Editorial - Global warming: Selfishness produces suicide bomb

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The suicide bomb of global warming—though many people are foolishly ignorant of it or care little and do less-is growing into catastrophic if not apocalyptic proportions all over the world.Environmental analysts or prophets have warned that if this trend of the excessive emission of carbon dioxide and other criminal acts against nature continues, scores of islands including the Maldives may be drowned within the next few decades because the sea would have risen by more than one foot. Several parts of Sri Lanka’s coastal areas may also be swallowed up by the rising seas and Sri Lanka would not look like the pearl but something like a curl of the Indian Ocean.



According to eco-friendly technologist and management expert Dr. W. A. Wijewardena, since the early 1970s when Maurice Strong, founding Director of United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) started to talk about these issues, it became the hot topic at many international forums. Mr. Strong with Barbara Ward and Rene Dubos, submitted a report titled “Only one earth: the care and maintenance of a small planet” to the UN Conference on Environment. It was held in Stockholm in 1972 and that was the first time the doomsday was predicted for our mother earth through suicidal self-destruction by selfish people who abuse the environment and the bio-diversity of nature in various ways for short-term gain.

In an interview with BBC in the same year, the UNEP chief reiterated his doomsday prediction for Mother Earth and despite strong criticism against him, global warming has become the most important issue in the world today.  

While the causes of climate change are due to the actions of the people all over the world, its adverse consequences are felt mostly by people living in individual countries. Sri Lanka being a country sitting at the receiving end has to give top priority to the disasterous consequences of climate change during the coming years or decades.

" While the causes of climate change are due to the actions of the people all over the world, its adverse consequences are felt mostly by people living in individual countries. Sri Lanka being a country sitting at the receiving end has to give top priority to the disasterous consequences of climate change during the coming years or decades "

To help Sri Lanka to do so the Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) in a recent report has said the acceleration of the global warming process since the 1970s has vindicated Maurice Strong’s doomsday prediction.

The IPS report deeply examines areas such as whether Sri Lanka will be submerged by the sea, how natural disasters are worsening the conditions of the poor, that free water is not the best way to encourage conservation, the predicted decline in the rainfall in the dry zone by 2050, the fact that micro irrigation is better for preserving soil moisture, how temperature increases benefit high elevational teas, but punish mid and low elevations, how coconut trees could be used to mitigate climate changes, how the beautiful corals may be lost forever and community participation in environmental action.

The IPS says if the doomsday prediction is coming true Sri Lanka needs to be better prepared for such an eventuality since it is expected to have serious implications on the country’s agriculture. If an increase of temperature and a reduction of rainfall are the order of the future, the country’s research institutes should be lined up to develop new varieties of crops that will require less water and can withstand prolonged drought conditions. This requires not fundamental research but applied research that will develop such new varieties of crops. The government needs to make a bigger budgetary allocation for this vital area if we wish to become the hub of Asia rather than being blown up by an environmental suicide bomb.