I kept my pen for the last two years watching events that I never saw in my 67 years, my grandmother’s omens were fulfilled: “son, you are going to see things that my generation did not even imagine”. She was born in 1899. How right she was!
The Covid-19 pandemic is a sign that the world is not ready for what lies ahead. Dr. Pablo Ramírez, Greenpeace energy and climate expert, gave an interview to the portal “However”. Analyzing this interview and the concepts expressed by him, I learned that his concern is that “because of the way that the leading health organizations at the global and regional level (WHO and PAHO), as well as governments have faced the pandemic, the world It is not prepared to face the catastrophic climatic crises that are coming to us in the near future, such as the “Green Swan”. This term was first used by the BIS (Bank for International Settlements) to refer to remuneration for events produced by Climate Change. This term in turn is related to the Black Swan, an expression that was used in 2008 to refer to events that were not forecast and that had impacted the world economy.
Many internationally renowned biologists, virologists, and scientists have claimed that Covid-19 is linked to species trafficking and the indiscriminate use of wildlife. The destruction of natural habitat and the invasion of ecosystems, cause species to move, animals such as bats, rats, snakes, are forced to stay in cities and their peripheries and this increases the transmission of diseases, such as it is created with Covid-19 and a species of bat.
It is known to all professionals linked to life and the environment that global warming is rapidly melting Greenland and that its speed is six times greater than the melting of Antarctica. This passage from water from the solid state to the liquid will expose thousands of microorganisms that have been buried there for millions of years and that we are totally unaware of because they have never been studied. With great security you will find fungi, bacteria, viruses, rickettsia, etc. When these microorganisms are released, we have no idea what will happen, because they are ancient microorganisms that we have never lived with.
At present it is not demonstrated that Covid-19 is related to Climate Change, but it does show us that we were not and are not prepared for this situation that sooner or later we will have to face, if not in this generation within two or three and we must be farsighted.
What comes after the pandemic is something that cannot be predicted, but I am sure that what comes will affect the climate again, the countries and their companies will want to recover the time they spent fighting the pandemic, the return of production in all its facets and the intention of stabilizing the economies with the acceleration of working hours, will lead to emptying alarming amounts of polluting gases into the atmosphere and this will undoubtedly bring greater consequences in more and greater natural disasters , shortage of water resources, crop losses and diseases related to climate change such as dengue, which also represent a risk for humanity.
They are alterations and modifications that are not reversible and that can be passed and controlled like the Covid-19. These changes are more difficult and dangerous and the only weapon we have to counter them is the Paris Agreement and to fulfill its mandates. Among the most important is to lower the temperature by 1.5 degrees to reach the temperature of the pre-industrial era, that is, the temperature in the late 1800s, the current trend indicates that by the end of the century we will be 4.5 degrees above.
If this is fulfilled, an ecological collapse would come, where the damages would be catastrophic and the worst, these phenomena would become periodic where we use in just one day what the planet takes to regenerate two or three years.
The pandemic, within all the bad, has given the planet a break, but nothing in our social structure has changed. Let’s raise awareness and have mercy on our common home, I am not an alarmist, but my responsibility as a professional, father and grandfather move me to give an alert in this rough sea, because what is coming is serious and we must be prepared. Let’s not cry tomorrow, if we don’t act today there will be crying and gnashing of teeth.
The author is an engineer.
