Cyril and the unmethodical
The motif of the reports we’ve been watching these days from all over the world lead with: «for the first time…» So, for the first time in the past 20, 50 or 100 years, the halcyon days are going on for weeks and weeks – and that is not thanks to compassionate Zeus. For the first time, a tropical storm of this magnitude – dubbed «Cyril» by meteorologists – is battering Europe. For the first time, animals, plants and trees seem so out of order, flourishing in mid-winter, giving birth when they should be hibernating, choosing to stay home rather than migrate. Sure, we read all that but we mostly treat it as (often amusing) oddities, as games of nature, as if it’s none of our business. If the motif just came from the lips of TV journalists then, perhaps, our Sybarite-like behavior would be justified. After all, our exposure to that overdose of TV dramatization has made us immune to such reports. And yet the motif is recurring, not only in the diagnoses and predictions of bioclimatologists and physicists, but also by economists. Perhaps their ice-cold arithmetics sound more intimidating and convincing. For their part, atomic scientists have pushed the hand of the doomsday clock two minutes closer to midnight, warning that «the dangers posed by climate change are nearly as dire as those posed by nuclear weapons.» However, repeated warning signs and evidence that the Earth cannot absorb or tame such a dramatic climate change have failed to prompt the mighty political elites into action. Unwilling, unprepared and unmethodical, they’re watching the planet go down as if they’re watching some dull, futuristic movie. Only in movies, there’s always a superman to halt the hands of the doomsday clock at the very last minute.
