‘Red Sky at morning . . .’

Trinidad being a Small Island and rapidly Developing State likely to be affected by Climate Change, The Cropper Foundation, together with the EMA and the Ministry of Public Utilities and the Environment invited Professor Speth to Trinidad to give a lecture on Climate Change in the Central Bank on May 16 with the somewhat forbidding title “The Caribbean and Climate Change: The Risks Ahead and Needed Responses”.

Film clips of the effects climate change is already having on low-lying islands in the Pacific were a thought-provoking introduction to the lecture itself. The Caribbean islands, however, aren’t, on the whole, low-lying. Most are mountainous so why worry about rising sea levels that accompany, as night the day, climate change and the warming of the world’s oceans? Because most people in the Caribbean don’t live, and certainly don’t work on mountainsides.

Many live and most work in towns and cities beside the sea, often on land reclaimed from the sea. Take Port-of-Spain, for example; Independence Square was once called Marine Square because it was so close to the sea. Once Fort San Andres was an island, the lighthouse was surrounded by water. The Port-of Spain Docks and Wrightson Road were created shortly before and during World War II. Most Newsday readers can remember when MovieTowne was a mangrove swamp.

And as if that wasn’t enough to make us think twice, to pay serious attention to the words of Professor Speth, remember: the huge (for Trinidad) industrial complex of Point Lisas was also a mangrove swamp.

Sea level rise isn’t the only effect climate change may have on us — as Professor Speth explained in his lecture — and is as good a reason as any for devoting an entire Environment Watch column (or two, who knows?) to the lecture, paying particular attention to “The Needed Responses”.

The lecture began, as usual, with a welcome speech by Public Utilities and Environment Ministry Permanent Secretary Carl Nesbitt who made mention of TT’s natural gas as an alternate, clean fuel for motor vehicles as well as industry, and to the National Reafforestation programme to rehabilitate the environment. I half-expected, half hoped that a later speaker might point out that it costs a deal of money to convert cars from gasoline/diesel to natural gas, and that natural gas filling stations are few and far between in TT.

I had hopes, too, that someone would remind him that, in clearing land for the La Brea Industrial Estate the National Energy Corporation had destroyed as many, if not more, trees than the Reafforestation Programme had planted.

In introducing ‘Gus’ Speth, Senator Angela Cropper said he is a Rhodes Scholar, founder of the World Resources Institute, has been advisor to more than one President of the United States of America — but not the current incumbent.

Professor Speth lost no time in wading right in to accuse political leaders of ignoring, of brushing aside reports of warning signs of Climate Change and the effects it will have on small nations that are the victims of Climate Change.

Although it seems Small Island Developing States can do little or nothing to prevent it, Professor Speth pointed out that when people get together they can effect change, as, for example the campaign in the Southern United States to end racial discrimination.

It was concerned citizens, local people, who combined forces to draw attention to the dangers of hazardous waste sites around the US and actually challenged the seemingly all-powerful petro-chemical industry. “Victims,” he said, “are a huge force for positive change . . . victims understand the problems because they live with them and because of that they speak with real authenticity. . they demand civil justice”.

He said victims of Climate Change in the Caribbean face an onslaught of change. While admitting no one knows for sure when sea levels will rise or how extensive they will be, admitting that there is uncertainty in the science about this. “What we do know,” he averred, “is an extra warming of about 2.7 degrees Celsius will start the melting, the serious melting of the Greenland icecap. What we have already seen over Greenland has started to accelerate the glaciers; the movement of glaciers is now twice as fast as they were moving previously from Greenland into the ocean.

“About the best estimate we have today of what will happen if we double the pre-industrial level of 280 parts per million of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere — the best estimate we have for the warming at that point is two and a half degrees extra global average warming.

“Now the problem is that two and a half degrees global average warming is going to translate into twice that over Greenland,” where he said he thought the ice is a couple of kilometres thick.

Once the Greenland icecap starts to melt (and, remember, Greenland isn’t by any means the only part of the world covered in sheets of ice) it could, in a matter of decades, set in motion a process which, said the Professor, might be irreversible.

“We don’t know whether it’s reversible or not” he added, “ It won’t happen overnight, it will unfold over a long period of time perhaps decades, perhaps as long as centuries — but things are happening in the Arctic and Antarctic recently which we don’t understand, which were not predicted by the international scientific community just a few years ago.” Next Week Professor Speth tells what effects Climate Change might have on the Caribbean.

annehilton@ rave-tt.net