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Cuthbert Mavheko

Climate change has ignited a firestorm of thought-provoking debates at many forums around the world, with leaders from some industrialised nations pledging to fund programmes aimed at reducing hydrocarbon emissions, which are destroying the ozone layer.

Recently Britain’s Ambassador to Zimbabwe, Melanie Robinson said her Prime Minister, Mr. Boris Johnson, had pledged to double the UK’s investment in helping developing countries combat climate change.

She said the UK will spend US$14, 9 billion over the next five years. Of that amount, she said, about US$1, 3 billion will be used to help scientists and engineers develop technologies to reduce carbon emissions in developing countries.

Taken at face value, this investment appears completely above board. However, with all due respect, my humble submission is that it merits thoughtful scrutiny.

According to a recent United Nations report, 78 percent of the tonnes of toxic carbon monoxide and hydrocarbon emissions, which are being discharged into the atmosphere daily and destroying the ozone layer in the upper atmosphere, are from industrialised nations, the UK being one of them.

If this report is anything to go by, developing nations are emitting just 22 percent of these toxic emissions.

Without claiming the expertise and competence of a qualified environmental scientist for an exhaustive and illuminating analysis of such a wide and complex subject such as climate change, one would, however, not be totally off the mark to conjecture that the British should get their house in order first before shifting their attention to developing nations which, as I have already stated, are emitting an infinitesimal percentage of the deadly ozone-depleting emissions.

The British should, first and foremost, reduce the tonnes of carbon monoxide and hydrocarbon emissions which they, and other developed nations, are discharging into the atmosphere daily before they fund programs aimed at reducing emissions discharged by developing countries.

In that spirit, I am prepared to reflect further on the issue by inferring that the British Government resembles a person who goes all out to douse the flames of a small fire that is damaging his neighbor’s house, while ignoring the blazing inferno which is consuming his own house.

According to the British Ambassador, part of the US$14,9 billion which the British Government will invest in Third World countries, is for the development of carbon-reducing technologies in these countries.

 But can science and technology provide a solution to the environmental problems that the world faces today?

William D Rackelshaus, a former administrator of the US Environmental Protection Agency once said: “We cannot continue to rely on science and technology to give us a new point of view or solve our environmental problems; for it is science which has actually increased the environmental problems that we face today.” 

What boggles the mind is that industrialised nations are today telling Third World countries to refrain from cutting down trees and burning fossil fuels, saying this is inflicting damage on the environment.

And yet, the same nations have, since time immemorial, deforested massive areas of the earth themselves.

Indeed, it is a cause of great concern to note that while industrialised nations aver that climate change poses a grave threat to civilization, they are not doing much, if anything at all, to mitigate its effects in their own countries. The USA for instance, withdrew from climate change talks in 2017 due to its reluctance to reduce the massive volumes of carbon emissions, which it is discharging daily into the atmosphere.

Ironically, the same hypocritical nations are now investing in programs, purportedly aimed at reducing carbon emissions in Third World countries.

The industrialised nations’ approach to environmental issues is not only retrogressive, but also shows beyond reasonable doubt that they are not serious about mitigating the effects of climate change.  

One does not need to be a rocket scientist to see that science and technology have increased the world’s environmental problems. The following illustration buttresses this insightful observation:

Prior to the invention of the automobile, horse-drawn carriages were the primary means of transport. During that time, city streets were often littered with horse manure and people had to contend with perplexing waste-disposal problems.

However, with the passage of time the automobile replaced the horse-drawn carriage. The advent of the automobile meant that people no longer worried about how to deal with horse manure.

But they now faced a more serious and perplexing problem-how to deal with highly toxic exhaust fumes from automobiles and the myriad of health problems associated with breathing polluted air.

It quite clear from the foregoing that while the invention of the automobile expedited the movement of people from one place to the other, it has done more harm than good to the environment and to human health as well.

The foregoing notwithstanding, mankind today looks with awe at modern science as a kind of god or messiah, which they believe will deliver this world from all its problems and challenges. In fact, scientists are unanimous that science and technology will transform this world into a utopian, push-button dream world of “the three L’s”- leisure, luxury and license.

Be that as it may, when we take a realistic look at world conditions and trends as they are today, they point inevitably to a stupendous worldwide calamity that has the potential to obliterate civilisation.

Let us consider another pertinent illustration: When nuclear power was discovered, the world hailed it as a panacea to environmental challenges and dilemmas associated with generating electricity from coal.

However, what the scientists who discovered nuclear energy didn’t tell the world then was that, apart from generating electricity, nuclear reactors also generate radioactive waste, which is hazardous to both fauna and flora.

Perhaps more importantly, they neglected to tell the world that nuclear power could also be used to manufacture terrifying weapons of mass destruction that are capable of wiping out the entire human species from the face of the earth.

Alas, modern science today stands exposed as a false messiah- a Frankenstein monster which threatens to destroy the mankind that created it and send it along the path of extinction. 

 *Cuthbert Mavheko is a freelance journalist living in Bulawayo. 0773 963 448.