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A slight change of topic/tone this week
- Gary, our editor, has suggested that the public has probably
had enough about pigs on Eivissa/Ibiza, so my article about
the masked tricksters/pranksters, es desfressats, that appear
(very rarely now) during the last feast held on the day of
the matança (pig killing) will have to be held in abeyance
until sometime in the future I can slip it in without anyone
noticing. Before we launch, however, into another series dealing
with sling stone throwing or courting rituals or feuding amongst
rural Ibicencos I would like to pause to mull over some thoughts
about global warming and its local and worldwide implications.
On the evening of Monday, 26th November,
José P Ribas (your Electronic Ibiza History Culture environmental
correspondent), friend Trias, my wife and I went over the
Hotel Royal Plaza in Vila (Ibiza Town) to attend a lecture
on Climate Change and Global Warming organised by Hazel Morgan,
the dynamic president of Amics de Sa Terra Eivissa (Friends
of the Earth Ibiza). The invited speaker was Dr Antonio Ruiz
de Elvira, the climate specialist in the Physics Department
of the University of Alcala in Madrid, and a well-known lecturer
on the more complex aspects of climate change. After the lecture
we were privileged to dine with him and other members of Amics
de Sa Terra to continue discussions and we have since been
in correspondence with him via e-mail on certain environmental
matters. Antonio is the major author and co-ordinator of the
recent book "Quemando el Futuro: Clima y Cambio Climatico"
("Burning the Future: Climate and Climate Change"),
published by Nivola and available from the bookshop in the
Vara del Rey in Ibiza town at 2.995 pesetas. His talk was
excellently presented, concise and full of punch. It covered
the most recent studies available on world climate change
over the last few million years and led scientifically into
how (and why) the climate is changing now and what is in store
for us within the next century. Although the world's climate
has changed many times in the past, Antonio professionally
pointed out the evidence indicating that the present climatic
changes are/will be probably the most rapid in the earth's
history (excepting certain 'disaster' changes such as the
possible giant asteroid that hit in the Gulf of Mexico circa
65 million years ago and thought to be responsible for the
extinction of the dinosaurs). The types of changes that in
the past took hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of
years will now be compressed into the time span of a few human
generations. Our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren
will be living in a much more difficult world.
Yes, our future is going up in smoke. Although
a certain amount of climate change is only normal in our world's
climatic cycles, there seems little doubt that the massive
extra amounts of carbon dioxide (and certain other elements)
pumped into the earth's atmosphere since the discovery of
petrol (and its potential uses) in 1880 have begun to rapidly
accelerate this process. One can almost say 'Put the blame
on Rockefeller' (but then if he hadn't started it, then someone
else would have). Other, normal, cyclical, reasons for the
heating of the earth's atmosphere can include normal changes
in the earth's axis and possible increased solar activity
since circa 1650, but the most important is the very recent
rapid increase in 'greenhouse gases' such as CO2. It seems
the actual full effect of these heating gases will have kicked
in with full force during the period approximately 2040 to
2100.
By then the types of recent hurricane-force
storms that hit the Balearic Islands and southern Spain last
month will have become a normal occurrence (and future storms
could be much stronger) at this time of the year. This ties
in almost exactly with the predictions made in 1993 by the
British Scientific Institute for this part of the world (and
mentioned in my second article about 'Water' for Electronic
Ibiza History Culture written in Weekly Edition 026 of Saturday 25th August
2001) and now this prediction is born out by recent detailed
scientific data. As predicted in 1993, these islands will
have a much longer and dryer 'dry' season, and much more of
the rain that does come during the period October-February
will come in the form of violent, hurricane-force, storms
like (and possibly stronger than) those of November. These
kinds of super-storms do not necessarily bring the type of
rain that Eivissa/Ibiza needs: the torrential rains flood
off the soil too quickly and do not readily soak into the
earth to replenish the water table. Many modern houses and
apartment buildings built within the last 30 years or so will
become untenable - many have been built in areas that a wise
pagès eivissenc (Ibicenco peasant) would never build
in. No one in their right mind in the old days here would
build a house next to or in a 'torrente' (a flash flood draining
area) nor in areas that are liable to become swampy after
such rains. Some modern coastal buildings will just eventually
(or more rapidly!) disappear. Such storms will destroy beaches
(as happened already recently in some parts of Eivissa but
more particularly Mallorca) and eventually the tourism industry
may be forced to construct 'storm proof' beaches (where the
sand will not be washed away) or basically forget about the
present kind of coastal tourism and develop something different.
Sea levels may eventually be up to a metre above present levels
- and when one thinks about high tide and 'storm surges' this
could be quite a bit more - so mankind's presence on the coast
of Eivissa will probably have to be drastically re-thought.
These are my own thoughts here, but they follow naturally
from the type of evidence presented at the talk. I remember
once saying in a lecture here on the island a few years ago
that one might have to consider a future 'Ibiza without beaches'
and it looks like climate change will probably lead to that.
As the hot, dry, period of the year looks like it will be
extended and intensified, there will be greater water shortage
problems (there is already not enough good water for the present
situation) and much greater danger of extensive forest fires.
