“World Leaders” fail to “negotiate” with Mother Nature

“There is no relief in sight,” the weather man blandly but ominously blurbed today in the Austin American-Statesman. Didn’t we break heat records last year? This tiresome breaking of records wears me out. If we did it again this year it means still higher temperatures or a longer duration. For 22 days already this year Austin reached or exceeded 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.77°C). Of those days, eleven set records. Heat advisories continue to discourage outdoor activity. Actually, the National Weather Service did not need to say anything; the heat discouraged activity all by itself.

The numbers do not viscerally convey what we feel. We jokingly [or morbidly] quip about walking around in a sauna, standing in front of an open oven door, the breezes feel like either a giant blow dryer or the engine exhaust of a Metro bus. Plants wilt, grass turns crispy and yellow-brown, trees die, creeks run dry, birds pant, and squirrels lie prone on the ground or on tree limbs – indifferent to the possibility of predation. Cars overheat; bus air conditioning proves inadequate by 5:30 p.m. to cool commuters. Tempers flare. As I walk on scorching pavement, the raspy chorus of cicadas whines its raucous continuo to accompany the hellish misery. Cicada songs perfectly represent the bleak draining away of enthusiasm, initiative, and optimism. They provide the appropriate sound track for sweltering “ozone action days.”

Elsewhere… Illustrious, industrious, and pragmatic “world leaders,” meeting this week in L’Aquila, Italy, in the picturesque Abruzzo region, decided to limit climate change as much as politically possible. Among themselves, amid recent earthquake-damaged antiquities, these illustrious, industrious, and pragmatic “world leaders” negotiated a maximum of 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, that they would “allow” the average global temperature to increase. Without a ring-side seat, I cannot know if anyone present expressed any hint of irony. They negotiated with each other but they neglected to notice, amid the earthquake-damaged antiquities, that Mother Nature neither negotiates nor recognizes treaties of men.

Presently, at a mere 1-2° Fahrenheit average global temperature increase since the inception of the Industrial Revolution about two centuries ago, we already see dire consequences. The rapid melting of glaciers in South America, Africa, The Philippines, and Central Asia already threatens to deplete fresh water supplies that millions of people have depended on for generations. Arctic sea ice disappearance threatens not only polar bear and walrus existence but survival of indigenous arctic people, to say nothing of the Gulf Stream that keeps Northern Europe habitable.

With scarcely half of the “negotiated” limit to global warming already met, melting arctic permafrost rots anaerobically, creating methane which “burps” up out of the tundra and rapidly evaporating arctic lakes. Methane (CH4) acts even more effectively than carbon dioxide (CO2) in trapping heat and warming the planet. (Elizabeth Kolbert, “Field Notes from a catastrophe”) Already, corals suffer terribly from greenhouse gas emissions. Excessive atmospheric CO2 dissolves in sea water, increasing its acidity. Changes in oceanic pH and temperature kill algae living symbiotically with the coral, which then “bleach” as the corals evict their dead tenants. Because of their symbiotic dependency, the corals die without the algae. Coral reefs nurture many species of fish that millions of equatorial people depend on for sustenance.

When the Austin, Texas meteorologist commiserated, “There is no relief in sight,” he might well have referred to the lack of understanding among the illustrious, industrious, and pragmatic “world leaders” who forgot that Mother Nature does not negotiate with them.

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