Under the baobab: UN climate report makes clear that the time to take action is now

At the start of this millennium Jo and I spent the night camped in the desert outside of Timbuktu. During the day the temperature was over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. At night it was under 50. Aside from the Tuareg camel herders, the only life that thrived in that environment were dung beetles. I asked our friend Ali Ould Sidi, the cultural minister for the Province, why the ancient Malians built their capital city in the desert.

“They didn’t. They built it next to the Niger River. They wanted to take advantage of trade routes between Mecca and Ghana. This entire area was lush tropical forest, part of the breadbasket of Africa. They cut down the trees for fuel, farmed the land into sand. The river moved several kilometers south. Then the earth made the desert. Timbuktu and the great Mali empire faded into nothing.”

We visited Iceland a few years ago to see the glaciers, while we could. They were no longer visible from the original road. Global warming had caused many to melt. You had to walk several kilometers to see them.

There have been more hurricanes and tropical storms coming out of the gulf than at any time in recorded history. Forest fires, the worst ever, have scarred the west coast from Southern California to Oregon. Multi-year droughts are transforming parts of the Southwest into deserts.

According to the summary of the recently released report by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change:

“Human induced climate change is already affecting many weather and climate extremes in every region across the globe. Evidence of observed changes in extremes such as heatwaves, heavy precipitation, droughts, and tropical cyclones, and, in particular, their attribution to human influence, has strengthened ... it is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land. Widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and biosphere have occurred.”

These disasters are not the result of gamma rays, comets or aliens from outer space. Like the Malians we are doing it to ourselves. Nero-like we play pretty tunes while Rome burns. This time it is not the desertification of a major portion of Central Africa or a minuscule portion of the Italian peninsula that is at risk. It is the temperature, air, water and earth of the entire planet. We all live under the same big tent breathing the same soon to be poisonous air. As an arriere-grand-pere namesake wrote — we must be, “One for all and all for one.”

What can be done? The report also states:

“Many changes, due to past and future greenhouse gas emissions, are irreversible for centuries to millennia, especially changes in the ocean, ice sheets and global sea level.”

It is estimated that the global temperature will rise 1.5 to 2 degrees Farenheit by 2050, which will mean much of the world’s coastal landscape may be under water. The areas most affected will be in Africa and Asia, where most of the world’s people live.

Some of our neighbors are trying to do something.

The United Nations has articulated 17 sustainable development goals, all of them directly or indirectly affect climate change and global warming. Locally The United Nations Association of Centre County and Penn State Sustainability Institute lobby to bring about these changes. The ClearWater Conservancy’s mission “is to conserve and restore our natural resources through land conservation, water resources stewardship, and environmental outreach across central Pennsylvania.” The NAACP of Centre County works to address the “many practices that are harming communities nationwide and worldwide, promoting policies needed to advance a society that fosters sustainable, cooperative, regenerative communities that uphold all rights for all people in harmony with the earth.”

We are not dung beetles.

It’s time for Nero to play a different song.