Climate change is disrupting economies and costing lives, right now. This week’s climate news reads like a prediction of societal collapse set in a Mad Max future. Each of the last seven months has set a new climate record. Due to drought, Venezuela’s hydroelectric dams have no water to feed the turbines that supply power to the country, so the country shuts down and children die in operating theatres that have no electricity.
Lack of rain threatens the lives of millions in Southern Africa. In Pakistan, gravediggers prepare cemeteries for the surge of deaths that health officials warn will accompany another record-breaking heatwave.
We once thought we would see these things happening 50 or 100 years from now, but climate is changing faster than we anticipated and much faster than we react.
The countries that are most vulnerable are the ones that are least capable of adapting. The least-prepared societies are the ones where citizens will first start to lose livelihoods and lives. How prepared a society is has everything to do with governance choices. We call for individual action, but the impacts of climate change have become so overwhelming that people react with fear, guilt and inaction. What we need now are leaders who can steer collective action. The leaders who do this will be remembered by history as legacy makers.
How to break this cycle of doom and continued self-destructive inaction? We must realise that there is great opportunity in this environmental crisis. This is the time for self-reinvention. The challenges we face are huge, and we can easily overthink them and procrastinate. Overwhelming tasks are best completed one manageable step at a time.
Trinidad and Tobago sits at a curious position in the climate timeline. As a society, and an economy, we are firmly rooted in the fossil fuel era. Economically we want to look back to the past, when we could ignore depleting oil and gas reserves and the threats posed by greenhouse gasses.
As a small island in the Caribbean we are at increased risk from sea level rise and drought, but we have to see mass inundation before we believe that. As a society that has not yet found its philosophical and governmental footing, we are among those that lack the capacity to adapt to the threats that come our way.
What we have in our favour, whether we realise it or not, is that we are a society that embraces change. Our entire history is one of a people who have continuously adapted, consciously or not. We are all survivors. Regardless of where our DNA comes from, ours is a people whose ancestors adapted to extreme threats and successfully passed on their genes.
By our very nature we are strong and tenacious. We have survived invasion, abduction, poverty, trickery, revolution, genocide and disease; and we all adapted to live in an environment that is different from what our ancestors knew. There is no distinction of race or class in this—these are fluid terms in any case. We all have in common is that change was forced upon us, and we survived. Our existence today is proof that our ancestors made the right evolutionary choices. There is no morality or judgment in this, just results.
Every generation self-selects what genes are passed on to the future, which DNA code is adapted to survive.
We are at an economic-survival and a climate-survival junction. It is just like approaching a red traffic light. We cannot wait until we are directly upon the light, and deadly traffic, to press the brake. We have to mash brakes 100 yards off. The legacy makers must act now.
Digging graves in anticipation of climate calamity, like in Pakistan, is not adaptation. Our people have survived too much terror and disease to die in modern operating theaters like in Venezuela. Our economy and climate are both energy steered. We must make our mark by embracing renewable energy now. We have no time to wait another five or ten years, through endless cycles of yet another renewable energy feasibility study. We know where the wind blows and where the sun shines.
No leader is remembered for a legacy of feasibility studies. The legacy maker is the visionary implementer who builds the first wind turbine park. The first solar panel park is the legacy makers mark. It will be the start of a new economy. Thousands of jobs will be created as billions are invested. There is too much money to be made to wait any longer. The sustainable energy economy will provide the resources we need to adapt to changing coastlines and rainfall patterns.
A recent study shows that the world can go fossil fuel free in ten years time, if the legacy makers make it happen. We don’t have to change the world. That would be an overwhelming task for our small country. Let us bite off a manageable bit and start building the renewable energy infrastructure that is needed for a clean, green economy, so our country’s DNA can continue to pass on its survivor genes to the future.