We’re counting down the days until the new US President Donald Trump returns to the Oval Office. While economists worldwide are getting cold feet about where he’ll steer the global economy in his crusade to maintain the dollar’s supremacy through imposing tariffs on interconnected economies, there’s another group sitting on pins and needles – those worried about what Trump’s full return means for climate change and the green transition.
The writing is certainly on the wall. He gave us a bitter taste during his first term by rejecting roughly 100 environmental bills and dismissing climate change as a “hoax.” As for the episodes of this “new season,” Trump has already announced plans to slash spending on green energy, withdraw from international climate agreements, and usher in a new wave of oil and gas drilling. This comes just as global efforts to save this floating wreck we live on have begun to bear fruit.
But that’s the big picture. And fixating on it might only hasten the final credits. Nature always finds a way to bounce back. But humans? If each of us remains a mere spectator, banking solely on the big players, international organisations and scientists, then we’re really in hot water (according to NASA and NOAA research, average temperatures have risen by 1.2 degrees Celsius, with this trend accelerating in recent years as each year breaks the previous year’s record). Yes, we’re heading for disaster.
Let’s add another variable to the equation. Say Trump is right and it’s all a hoax, just a natural cyclical weather phenomenon. Does that justify our inaction and the draining of Earth’s natural resources before they can regenerate? Does it justify atmospheric pollution, deforestation, water waste, and so on? Either way, the big loser is health and quality of life in general. Therefore, the responsibility lies with each of us, both collectively and individually.
Recently, I had the opportunity to attend the annual three-day seminar of Friends of the Earth Cyprus. I went to load myself with guilt about my own minuscule contribution to the environmental causes and to learn about all the disaster stories unfolding in my homeland. Friends of the Earth is just one of many non-governmental, non-profit environmental organisations on our island doing tremendous work for our community – doing for us, before us, everything we should all be doing ourselves, within our means, for ourselves.
“Where are you off to?” a friend asked me, half-joking. “With those scruffy tree-huggers who only eat grass?” I laughed. Not only are they not scruffy, they’re now well-educated scientists, loaded with degrees, experience and knowledge, who fight day and night, whether in parliamentary committees, through protests, or through scientific seminars, studies and articles. They’re the handful of “eccentric” people we see in blink-and-you’ll-miss-it soundbites on the news, protesting about trees being cut down on Limassol’s seafront, for example.
And us? We’re the ones sitting on the sofa either nodding in approval or muttering with furrowed brows that these people are holding back progress. Or we just watch on indifferently.
Meanwhile, one government after another treats Cyprus’s environmental issues, both big and small, as mere trifles, diving headfirst into the familiar pacifiers of the Cyprus Problem – a reliable, safe chorus – and the economy, with banks, civil servants and their unions coming out on top, while the rest of us scrape the barrel. But that’s another painful story altogether.
As for those “scruffy tree-huggers,” they’re the ones who years ago paved the way, putting the brakes on schemes targeting Akamas and other major environmental shenanigans being cooked up behind the scenes. Not always successfully, but regardless.
They did it for us. Before us. With a megaphone and flip-flops worn thin from miles of walking. Without a penny and with no personal gain.
But today? What about us? Each one of us?
We’re experts at sweeping rubbish under the carpet. Well-groomed, suited up, with our eyes firmly shut.
Is everything really fine?
