AS I write this, the scourging heat is sparing no one and it is spreading its tentacles far and wide.
In India, hundreds have died due to the heat.
In many parts of the world, the droughts seem to spread like the Sahara.
Most deserts continue to expand like a growing tree powered by carbon dioxide and greenhouse gasses. There are climate changes and weather that cannot be predicted by forecast and atmospheric institutions.
In the United States, the spring month of May has caused early storms and powerful record breaking hurricanes in the central states.
In California the prolonged drought has made the State take drastic action to conserve water.
Should this drought continue California is said to run out of water in two years. For a state so productive and rich, she will succumb to climate change and global warming.
At home, the heat is taking its toll. People are suffering from heat strokes and our agricultural produce will decline as the land turns into dryness.
Like a checkered piece of dry land, once a fertile jewel with moisture and nutrient rich.
Today the soil and the land are feeling the scourge of the heat and the people are not spared.
The entire planet is in heat. She is dying and it is our fault.
The Financial Times issue of 27th of May, 2015 featured a report entitled “Climate Campaign wins over more senior executives”.
The article by Pelita Clark mentions that many CEO’s and corporate executives agree that carbon dioxide is the enemy number one.
Gerald Mestrallet, CEO of France’s sprawling Engie (formerly known as GDF Suez), one of the worlds largest energy companies, show how much change has evolved in the business world since the last-fruitless effort made to seal a meaningful global climate change agreement, in Copenhagen in 2009.
Although there has been a change in thinking by a few corporate executives. Many are combating climate change in their own way.
The UNFCCC and the COP 21 in Paris will face pressure not only from citizens and NGOs but from the people who themselves have polluted the planet in the last 50 years.
Yet in our country and in many others there is still the thinking that the old model will work.
Unattainable development and infrastructure projects continue to rise vertically all over, leaving no green spaces in urban cities.
Greed has to be curtailed by regulation and conscience with action.
What the COP failed to do, the people will achieve as many corporations will be present in the COP 21 in Paris this year.
Frankly, we are wondering why the CEO,s and corporate executives have taken so long to realize that carbon dioxide is the enemy which must be beaten.
Some developments are encouraging. The rise of renewable energy and the search for carbon sequestration in our forest and oceans.
The day is nearing when oil and coal will be fossil fuels of the past as many are getting tired of the dominance of oil and the dirtiness of coal.
They are tired of carbon dioxide.
It has affected their bottom-line profits and they have realized this.
Sadly while all this talk is occurring the world is suffering from food and water shortages.
Like California, our country’s watersheds and dams are drying up. The water levels are receding rapidly as temperatures breach record highs.
The enemy is carbon dioxide, as well as and those who continue to spew carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Let us not be fooled by pronouncements but continue our collective struggle to win the war against climate change.
(By: Antonio M. Claparols – President ESP)