Tag: Arctic

Categories
climate change

Landslide In Wayanad Is Only The Beginning by Binu Mathew

Landslide at Wayanad: Photo Courtesy: Countercurrents

On the morning of  July 30, a huge landslide occurred at Mundakkai, in the mountainous district of Wayanad, Kerala, India. 282 people have been confirmed dead and many hundreds are still missing. It is the worst landslide in the history of Kerala and perhaps one of the worst in the history of India. A whole village was washed away in the flood and the flow of earth and rocks. A government higher secondary school and a bridge also got washed away. The rescue operations are still going on.

According to data released by India Meteorological Department Wayanad district received as much as 7% of its entire seasonal rainfall in 24 hours (from Monday morning to Tuesday morning). The Mundakkai region received 572 mm of rainfall in the past 48 hours prior to the landslide. This clearly points to an extreme climate change-induced disaster.

Experts like Madhav Gadgil are saying that it was due to the environmental degradation that the disaster occurred. The fact of the matter is that the landslide happened inside a deep forest which was not affected by human intervention.

The disaster area belongs to the Western Ghats, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, which is a very fragile ecologically sensitive area. This is also a region prone to frequent landslides. The Western Ghats starting from the Southern tip of the Indian subcontinent to the Konkan region is home to about 50 million people. In the parts belonging Kerala alone at least 5 million people live. Human habitation has caused a lot of ecological damage to the region. After the liberalisation of Indian economy, tourism has become a major industry in the region. Lots of tourist resorts have come up in the last 30 years, leading to stone quarrying in a major way. The stones from Western Ghats are used to build new roads, bridges, houses even in the lower land area and even the Adani port in Vizhinjam, Trivandrum.

If you look at the history of the Kerala part of Western Ghats, it was the Britishers who started huge tea, coffee and rubber plantations starting from late 19th century. It has caused huge environmental degradation in the region. Tata and Harrison Malayalam are the big planters now in the region. They behave like feudal lords, giving paltry sums in lease to the government and even encroach government lands to plant monocrops. The landslide affected Mundakkai also is a tea estate area owned by Harrison Malayalam company.

The farmers migrated to Wayanad and other parts of the Western Ghats of Kerala during the independence period due to the acute famine of that time. The government also promoted the migration of farmers. It is the descendants of these farmers who are killed by the landslide. They are the unsuspecting victims of unchecked development model and climate change caused by the Global North.

No place can withstand the kind of rain that was received in the landslide area. Yes, of course, wrong development model and environmental degradation has contributed to the disaster but it is not the root cause. It is the climate change caused by global warming for which the Global North is primarily responsible.

Present CO2 level in the atmosphere is 421 parts per million (ppm), which is similar to the CO2 level of Pliocene Epoch was a period in Earth’s history that lasted from 5.333 million to 2.58 million years ago. During the Pliocene epoch, CO2 levels in the Earth’s atmosphere were between 380 and 420 (ppm) during the warmest period.  The global mean sea level during the early Pliocene Epoch was around 17.5 ± 6.4 meters which means that we are locked in for a sea level rise of at least 6.5 meters, 17 meters being the upper limit. Also CO2 levels in the atmosphere are rising 2.9 ppm per annum.   This also means that we are moving into an unchartered territory in the climate crisis.

Most of our coastal cities will be under water very soon. Kerala which has one third of the landmass very close to the sea will be submerged under water.  As the ocean warms more and more drastic climate events like Mundakkai will be a regular phenomenon. As Himalayan glaciers melt, the rivers originating from the Himalayas will dry up. Most of North India will be a desert. As the permafrost melts in the Arctic, Methane which is 28 times more potent than Carbon Dioxide will be released into the atmosphere and we will lead to a feedback loop, meaning more and more greenhouse gases will be released into the atmosphere without any human intervention. Another dangerous scenario is that as the permafrost melts, viruses and bacteria buried millions of years ago will be released into the atmosphere causing pandemics like COVID. Forest fires will be a regular occurrence in the dry seasons.

Do you think that climate change would be just weather events? No. Not at all. It will spread into social relations and human relations. We might see water wars, famines, and even civil wars in the name of nationality, ethnicity, language etc. Do you think that the present population of 8 billion people will survive the coming climate catastrophe? I think it will not. Many researchers are saying that we are in the middle of the Sixth Great Extinction.  The sixth great extinction, also known as the Holocene extinction, is an ongoing mass extinction event that is caused by human activity. It is thought to be the sixth mass extinction event in Earth’s history, following the Ordovician–Silurian, Late Devonian, Permian–Triassic, Triassic–Jurassic, and Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction events. 

Courtesy: Countercurrents

In the beginning of the 20th Century, the human population was only 2 Billion. Now we are 8 Billion. The huge spike in population growth that we saw recently is an aberration in human history. Nature will correct itself. That means we are going to see millions or even billions of deaths, if not in our lifetime, definitely in the lifetime of our children and our grandchildren. That means thousands of Mundakkai events will play in a loop in front of our eyes! What is most devastating is that there would be some of our dear and near ones too.

What happened in Mundakkai, Wayanad is not an aberration. It’s the new normal. It’s the beginning!

