Most people can’t escape the threat of climate change: Commentary

This column appears monthly in Seacoastonline and the Tuskegee News. This week Guy Trammell, an African American man from Tuskegee, Ala., and Amy Miller, a white woman from South Berwick, Maine, write about how the changing atmosphere is impacting our lives.

By Amy Miller

Silvino captained the boat that took us between the uninhabited Caribbean islands of Guna Yala. Eligio introduced us to the culture of the indigenous Guna community that lives on the coast and in the tropical islands off Panama. And Reuben brought us drinks from the local coconuts.

On a four-day trip from Panama to Colombia, I was introduced to a handful of the hundreds of islands of palm trees and sandy beaches that belong to the Guna and one by one are falling into the sea. 

The Gunas, an indigenous group with control over its own region, has stubbornly retained its culture even as it is connected to the outside world. Its representatives were among indigenous groups that showed up last month at COP30 in Brazil, the 30th worldwide conference to address climate change. 

The silenced and tiny countries and communities where people have almost no responsibility for the carbon monoxide that is changing our atmosphere are nonetheless suffering the consequences.

At the conference, Arab countries fought to save their economy by protecting the oil market, even as they are setting their own ambitious goals for installing wind and solar. The United States, the world’s second largest consumer of energy after China, decided not to attend the event at all. Meanwhile China, which surpasses the United States in both the export and use of renewable energy, stepped into a leadership vacuum left by the U.S.

The leaders of these countries along with banks and multinational corporations make the decisions, while the people with the most to lose have barely a voice.

Last year, several hundred Guna families had to move off their island due to rising sea levels, coastal erosion and frequent flooding. For many of the Guna, moving onto the mainland or adapting to the crisis are the only options.

The Gunas are far from alone. Dozens of indigenous groups showed up at November’s climate talks, their voices nearly ignored as if in a forest with no one there to listen. Indigenous people make up about 6% of the world’s population, but own or govern at least a quarter of the lands, areas found to be healthier and more resilient than the rest of the globe.

Rotary International, a global organization that eschews political affiliation, has taken on climate change as one of its causes. 

“Rotary enables our members and their community partners to take action by… addressing the cause of climate change by reducing the emission of greenhouse gases [and] strengthening ecosystems and communities affected by climate change,” according to the Rotary website.

In their book “Abundance”, journalists Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson suggest that rather than, or perhaps in addition to, monumental efforts to get us to give up what we love, we could find new ways to achieve the abundance we crave. They note that we have to set in motion policies that pave the way for cheaper cleaner energy and more research into technical advances that allow us our lifestyles. Conservation efforts are worthy, but they will not be enough. 

So what makes it so hard to tackle this problem? The money in oil? The life styles we love? Our cars, our travel, our steak dinners? Yes, all of it. It could be different, even without giving up our comforts.

Hundreds of millions of our fellow humans live without electricity or cars or running water but are suffering from our luxuries. Most of us in the developed world are unlikely to go backward, so we will have to move forward, for the sake of the Gunas and for our own sake.

By Guy Trammell Jr.

As George W. Carver said, “More and more, as we come closer and closer in touch with nature and its teachings are we able to see the Divine and are therefore fitted to interpret correctly the various languages spoken by all forms of nature about us.”

Climate change, in nature, reveals itself in more wildfires, warmer dry conditions, permafrost thawing and glaciers melting, as well as groundwater depletion that threatens food security.

Rapid urbanization and inadequate waste management expand mosquito habitats. Combined with warmer seasons that extend transmission periods, diseases such as dengue are surging.

Heat stress from climate change affects industrial workers on supply chains, manufacturing, agriculture and food harvesting, along with construction workers.

Ocean heat waves can last for days or months and have increased in frequency by 54% over the past 40 years, devastating marine wildlife. Heat waves occur in upper ocean layers — where plankton live, producing most of our oxygen — and bring disease and death to fish.

We construct buildings and roadways with 50-year-old standards, not taking into account environmental changes resulting in roads in constant disrepair. Devastating weather events are destroying urban centers because we build as if climate change doesn’t exist.

At November’s United Nations global climate change conference in Brazil, the final agreement says countries understand the “need for urgent action” to make “deep, rapid and sustained” cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. Inconceivably, however, there was no specific mention of fossil fuels (gasoline, oil, coal), even though they are the major source of greenhouse gas. 

Many countries in attendance were disappointed. As Daniela Duran Gonzalez of the Colombian Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development said, “There is no climate change mitigation if we cannot discuss transitioning away from fossil fuels.”A new global conference to address the phase-out of fossil fuels was announced after the climate conference. It will be held in Colombia, a fossil fuel producer, and co-hosted by the Netherlands, Shell Oil’s birthplace.

What can we do? Our country must participate in international climate gatherings, not kneel to oil and coal industries.

We can use LED light bulbs and small home solar units, reducing dependence on the fossil fuel powered electric grid, and make the case for it with others, including government leaders. A few years of adjustments actually can reverse the effects of climate change on our planet. 

Healthy Rivers Ogunquit (HeRO), an alliance of southern Maine residents, businesses and organizations, was formed to protect the tributaries of the Josias and Ogunquit rivers — including the latter’s headwaters in South Berwick — all the way to the estuary and beaches.

We need HeRO board member Megan Kelly’s “passion for social impact to protect and preserve this beautiful place by the sea!”

Amy and Guy can be reached at colorusconnected@gmail.com