As reported (1), certain large companies are deviating from their commitment to environmental concerns through investments in wind and renewable energy. Breaking a bold commitment by one of these companies to reduce oil production by 40% and invest significantly in offshore wind, which was seen as a pioneering move, is more than sad.
By Ahmad Hemami, McGill University, Montreal, Canada
Some countries with a rich history have treasures of lessons in the form of poetry, art, literature, philosophy and the like, which set ethical and humanity rules that, if everybody follows, the world would be a better place than it is right now.
A famous ancient Persian poet called “Saadi” has a story about a man sitting on a branch of a tree and cutting it to trim the tree. When someone saw what he was doing he told the man on the tree ”Hey man, what you are doing is wrong and it is harmful to YOU, forgetting about others”. Although this is a small example, in the form of a short story, it represents what we have been doing in the past 40 - 50 years, at least. Short-term benefits for ME! Why should I care about the environment or future generations?
Despite the warnings by scientists and despite the factual evidence of all those previous warnings that we witness nowadays everywhere, keeping on closing our ears and having a blind eye on the matter is not far from paving the way toward our own destruction, as you see in figure 1.
The years 2023 and 2024 were record breaking for the number, extent and severity of wildfires, hurricanes, heavy rains (13 -14 cm in one hour), and floods in many places.
Just to mention a few, recently we had airports under flood in Dubai, Fort Lauderdale (South Florida), and Porto Alegre in Brazil (this one killing more than 180 people). Also, in August 2024, due to wildfires, half of Jasper, one of the most scenic cities in the world (in Albera, Canada), if not the only one of its natural kind, was burned to the ground, together with a large part of the neighbouring national park.
In 2023, from June 1 to 25, more land (460,000 hectares) than in the previous 20 years combined burned in southern Quebec (2). This was in Quebec only, which is one part of Canada. Similar scenarios repeated in other provinces, and the same sort of disaster happened in many parts of the world (United States, South America, Australia, Europe, …), no need to pinpoint the evidence.
Wildfires and flooding are not the only effects of global warming. They are caused by a chain reaction to the ecosystem, with other unprecedented consequences. Many mistakes have been made and are still being made. Ignoring the warnings is a big one.
Collectively, we, the inhabitants of planet Earth, have caused all of this. However, not every ordinary man or woman is equally responsible for this tragedy. Normally, those people at the top in governments and large corporations are the decision-makers.
Governments (We are referring to proper governments. Some governments are even opposing and oppressing their nationals) set policies, and corporations are the ones who carry out various operations to generate money.
Large companies have hands on natural resources, influence food and other consumables of people, in addition to services. Thus, naturally they gain a lot of power and the way they run their business counts for upcoming consequences, good or bad. They are money making mechanisms. In this sense, people’s health and education are not on their mandate, and they are not concerned about the environment, unless they are obliged or forced to. After all, they need healthy and educated people to work, and they must follow the rules.
Nobody knows for how many more years oil, gas and minerals can be found under the ground, but what we and other living creatures need as a priority are clean air, clean water and healthy food. No doubt.
Further reading
[1] Publisher's Note, WindTech International, Vol 20, No 4, July/Aug. 2024: Windtech International - Publisher's Note July August 2024 (windtech-international.com)
[2] Canada’s record-breaking wildfires in 2023: A fiery wake-up call:
https://natural-resources.canada.ca/simply-science/canadas-record-breaking-wildfires-2023-fiery-wake-call/25303