Binu Mathew is the Editor of Countercurrents.org. He can be reached at editor@countercurrents.org. This article was first published in Countercurrents.org.

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Categories
Poetry

Christmas Poem

By Rhys Hughes

Courtesy: Creative Commons
Christmas is coming,
the goose is getting fat,
the moose is getting fatter
(he has eaten all your hats).
Your baldness is appalling
under the midnight sun,
the polar bears are warming
their thumbs around a drum.
Who set the drum on fire?
It wasn’t me or even you,
I think it must have been
that cold mutineering crew
from the good ship Caribou
that sailed to Arctic latitudes
simply to enjoy the view.

Christmas is coming,
the serpent is rather thin,
the stick is getting thinner
(it never poked your dinner).
Your moustache is atrocious
under the northern lights,
the penguins are out of place
after their long-haul flight.
What agent gave them tickets?
It wasn’t me or even you,
I think it must have been
Rubadub Gimp, the limping
chimp or maybe London Zoo.
And as for the walrus: his
bigger moustache appals us.

Christmas is coming,
the rain remains the same,
but now it is frozen hard
(shards bombard the yard).
Your elbows are despicable
under my critical gaze,
the narwhals are practising
seasonal songs of praise.
Who made them so devout?
It wasn’t me or even you,
I think it must have been
Graham Greene in a dream
researching a future theme.
Now regarding the festivities,
I’ll have more pudding, please.

Rhys Hughes has lived in many countries. He graduated as an engineer but currently works as a tutor of mathematics. Since his first book was published in 1995 he has had fifty other books published and his work has been translated into ten languages.

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Categories
Pirate Poems

Pirate Blacktarn gets Lost

A strange tale in verse by Jay Nicholls

Pirate Blacktarn, terror of the Lemon Seas 
Shivered in an icy breeze. 
“This is odd,” he muttered crossly,
“Suddenly I’m feeling chilly.”

“This is weird,” the crew agreed.
Big Bob grumbled, “it’s cold indeed.”
Colder it grew as the days went past.
The North Wind blew with an icy blast.
Blacktarn stayed in his cabin by the fire,
Piling the coals up higher and higher.
Poor Tim Parrot could hardly speak,
For a giant icicle hung from his beak. 

“This is dreadful,” groaned all the crew. 
The tips of their noses had turned pale blue. 
Then a monstrous iceberg passed them by
With a jagged tip nearly scraping the sky.
Blacktarn stayed in his cabin, very snug 
Where the roaring fire made a cosy fug.

“What’s happened” wondered the frozen crew,
The Lemon Sea’s turned an icy hue.”

Then Stowaway Fay jumped up suddenly
And emptied out her mug of tea.
She tied it fast to the end of a rope
And dropped it into the sea, in hope.
Back she hauled it and started to drink.
But the taste of the water made her think.
It was chilly and strange and salty to savour,
Not a hint of lemon was in its flavour.

“I knew it,” she cried, though her voice was hoarse
“Our daft Captain’s set the wrong course!
Of navigation he hasn’t a notion,
We’re adrift in the Arctic Ocean!”

At this the crew grew very mad.
“Our daft Captain is really bad.”
Below decks they charged with an angry roar 
And banged on Blacktarn’s cabin door. 
Blacktarn pretended he didn’t hear,
He hid in the cupboard, quaking with fear.

“Silly Captain, you’ve read the chart wrong,
Now take us back where we belong.”
“It’s not my fault,” he squeaked through the door,
“I’ve never read a sea chart before.”
The crew let out a mighty groan.
“Typical, we might have known.”
“Well,” said Fay, “we’ll read the chart.
Hand it over, let’s make a start.”

Blacktarn pushed it under the door
And the crew spread it out across the floor. 
“We go north, no east, no nor’,nor’ west.”
“No,” said Fay, “south is best.”
But which way was south? No one knew
Until through the door Tim Parrot flew.
The fire began melting his frozen beak
And at last poor Tim was able to speak.
“This way’s south, just follow me,
I can guide you back to safety.”

Just ahead of the ship he flew,
Hoping to find the waters they knew. 
At long, long last, they smelled lemon in the air.
“Hurrah, hurrah, we’re nearly there.”

Then out came Blacktarn, onto the deck,
“Just come to give the sea chart a check,
Now that we’re back in the Lemon Seas at large.
Of course with a captain like me in charge
You know you really can’t fare badly,
Come on crew, keep sailing across the Lemon Sea.”


Note: The ‘Pirate Blacktarn’ poems were written in the early 1990s but were never submitted anywhere or shown to anyone. By lucky chance they were recently rescued from a floppy disc that had lain in the bottom of a box for almost thirty years. There are twelve poems in the series but no indication as to what order they were written in and the author no longer remembers. However, they seem to work well when read in any order. They all feature the same cast of characters, the eponymous pirate and his crew, including a stowaway and an intelligent parrot. The stories told by the poems are set on a fictional body of water named the Lemon Sea. (Dug up by Rhys Hughes from the bottom of an abandoned treasure chest).

Jay Nicholls was born in England and graduated with a degree in English Literature. She has worked in academia for many years in various student support roles, including counselling and careers. She has written poetry most of her life but has rarely submitted it for publication.

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