The Tribune

Mexico Beach is a small beach community with a population of 1,072 situated near the Florida panhandle’s so-called “Redneck Riviera”. The area’s wide sandy beaches have always beckoned landlocked visitors from neighbouring Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama, accounting for the nickname. Mexico Beach sits so directly astride the dividing line between the Eastern and Central time zones that drivers heading west from the town’s eastern boundary will gain an hour on their watches before reaching the western town line.

This heretofore obscure hamlet was pushed into the headlines less than two weeks ago when Hurricane Michael slammed ashore and left the world with indelible (until the next catastrophe) images of devastation and loss. Most of the town’s commercial and residential structures were reportedly built on the cheap and succumbed quickly to the storm’s violence.

One of the owners of a solitary structure that survived told a reporter “I think the world’s climate is changing, and I think it’s going to get worse.”

Indeed. Hurricane Michael was a potent reminder for the rest of the world of what Bahamians know from recent experience. The planet’s climate is really changing and the results can and will be calamitous for its residents.

Just two days before Michael struck Florida, a major new report from the United Nations underscored this grim prophecy. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a comprehensive report mandated by the 2015 Paris conference on environmental change, and its forecast is undeniably gloomy.

Readers may well be familiar with the broad outlines of this report. Essentially, it asserts that humans must virtually eliminate greenhouse gas emissions by mid-century to avoid a now inevitable-seeming increase in the world’s temperature by 2050 of 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit. Major greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide and methane, two major bi-products of human activity.

Failure to achieve this target would have dramatic consequences, as we have been hearing for several decades. The accelerated melting of polar ice caps could raise the world’s sea levels by up to four feet. This process is already underway, perhaps most apparent in low-lying Pacific island nations whose highest point above present sea level is less than the height of an average person. An additional consequence of failure to keep in check the world’s rising temperatures would be he destruction of at least 70 percent of the world’s coral reefs, perhaps obliterating them altogether.

It does not take much imagination to foresee the consequences for The Bahamas.

While former American Vice President Al Gore did not invent the Internet as some claimed 25 years ago, he did sound an early clarion call of warning on the earth’s environment. Together with the IPCC, he received the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his educational efforts on climate change, including production of the fourth-largest grossing documentary film of all time, An Inconvenient Truth.

A strong international voice has now joined Gore’s continuing efforts. Erik Solheim, executive director of the UN Environmental Programme, said the recent UN report “is like a deafening, piercing smoke alarm going off in the kitchen. We have to put out the fire.”

What are the world’s nations doing about this existential threat? What can realistically be done? Acclaimed Washington Post economic columnist Robert Samuelson recently wrote the world’s most advanced nations presently have neither the requisite technologies to effect the mandated changes nor the political will to react responsibly.

The Trump administration in the US has certainly shown no inclination to get with the programme. Disgraced former Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt remained firmly and unapologetically in the embrace of dirty energy conglomerates. His acting successor, Andrew Wheeler would only say in response to the IPCC report that “we will continue to innovate on clean coal technologies.”

Not a single question concerned climate change in the three 2016 American presidential debates.

The US is not the only culprit. China is reportedly the source for twice as much carbon dioxide emissions as America, and it is estimated by 2050 the demand for air conditioning units will rise by 350 percent, much of it in India, Indonesia and China.

The UN report calls us all to action. Staying informed and engaged is our essential duty.