The cruel downside of climate change

At the insistence of Sumeya, my daughter, I grudgingly went to see a doctor. I could feel the concern when, between rib-cracking coughs, a throbbing headache and ear-splitting sneezes, she asked whether I was alright. Nowadays, coughs get serious and a doctor’s prescription is important, my wife had told me. Growing up, the prescription of a cold or a cough was bitter lemon swirled with a little honey.

Once you downed that, it often left you smelling like a lemon tree the whole day, but it worked nonetheless. In my days, we never knew about ginger and garlic. Java House’s signature drink - honey, lemon and ginger - sells like hot cake because of what many believe it does. I am not sure it is as potent as we used to know.

The colds are so common nowadays that you are at the doctor’s room before you are done with the last visit’s drugs’ prescription. And it is worse when it comes with that throbbing headache and blocked nostrils. That the world climate has changed in the last three decades is not in question. Earlier, we could predict the seasons. December was once one of the hottest months. Last year’s was the wettest I have seen, thanks to the El Nino phenomenon.

The change in climate has been subtle, but severe. Parts of the world have become warmer, others colder, others wet, and others drier.

Some will experience modest crop yields while others will reap nothing. Others will get bumper harvest. The fact that man is slowly becoming a refugee of climate is unsettling, though sadly true. Just last week, the blistering temperatures in Nairobi were replaced by cloudy mornings. What is happening?

That could unpredictably change sooner than you can pull over those jackets and the Maasai shawls beloved of the menfolk nowadays.

Quite weird. In fact, climate change should terrify us most in the developing world.

The poor in Africa are not only poor, but also vulnerable to the consequences of global warming that cause floods, high temperatures and which give rise to disease-causing mosquitoes and other insects.

Yet we are in the horns of a dilemma; we have to combat poverty through technology and fight off the effects of global warming.

People need vehicles to move around to make a livelihood and take their raw materials and produce to the factory and the finished products to the market. They need energy to drive the engines in their struggle to escape from poverty. But that is not without consequences.

Twenty or 30 years ago, the mosquitoes in Nairobi were considered harmless; it is not uncommon to contract malaria in the city nowadays. The deadly Zika virus that is causing panic in Latin America could be attributed to extreme climatic conditions, who knows? Scientists will tell us more soon.

In Nairobi and parts of Eastern, Central and Rift Valley region, the cold season in July has not only grown longer, but too severe and many people often complain about headaches, colds, influenza and sore throats.

When it pours, the rain is acidic. In the villages, the wild fruits that many of us feasted on over lunchtime at primary school are no more, the rivers that we swam in have dried up. All that is left are sandy riverbeds. Gladly, the drum beat attributing all manner of evil to climate change is getting louder by the day.

Prof James Lovelock, the British scientist who believes that mankind has fatefully unbalanced the delicate mechanisms of a world he calls Gaia, in his book The Revenge of Gaia, catalogues the alarming consequences of an upset climate. We shouldn’t think of the Earth as rocks, soil and trees, he says, but a larger organism with a life of its own and punishes any species that upset its structure.

No doubt, the effects of climate change are being felt on every continent, from the melting of the glaciers of South America to the retreating sea ice of the Arctic. Human influence on the climate is clear. In its Fifth Assessment Report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) showed concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have increased to their highest levels ever.

That means the risks and disasters attributed to climate are growing. The upshot is that it will be more costly to mitigate against these risks and calamities. At the Paris Climate Conference in December, the world agreed to a target of keeping global warming below 2°C (many are aspiring for 1.5).

To reverse the looming catastrophe, the UN is advocating for the use of the Clean Development Mechanism in the twin fight against poverty and climate change. Investing in natural sources of energy like the sun and wind or using renewable energy is a step in the right direction. The use of solar power and wind energy has been embraced across the country.

In Isiolo, the county government with other partners is driving the use of these clean forms of energy.

Nationally, the use of geothermal power to power industries is a reality. The thing about clean energy is that it drives down energy prices considerably. And doesn’t get us the cold and headaches.