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Acting before too late

Sep 06,2017 - Last updated at Sep 06,2017

While the media focused over the past week on the devastating storm that hit Texas and Louisiana, causing loss of life and widespread devastation, little has been said about the even more devastating floods that occurred, during almost the same period, in India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh, which left some 1,200 people dead and displaced hundreds of thousands.

Six states in India suffered massive floods that took a heavy toll on life and property. It is reported that no less than 300 people died in India alone because of floods last week.

Pakistan’s capital, Karachi, was particularly hard hit by terrible floods that killed scores of people and rendered thousands homeless.

Many parts of Africa also suffered from flooding due to rainstorms, especially in Niger and Sierra Leone; in the latter’s capital alone 500 died because of the unleashed nature.

In all these places and more, misery, death and destruction was brought about by the big culprit: climate change.

Deniers or no deniers, it is time the international community awoke to the indisputable fact that climate is changing and that it should — it should have long ago done so — give this crisis full attention and attempt to deal with it to avoid worst manifestations.

President Donald Trump visited the areas in his country devastated by the merciless storm and pledged no less than $7.5 billion for reconstruction and compensation.

All this just after he had decided to pull his country out of the 2015 Paris deal on climate change which he refuses to acknowledge.

Would the US president at least recognise the connection between the vicious rainstorm that devastated Texas and Louisiana and climate change? 

What more evidence does he need to see the devastating effects the wrath of a nature we tamper with can have on humanity?

 

Whatever he and those like him think should not deter the scientific community and the world at large from recognising the problem, and from working hard to fix it before mankind realises it went a step too far towards destruction and cannot go back?

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