Climate change: human beings are to blame
If by some chance nature (mother earth or Pachamama depending on who is talking), were to come to life and decide to evaluate how humans have behaved towards her, I fear that her conclusions would lead to us humans being sentenced to life imprisonment or in the worst case to a long-term death sentence. This is the conclusion - based on respectable data and sources - reached by the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). What is new is that, for the first time, humans are being blamed for most of the climatic anomalies we are experiencing and which have been strongly demonstrated this summer: floods in central Europe and China, rain in Greenland and unusual snowfall in southern Brazil are some examples of such phenomena.
One can refute why these phenomena occur: central Europe (Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands) has a climate where rain is normal, in Brazil it is winter right now and extreme heat is typical for summer, and the hotter it is, the better for tourism, because the hotter it is, the more visitors there are. However, these statements ignore some climatological details that have gained strength in recent years: heat waves are more extreme, it rains less, but with more force and fires are increasingly fierce and difficult to control, such as the one experienced by the island of Gran Canaria in August 2019 and the one suffered in Avila this summer.
Faced with these challenges, which are here to stay and being aware that we are to blame for them, we have to ask ourselves two questions: what can we do to mitigate the damage already done? And what are the political consequences of these climatic calamities?
On the first question, the report is clear: we need to act now to try to mitigate the worst effects of climate change. Immediate, decisive and large-scale action is needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions". However, this does not mean that - in an ideal world - if we were to implement the measures now, the situation would improve in the short/medium term (1-5 years). The report indicates that, even if these measures were implemented, it would take 20-30 years for the Earth to recover. This means that if we are really serious about climate change - starting by acknowledging its existence - it will be a long-term struggle, with no immediate benefits.
The alternative (doing nothing) would be fatal not only for our survival as a species (macabre as it may seem, climate change kills), but also for the aggravation of socio-political phenomena such as migration and wars.
With respect to these two, it is interesting to note that shortly after the UN panel's report was published, another report from UNICEF - the UN children's agency - appeared, the title of which is quite explicit about who the main losers of climate change are: "The climate crisis is a crisis of children's rights".
At first glance - and adopting a developed country mentality - we could say that the Unicef report is catastrophic since children in rich countries do not suffer the effects of global warming: there is no (or no record depending on how you look at it) of water shortages, we do not suffer from famines due to crop failures and the climate does not prevent our young people from accessing education. However, the three countries where children are most at risk from climate change and environmental degradation - Central African Republic, Chad and Nigeria - are, to complicate matters further, nations with civil war (CAR) and the scourge of jihadist terrorism (Chad and Nigeria). Nor are they so far away, as Chad is located in the Sahel, the current battleground of jihadism and close to Spain. In fact, it is from this area that most of the irregular migrants arriving on the Canary Islands' coasts and a good part of those who jump the fences of Ceuta and Melilla come from. If they (including minors) are now fleeing because of the violence, can you imagine how many more might flee because the climate has become so unbearable for them to live in? What social tensions would this type of irregular migration provoke in the aforementioned Spanish territories? Such a scenario should not be completely ignored, for as discussed above, Africa is closer to Spain than it seems, even if it is hard to recognise.
Finally, we cannot finish without mentioning the future conflicts that a worsening climate situation could bring. The wars of the future will be fought not over oil or minerals, but over water. Rivers and lakes will become the new sources of power. Without going so far as bullets, these tensions are being seen along the Nile, where Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia are at odds over the Grand Renaissance Dam in Addis Ababa, which for Cairo and Khartoum represents a theft of the valuable waters of the river of the pharaohs. Can you imagine these countries, which have strong armies, coming to arms? Beyond the stresses it would place on most of the Nile basin and the impact on shipping traffic in the Red Sea, it would be the first conflict over control of water, which could serve as a bellwether for future wars.
In conclusion, the report of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change blamed humans as the main culprits of climate change. The weather events that have made headlines this summer, such as the floods in Central Europe and the snow in southern Brazil, show that extreme weather events are here to stay. The damage can still be reversed, but it will take years for the earth to recover. Migration and war are the two socio-political phenomena that will worsen if the climate continues to degrade.
In the case of the former, we will see a new type of (mostly minor) irregular migrant: the climate migrant, one who flees because the climate does not allow him or her to live. A large wave of this type of migration will provoke socio-political tensions in the Spanish territories that directly experience this phenomenon from Africa: Ceuta, Melilla and the Canary Islands. With regard to wars, a new type of conflict will emerge: that over water. The current political frictions in Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia over the use and flow of the waters of the Nile serve as a warning for the future, because, although weapons have not yet been used, the cause of the discord is neither politics nor terrorism, but a resource that we rich people assume we will have at once, something that is called into question by what has been described above.
Even if we do not make short-term gains, if we take climate change seriously, perhaps we will bequeath a more peaceful and cleaner world to our children, who suffer most from this calamity.