In fact, the present kind of tourism industry on the island
may no longer be tenable in, say, 40 years or so. We may all
have to spend holidays in the south of England where temperatures
and climate may be similar to the south of France today! The
south of France itself will probably be too changed to continue
as it is today. Eivissa will have to drastically change its
approach to water production and distribution and electrical
power production, amongst many things. The whole island's
electricity is provided by the energy company GESA (Ibiza's
Electricity Company), working from the giant generator just
outside Vila (and sometimes still called 'sa fabrica de fe
llum'- 'the light factory' by rural Ibicencos: the first light
production facility was called 'sa fabrica de fe llum de gaz
pobre de C'an Matutes' as the first 'modern' lights the peasants
remember were yellowish lights - and therefore made from 'poor
quality gas' - done at C'an Matutes). GESA provides good quality
service to its customers, but it seems the actual technical
properties of its massive generator are such that it allegedly
produces only circa 30% of the energy it could produce from
its fuel input than if it had more advanced equipment.
Antonio Ruiz de Elvira is not completely
pessimistic for the future, though. Placing faith in human
ingenuity, he hopes that (forced and rapid) developments and
advances in solar power energy production can help provide
a solution. But it will need a drastic change in government
attitudes worldwide to enable such progress to take place.
At the moment most governments assume that part of a normal
governmental duty is to provide funds for road and transport
infrastructure, but energy production is still mostly in the
hands of private industry. Governments will in the future
need to take over the energy industry, phase out the use of
forms of petroleum for energy production, and greatly sponsor
and subsidize the use and spread of solar power. As I see
things, legislation may eventually have to be brought in to
restrict the number of petrol automobiles and forced legislation
enacted to support urgent and effective research into 'petrol-less'
forms of transport (both topics that my late father spoke
about nearly 50 years ago). It has been rumoured, of course,
for many years, that the (particularly US) petrol and automobile
industries have 'bought up the rights to and hidden away'
any promising new inventions that might interfere with their
dominant positions and have not really seriously looked into
alternatives, although there has been a certain amount of
half-hearted publicity about particular projects that are
all 'too expensive for now but are seriously being looked
at'. This has been going on for decades and the lack of real
progress indicates that neither the big companies nor the
'big' governments are at the moment really that interested
in them. Their publicised concerns for the environment and
the little that is actually being done indicate that few really
seriously think all the talk of future disasters is actually
real: 'If we talk about it and show enough concern, then maybe
it will just go away'. It seems to be almost a habit now that
governments in Europe and the US are becoming increasingly
used to handing out emergency money to help areas devastated
by increasingly powerful natural phenomena such as storms
and hurricanes. Insurance companies - always the first to
catch on to forthcoming trends as ignorance can lead to massive
financial losses - have already begun to seriously consider
restructuring their policies for areas susceptible to stronger
and more frequent devastating storms. In the US, insurance
company policy is already beginning to come in to conflict
with government policy, the insurance companies thinking of
increasing payment rates for potentially endangered areas
(e.g. coastal areas of Florida threatened with rising sea
levels and increasingly frequent and stronger hurricanes)
whilst, in general, US government policy (particularly amongst
this present administration) pursues a 'gung-ho', business
as usual, policy. The two recent freak storms (the latest
within the last 48 hours as I write - with winds up to 175
kilometres per hour) that hit Sydney, Australia, within the
last couple of weeks, will make Australian insurance companies
race to contact climate consultants to help them minimize
future losses from more frequent similar events in the future.
Millions of words have been and continue
to be written on these topics, but unfortunately the world's
'only superpower', which also happens to be the world's major
producer of the 'items' most damaging to earth's atmosphere,
continues to hide its head in the sand. Once governments realize
that they can actually save money in the long run by planned
preparation for global warming, rather than just regularly
handing out emergency funds to affected areas, will the needed
official changes in policy actually take place. As usual,
it all boils down to money (and greed, as I pointed out in
one of my 'Water' articles): money (etc) brought us in to
this problem and with a lot of luck it might, if not get us
out of it, at least help to minimise the more deleterious
side of climate change. But there is great urgency: even if
all CO2 - producing fuels were rapidly fazed out now, it would
take the atmosphere 40 years to revert to relative normality.
You have probably all heard this a thousand times before,
but as this is something that will definitely affect everyone
in the world in varying degrees within the next 40 years or
more, then it is worthwhile hearing thousands of times more
until everyone finally sits up and says to governments and
certain big businesses "OK, enough bullshit and shifty
'spin-doctoring' from you people: get down to proper planning
and work or we will take you all to court and fine you for
stupidity". Well, that is maybe not the kind of thing
that modern governments in the West would allow to be done
to them, but at least in a 'democracy' one should be able
to vote them out of power. Unfortunately the public worldwide
haven't really been doing enough of that lately. We should
take an example from the traditional societies in Vanuatu
in the Southwest Pacific; there, a 'chief' and his advisors
have a traditional sacred duty to protect their environment,
as they know that by doing so one also protects ones people
(I am simplifying this, there are many different cultures
in Vanuatu, and there are many traditional approaches to this).
Many modern governments in the West do not seem as advanced
as this - and the EU may not be any better (as last weeks
criticisms of the EU by the Prime Minister of Belgium, currently
the President of the EU, show). Maybe those in Vanuatu are
right, that White People just do not really understand Nature.
And therein lies our predicament: as the Kaggaba/Kogi Indians
of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in northern Colombia put
it in as polite a way as possible, we 'modern white democracies'
are basically the ones that have brought the world to this
stage, with all its good and bad, but unless we grow up and
begin using our intelligence for saving the whole world rather
than just for greed, it may all be too late. Our children,
grandchildren and future generations will rightfully blame
us if we do nothing.
And more on these themes, including Global
Warming Refugees, next week.
Kirk W Huffman
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