barbados to Tobago waters, rising sea levels in our Caribbean harbours and more-frequent natural and human-made disasters.
Today, all the worst elements exist alongside each-other: Rain and drought, heat waves and worsening winters, every month being hotter than the previous one, every year seeing more ‘tropical’ storms and hurricanes, earthquakes and volcano eruptions, floods and forest fires – even a ‘Christmas Eve Trough’ that severely hit an off-guard Saint Lucia on December 24, 2013.
However, believe it or not, like science, Climate Change is Real – and it’s affecting us in real ways – and we really need to start learning more about it.
The rich countries go to the annual United Nations (UN) Climate Change Conference of Parties (CoP) in The North and pledge to help pay and repair the Loss and Damage they have long been causing to The South, but every year they fail to deliver and come-up with new schemes, among the latest being so-called ‘Monetization of Climate Change’ championed by format US Secretary of State John Kerry.
They pretend to be concerned, while refusing to pay-up to repair the global damage they cause in developing nations and small island developing states.
The rich nations are doing what we will consider strange things, to look and sound good, but refuse to take action to do good for those nations their bad decisions and gas emissions damage beyond repair – like what Beryl just did.
Take Norway, for example, which two weeks ago became the first country to pass a Carbon Tax on cows.
The scientists have found that a cow’s burp – just one ‘fart’ or ‘a fat’ – lets out enough emissions to harm the climate, so Denmark passed a tax of almost US $100 (EC $271) for each cow owned by every cattle farmer.
The tax is based on a mathematical measurement of how many times a cow farts per day and how much that contributes to negative climate change every week, month and year.
Back in time, we used to (and we still do) collect precious ‘Cow Poop’ (cattle dung) to use as manure for planting fruits and vegetables – and it came from the same passage as the cow’s fart.
I can’t remember ever hearing how a cow farts, far-less how it smells, or to have even believed it can change the climate.
But today, tropical countries are being forced to consider which part of a cow’s daily waste is good and which is bad – and maybe soon too, Caribbean cattle farmers may have to be charged a ‘Fart Tax’ according to future World Health and Climate Resilience rules (Coming to pasture near you soon?)
We’ve seen it all before.
Hurricane Janet lasted nine days (September 21 to 30, 1955) and caused havoc across the Caribbean as the most-powerful tropical cyclone of the 1955 Atlantic hurricane season and one of the strongest Atlantic hurricanes on record, as the first named storm in history to cause 1,000 deaths – and the first Category 5 storm name to be retired (never to be used again).
Hurricane David in 1979 lasted longer – an entire fortnight from August 25 to September 8, 1979; Hurricane Allen lasted 12 days from July 31 to August 11, 1980; and Hurricane Gilbert lasted 12 days from September 8 to 19, 1988.
Since then, the 21st Century has seen hurricanes and storms like Maria come faster and more-furious, accompanied by volcanic eruptions in St. Vincent & The Grenadines, long droughts, rising sea levels and other worsening phenomena.
Caribbean Governments must therefore try hard to avoid the region’s climate perils being treated like providing field trips to collect data for geographic, oceanic and meteorological scientists to factor into their never-ending calculations of the accumulated effects of environmental and humanoid activity on how fast the climate changes.
Likewise, Loss and Damage from Climate Change is no different than the huge debts Europe and North America owe the Caribbean for Reparations for Slavery and Native Genocide.
The time has come (in my view) for twinning these demands that both affect all developing nations still fighting the lingering effects of Slavery and Colonialism in Century 21.
Like CARICOM is already proposing for internationalization of its legal case for Reparations, the region can also file cases for Climate Change-related Loss and Damage at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), International Criminal Court (ICC), European Court of Justice and the US Supreme Court.
I rest my case.