We are stuck between Trump and a hard place: the climate change problem
We live in a time where the President of the most powerful nation in all of the world (at least that’s what they’d still like us to believe) is as sure of global warming being a farce as he is of the need to build a wall to keep the Mexicans from taking their jobs.
While many scoff at Mr Donald Trump for his borderline-surreal understanding of pretty much everything under the sun, there is ample proof that a dangerously large portion of the Earth’s population seconds his view. Either that or they don’t care enough to make the change necessary to avoid the only place we all can call home from slipping into annihilation.
There’s also a small population that understands, and has the intent to make a change but doesn’t know how to go about the job. Save for a few souls investing time, energy, and grey cells to keep the world from falling apart, we’re headed towards doomsday faster than anticipated. But that’s just it, we’ve only accelerated the process, we haven’t caused it.
In that sense Mr Trump is right (sigh). The earth has seen its share of global warming and resultant climate change in the past, and it would have happened even if the Homo sapiens hadn’t taken over. The only difference though — a little something that Mr Trump doesn’t want to consider — is that we have greased the rollercoaster.
Now we’re hurtling down, and eventually, we’re going to fly right off the track.
It’s a Royal Mess.
England, unfortunately on the forefront of everything, have to be blamed for acting as a catalyst to this catastrophe too as they kicked off the Industrial Revolution. Once they got going and the United States of America got in on the action, there was no stopping people from burning as much fossil fuel as they possibly could, to avoid doing what they were meant to do: move their muscles.
What they didn’t realise at the time was that exhaust gases couldn’t escape Earth’s atmosphere and the temperature was just building up. Think of Earth as a giant teapot, minus the spout. As expected in such a case, the ice cover on either Poles came down dramatically, and that raised water levels world over. Not only that, the change in dynamics of an entire ecosystem absolutely obliterated the concept of seasons.
Take Bangalore for example. Summers are barely bearable, winters are non-existent, and monsoon isn’t really one. The lack of weather pattern, aka climate, has left everyone bemused. Yet, nothing is done. Worse still, a large chunk of the population is of the opinion that nothing can be done.
The exact same phenomenon is unfolding in England at the moment, and the heat wave (well, at least what they consider as a ‘heat wave’) has hit the headlines. Perhaps England (or, even India for a change) can kick off a Green Revolution now and hope it does as well as their earlier ‘revolution’.
If not, Elon Musk’s Mars fantasy could be our only hope.
Written by Roshan Thyagarajan, Senior Cricket Journalist, Wisden India
Are you an aspiring writer? Does politically-biased news make your cringe? Do you want to be a social change maker? Aha, then, we have designed a program especially for you: #WriteForChange with Solarify.
You can contribute to our new series: http://bit.ly/2JHF0c4, as well.
