Malta Warming

13^th April 2007

The Malta Independent - Friday Wisdom

Humanity is sitting on a ticking time bomb. If the vast majority of the world’s scientists are right, we have just 10 years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet into a tail-spin of epic destruction involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics and killer heat waves beyond anything we have ever experienced.
 This assertion comes from the hit documentary movie An Inconvenient Truth, which offers a passionate and inspirational look at one man’s fervent crusade to halt global warming’s deadly progress in its tracks by exposing the myths and misconceptions that surround it. That man is former Vice President Al Gore, who, in the wake of the questionable defeat in the 2000 US Presidential election, re-set the course of his life to focus on a last-ditch, all-out effort to help save the planet from irrevocable change. In the movie, which has yet to hit our shores, Al Gore is seen as never before in the media – funny, engaging, open and downright on fire about getting the surprisingly stirring truth about what he calls our “planetary emergency” out to ordinary citizens before it’s too late. In 2005, America experienced the worst storm season ever and Gore suggests we may be reaching a tipping point with catastrophic consequences.

Interspersed with the bracing facts and future predictions is the story of Gore’s personal journey: from an idealistic college student who first saw a massive environmental crisis looming; to a young senator facing a harrowing family tragedy that altered his perspective, to the man who almost became president but instead returned to the most important cause of his life – convinced that there is still time to make a difference. Gore argues we can no longer afford to view global warming as a political issue – rather, it is the biggest moral challenge facing our global civilisation.

In spite of the grave importance of the issues involved and the fact that as a little island we are gravely exposed to its serious consequences, global warming is hardly on the national agenda. There must be something radically wrong with this society if we lose so much energy arguing for and against spring hunting and bird trapping, and yet we do not put global warming, or at least Malta warming, on the national agenda.

Either I am reading the wrong editions of the newspapers or else something unorthodox is going on. Recently there were two occasions where I had to discover about our concern with global warming and our serious risk exposure to its consequences from international rather than local sources.

Following the last EU Heads of Governments meeting in Brussels on 9 March 2007, an agreement was signed making it a legal obligation for all members to reduce carbon emissions by making a substantial shift for energy generation from fossil fuels to renewable resources. Specifically, it was agreed: “The European Council emphasises that the EU is committed to transforming Europe into a highly energy-efficient and low greenhouse-gas-emitting economy and decides that, until a global and comprehensive post-2012 agreement is concluded, and without prejudice to its position in international negotiations, the EU makes a firm independent commitment to achieve at least a 20% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 compared to 1990.”

As the meeting was drawing to a close, the correspondent from international news and business TV channel CNBC Europe fished out the Maltese Prime Minister from the group of Heads of Governments and asked him how a small country like Malta could take on such an obligation when its size permitted no economies of scale for generation of renewable energy. The Prime Minister quite correctly argued that the obligation was a collective one and Malta could not withhold its consent to such a matter of life or death. He suggested that Malta would be in a position to buy excess renewable energy sources generated through economies of scale by larger member countries e.g. Italy.

More recently, during BBC Radio News a feature was carried about how small islands like Malta are exposed to the consequences of global warming. A BBC journalist came here and interviewed a senior official from Water Services Corporation as they went down to the underground water galleries that serve as a reservoir for our water stock. He explained the infrastructural achievements of these galleries built after World War II and warned that rising sea water levels resulting from global warming could impair the usefulness of these reservoirs as the salinity level inevitably increases.

This could force us to depend even more on desalination for our water needs leading to more energy consumption and carbon emissions as desalination is a very energy-hungry process.

Why do our civil authorities show so much awareness to the Malta warming problem at international level and yet have not made any visible effort to start a national campaign of awareness to its risk and the need for energy conservation at the capillary micro level?

A good starting point would be free cinema tickets for every family to go and see An Inconvenient Truth when it is launched.

At least it would save us the blushes of it being less popular than Mr Bean’s latest.