By Ikebesi Omoding
The Prime Minister of Nepal , Mr. Balerah Shah, has complained, to nobody in particular, that his country has the lowest carbon emissions, yet it has experienced the worst rain flash flood landings in recent memory. The high Tibetan state then had cascading rock bolders and blocks of ice falls that have denuded parts of the country and Tibetan China, causing more than 900 deaths right now, and more than 2,000 unaccounted-for people. These have included tourists from 23 countries from the rest of the world.
The most recent flash floods have also hit the Grand Canyon in Colorado in the USA. This has followed those that have been caused by tornados in Indonesia, Japan and parts of Eastern China.
Extensive ferocious fires have ravaged Southern Europe in Spain, Portugal, Greece and Turkey. Similar fires have also burnt in the US in states like Nevada and California; and Canada in the state of Saskachewan.
South Korea has sent its ice-breaking ships to the Arctic Circle to break the ice so that it can now sails ships carrying oil to-and-from Europe and circumventing the contentious Indian Ocean that has carried crude oil from the Middle East. This has helped escalate the levels of climate warming that has raged parts of the world in high winds, fires and rains.
The Pacific Ocean that has, up to now, helped to regulate the world temperature below 1.2 degrees Celcius, has now heated up because of the warming of the waters. It is threatening to reach more than three degrees Celcius, which will cause a global havoc of flooding, tornadoes and fires – even Earth quakes!
The tectonic plates that have been shifting below the Earth’s surface have caused inundation in places like Venezuela and Colombia. These Latin American countries are still counting the costa of the Earth quakes that followed in the thousands of deaths and destruction of infrastructure. On the African Continent, the visible places where previously quakes have taken place are yet quite; yet, in some previous years tremors have been experienced. Any other climatic conditions that shape and shake the Earth are liable to bring these into play, too.
Go to Artificial Intelligence (AI). Ukranian President, Volodamir Zelensky, last week said that a drone, which was later found to have an AI computer internally installed, hit a civilian area near the capital, killing a number of civilians. And China, in a recent exhibition, show-cased a robot that has run the one hundred meters, faster that Hussain Bolt did some 17 years ago.
What it has not shown-cased publicly, are robots that are armed with automatic rifles. China has an army of some 35 million soldiers, for a population of 1.2 billion people. If now China replaces these human soldiers with armed robots; and decides to invade Taiwan with only a half of the robots comparable to the number of its human soldiers, the robots will obviously overrun the island.
The Russian war in Ukraine; and the US debacle in Iran and the Strait of Hormuz, have in no uncertain terms, indicated the trend of fighting wars that is to come – drones and missiles; and if one throws in China, robots. With AI computers “manning” these instruments, the scale of catastrophe on the human populations is incalculable. And apparently, especially in the war fronts, there is nobody to take into immediate account.
The United Nations (UN) Climate Change Chief, Simon Stiell, has said, “ A warming climate, driven by humanity burning colossal amounts of coal, oil and gas, is making tragedies like this one [Nepal], and so many others around the world,” adding, “Much more likely, frequent and severe, with vulnerable communities often hardest hit.”
The UN has on a number of occasions brought the issue of Climate Change and warming into the attention of the world (leaders), but as of now, to no avail. The recent instance of the Venezuelan Interim President, Delcy Rodrigues, signing billions of oil deal extraction with US President Donald Trump, is one such incident where the hunger and greed for money has superseded the rationale for a Clean Climate.
