Climate and our concourse of crises

Hopefully, the main subject occupying this space today will resonate, however, tangentially, amongst those genuinely concerned about our future.

The temptation to take our eyes off some aspirations – even the need to prevail over the long term – is all too irresistible when confronted with immediate emergencies and emotions.

The current wave of senseless, murderous violence, political depravities, and a perception of general societal decay is, understandably, an overwhelming feature of national consciousness.

It took the venerable Noble Philip last weekend to caution against a summary verdict on prospects for the future, based on the mistaken notion of a “lost generation” and some kind of imminent social collapse.

The concept of “collapse” also finds suitable space in another discourse that disappears as quickly and as efficiently as it emerges as a matter of national, official and communal urgency.

It might be that all concerned, even we first scribblers of history, need to continually integrate the urgency of the climate crisis, against the backdrop of extreme vulnerability. This was not only about COP26 last year.

This assessment on the state of affairs has more than once been described as hyperbole and needless scare-mongering – especially by those who have not spent time examining the science offered by a majority of its leading, authoritative exponents.

We have learnt so much during this time of a pandemic to confirm the presence of denialist loonies who mistake ignorance for scepticism and whose packet of bad tidings has latterly included anti-vaccination messaging to adjoin climate change scepticism and other flat-earth beliefs.

The backdrop to today’s modest message occupies all this time and space mainly because it brings important context and understanding to the gigantic challenge before us. Climate change is real, immediate, and a crisis to be urgently addressed.

It is not being heard about on the hustings. Not substantially debated in our parliaments. There are broad portfolios that address environmental management issues that emerge as a consequence. But so little that elevates the subject to the level of other urgent needs – many of which are related.

Recently, I have been engaged in a journalistic exercise among colleagues to promote greater awareness of social justice elements involving countries, regions, sectors, communities, and peoples, not only of the effects of the climate crisis, but of measures being taken to address it.

As with the pandemic, there is an unevenness of impacts and consequences, critical questions related to distribution of power and influence, and therefore, the arousal of politics.

Over the past few weeks, a few Caribbean journalists have been attempting to address “climate justice” as an experience occasioned by our countries’ engagement of the climate crisis, both as subjects and as objects.

The ongoing exercise has, not unexpectedly, brought a virtual concourse or assemblage of crises to the counter. Inescapable cross currents of nations engaging social, cultural and political calamities that have emerged as acute indicators of the prospects for survival against the backdrop of what the science has declared is upon us.

It is therefore absolutely impossible, to cite one small example, to initiate or to report on the waiving of taxes on hybrid vehicles in T&T – a measure in keeping with our country’s nationally determined contributions (NDCs) under the 2015 Paris Agreement – in the absence of numerous contexts that have little to do with vehicle specifications.

This space has more than once been used to suggest critical connections between pandemic management and some vital elements of the climate crisis. They are not as remote as they at first appear.

If we are to consider the social justice components of our numerous challenges, we also cannot omit concerns that extend to a variety of social, cultural and political dynamics.

Almost a year ago to the day, I concluded on social media that the upheavals of the day had been the outcome of “a concourse of angers.”

I can’t remember the precise reference from Frederick Douglass (and if it was a term he actually used or that I had simply been clever) but the post addressed an inability to recognise the immediacy of purported long-term aspirations through the haze of angers, crises, and emergencies of today.

Climate change is there alright – as virtual ground space in the concourse of crises we occupy.