Nature's Evil

Oil remains the engine of the world economy. The mining and burning of coal, the most polluting fuel, continues. Economic growth continues to be the desired goal of all the governments on earth. The use of renewable energy is growing more quickly than expected, but this trickle of good news does not make up for the torrent of bad news. The Trump administration abolished even those tentative measures to limit emissions which the Obama administration introduced. In 2018, at the summit in Katowice – the traditional centre of the Polish coal industry – United Nations experts agreed there were only ten years left for humanity to take the necessary measures to lower emissions by a factor of two – only by doing this can we reach the old goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees by 2050. But these were not the official conclusions. The four oil superpowers – the United States, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait – vetoed their adoption.

The climate has already become as warm as it was before the Ice Age, but the sea level was 30 metres higher then. Further warming will lead to the destruction of coral reefs, the flooding of island states and sea ports, a worldwide crisis in production, and the migration of populations on a massive scale. Dozens of countries – small, medium and large – will declare a state of emergency. The future fall in global output as a result of climate change is estimated at 10 to 25 per cent. Some of these predictions have already materialised. Since 1950, the number of floods has increased fifteenfold, the number of wildfires sevenfold. The first victims are those who share the earth with us but, unlike us, have no clothes, houses or air conditioners to protect them. During the last fifty years, the population of vertebrates has fallen by 60 per cent. Scientists are concerned at the disappearance of insects. Their collective biomass is diminishing at a rate of 2.5 per cent per year, and, unless something is done, by the end of the century there simply won’t be any more insects. More than half of the bee population in the USA has already died out. Pollinating countless plants, insects are a source of food for fish and birds. Thousands of their species will disappear too.

Predictions of catastrophe exert their own fascination. But the greatest disasters will be unexpected. For example, myriads of towns, railways and gas pipelines are constructed on the permafrost. As the climate warms, the permafrost will melt everywhere, but millions of people and billions of dollars depend on the chance place where the surface caves in. Forecasts extrapolate from observations that have been made in the past, but changes in the climate create a feedback loop. Living marshlands are as good as forests at absorbing carbon dioxide, but when the temperature rises the marshes perish, giving off methane. It is a vicious circle. Gradual changes alternate with explosive bursts, and they are unpredictable. That is the nature of evil.

Governments will continue to battle with the same problems with which they have always battled, such as migration. They don’t know how to cope with floods, sink holes, and the destruction of cities. Like everything to do with geography, events will occur unevenly. The coastal states of South-East Asia will come off worst. But the port cities of the Atlantic which developed for global trade will also experience their share of suffering: from Venice to Amsterdam, and from New Orleans to St Petersburg, these classical megapolises will be submerged. And, unlike the Lisbon earthquake, which could not be blamed on the sins of human beings who were simply punished for nothing, the climate catastrophe will be our fault.