A Doom’s Day bulletin A man walks on ground which cracked owing to extreme weather conditions

Stephen Mpofu Correspondent

It hits the ears of attentive listeners with a frightening tumult:

l Islands and some island states WILL, NOT might, be wiped out or submerged under rising seas of heated water.

l Calamitous weather conditions already gripping the Mediterranean region and Sub-Saharan Africa, including our own region, will aggravate, sending humans, animals and other creatures to the periphery of extinction.

A doom’s day bulletin by mischief-makers?

A big NO.

This is an authentic global weather bulletin by scientists who always have the temperature of the globe at their fingertips.

To be sure, the weather specialists have already said that Zimbabwe and no doubt other areas in this region, will experience low rainfall with prospects of crop failure and hunger already haunting the minds of agricultural experts.

If truth may be told — and it must be known without pulling any punches — that if by its irresponsible conduct humankind continues in a daredevil way to spew carbon gases into the atmosphere, it might just be a matter of time before our earth is sent into rigor mortis along with all of its inhabitants, as global warming takes its final toll on God’s creation, people, animals and other living organisms.

As late as this week scientists warned on international radio that the globe is heating up and that if it rises to 2 degrees centigrade from the present level of just above 1 degree centigrade, lives will become unsustainable with draughts and floods taking their toll.

Just three years ago in 2015, the then Secretary General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-Moon, applauded moves by the United States President Barrack Obama to cut carbon emissions from coal plants.

These and similar obnoxious emissions from other sources are responsible for global warming with its negative cascades — climate change; floods; droughts that wipe out food crops and pastures for livestock and wildlife for countries including Zimbabwe that have deficient mitigation measures; all these making life bleak for people and the future very opaque.

But no sooner was Obama ousted from power in 2016 than his successor, Donald Trump, took America out of the Paris Agreement to fight global warming to make the world safer from that catastrophic phenomenon.

One weather scientist bemoaned this week the withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Agreement, saying that the move made it difficult for other countries to forge ahead effectively in combating global warming and its dangerous effects.

In the ongoing US trade war with China, President Trump has recently said a trade agreement with neighbouring Mexico but particularly with Canada, would make North America a kingpin in the manufacturing industry for a long time.

For a long time American factory chimneys have been known to spew poisonous gases into the atmosphere without any move to modify those chimneys, so that with no lid being placed on coal emissions, humanity as a whole continues to hurtle towards self-annihilation, what with other dangerous carbon emissions by other developed and developing countries elsewhere on planet earth.

Clearly distraught, the scientists bemoaning global warming and its effects spoke against the use of fossil energy and urged the people around the globe to resort more to solar and electrical power in doing business as a way of safeguarding the globe from certain man-made destruction.

What all this also suggests is that Zimbabweans should contribute to environmental protection by refraining from lighting veld fires that destroy vegetation, spilling carbon gases into the atmosphere.

In addition, wanton acts of deforestation should be prevented by all means possible since trees play an important role as carbon dioxide sinks, thereby safeguarding the atmosphere.

Above all, countries should unite under the United Nations in pursuit of any consensus reached, such as the fight against global warming, instead of so-called Big Brothers flexing their big power political clout and thereby exposing the rest of the global village to its demise.

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