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Stephen Mpofu
With, as humanity calls it, God’s masterpiece handiwork or Earth teetering on the brink of virtual extinction something had to break somewhere — and it did break just days ago when the leader of a country among the worst polluters of the globe announced a giant leap from leap to action to heal festering wounds daily being inflicted on hapless mother Earth.

And United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon applauded United States president Barack Obama’s move to cut carbon emissions from coal plants, thereby giving our beleaguered globe a respite from choking on carbon gases responsible for global warming with its negative cascades — climate change; floods; droughts that wipe out food crops and pastures for livestock and wildlife for countries including Zimbabwe that have deficient mitigation measures: all these making life bleak for people and the future very opaque.

Ironically, though, President Obama faces opposition to his administration’s bold plan of throwing Earth a lifeline by his own people, Republicans who appear to have a penchant for scuttling the African-American leader’s initiatives — witness their disagreement with him over the historic nuclear disarmament pact with Iran, with some of his opponents saying that deal will die on the day that President Obama leaves office.

Theirs appears to be more of power politics than a reality game as represented by both the agreement between America and its allies on the one hand and Iran on the other, and now the move to remove carbon emissions being pumped recklessly into the atmosphere by big and small nations alike, albeit in different proportions and rendering humanity’s habitat an unsafe place to live in.

In his response to Obama’s bold new initiative on reducing carbon emissions, the UN chief called on China and India to follow suit.

However, his message should be seen and understood to reverberate throughout developed and developing nations that are not being spared by climate change conditions triggered by global warming as carbons already in the atmosphere take very long to break down, according to environmentalists.

Businesses in the USA have had a long record for resisting calls to modify their factory chimneys, arguing that costs incurred in the exercise would render their products less competitive on the world market hence America and China reportedly account for a third of the global warming phenomenon that has beset humans with such devastation as has not been recorded since creation. Of course, all other emerging economies in South America and elsewhere and developing ones including those in Africa must play ball with the big boys in reducing greenhouse gases for the good of all humanity as well as that of other creatures for which land is their habitat.

Coming closer to home, thousands upon thousands of hectares of trees and grass are destroyed by veld fires and other fires deliberately lit by those who hunt game with fire or by others who torch pastures to scatter seeds for fluffy new grass to grow for their livestock.

Knowingly or unknowingly, for these people, the smoke bellowing into the atmosphere contributes to global warming through its carbon content with boomerang, negative climate change effects.

Developing nations are however one up on poorer ones as they boast measures to mitigate the effects of climate change, whereas Zimbabwe and other countries are not so adept at protecting themselves for lack of similar mitigation strategies.

That poorer nations contribute less to global warming and climate change should not be an excuse for them to adopt a laissez-faire attitude towards the need for a global commitment in making Earth as habitable as its creator intended it to be.

This discourse and Ban’s appeal to other polluters to scale back on their actions should be seen as a global call to arms by all humanity to combat a common enemy threatening the annihilation of all of us created in God’s image and likeness to look after this massive garden that He laid on for us all.