Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1504886
OPINION 10 maltatoday | WEDNESDAY • 2 AUGUST 2023 REMEMBER those old invest- ment ads on TVM, which always ended with the same line (pre- sumably, mandated by the MF- SA): 'The past is not a guarantee of the future; and the value of your investment may go up, as well as down'? Well, I've always had mixed feel- ings about that message, to tell you the truth. Not, mind you, that I don't appreciate the necessity for such a 'disclaimer', from a strictly legal point of view. After all: there certainly ARE people in the world, who need to have even the most obvious contingencies spelt out to them, down to the last detail. Like, for instance, that old lady who – according the 'News of the World', anyway - once accidentally 'micro-waved her beloved French poodle'... and then successfully sued the manufacturer, for failing to specify that: "microwave ovens are not suited for the purpose of 'drying pets (or babies), immedi- ately after giving them a bath'..." So yes, I get the general idea. Some people clearly DO need to be told, time and time again, that there is no such thing in life as a '100% guaranteed safe outcome, for any action or decision...'. ... but then again: while that may well be true for 'investing in stocks and bonds', it doesn't quite follow that it would automatically hold good, for every other situation under the sun. And even from my own experience, I can easily con- firm that (in some cases, at least) 'the past really CAN be a guaran- tee of the future', you know... Take, for instance, Robert Abe- la's reaction to the recent spate of black-outs. Under the following headline - 'Abela: climate change to blame for power-cuts' - the Prime Minister said that: "gov- ernment will be fast-tracking its investment in the country's dis- tribution network to reflect the accelerating effects of climate change. "[...] 'Climate change effects are being felt at a quicker pace than what was predicted by experts, therefore government investment in infrastructure has to reflect that idea'..." Now: if any of that already sounds familiar.. it's probably be- cause you haven't even had time to forgot an almost IDENTICAL headline (and story), back in No- vember 2021. At the time, the 'extreme weath- er event' was not a heatwave... but rather, 'flash-floods' caused by intense rainfall (although the situ- ation was also 'climate change-re- lated'; and had likewise caused its own fair share of 'chaos and con- fusion', as I recall). But just to refresh your memo- ries a little more: this is how Mal- taToday reported the Infrastruc- ture Minister's reaction, a little less than two years ago. Headline - "Ian Borg: Climate change to blame for excess rainfall that flooded roads..." Article - "Flooding in recent- ly built roads was not caused by shortcomings by Infrastructure Malta, but the result of freak weather 'rarely seen before', Ian Borg said. "[...] The minister blamed Thurs- day's widespread flooding on ir- regular weather patterns caused by climate change. 'The circum- stances were what they were... we saw rainfall volumes that are not common.'" Erm... what did I just tell you, a few paragraphs above? 'The past is no guarantee of the future', my foot! Those two stories were pub- lished a full 18 months apart: yet they still manage to mirror each other so perfectly, that you could literally just swap out the names... and pretty much everything else can stay, precisely as it is. Not only did Robert Abela and Ian Borg come up with EXACTLY the same excuse, in (almost) ex- actly the same words... but the ex- cuse itself is equally 'flawed' – not to say 'disingenuous' – on both those occasions, as well! Right: from now on, I'll limit myself only to the more recent example (naturally, on the proviso that everything I say about Robert Abela, is GUARANTEED to apply 100% to Ian Borg, too). But let's dissect what they're both actually saying, first. Like Borg before him, the Prime Min- ister is presenting us with TWO arguments, not one. His first is that the power-cuts themselves were not down to any lack of 'preparation', or 'invest- ment', on his own government's part... but rather, due to the effects of a global phenomenon known as 'climate change' (over which – conveniently enough – Rob- ert Abela himself has no control, whatsoever). In the same breath, however, he also argues that these climatic ef- fects are somehow being felt more 'intensely', today, than anyone had anticipated before (in his own words: "Climate change effects are being felt at a quicker pace than what was predicted by experts"...) And – much as it pains me to have to flatly contradict our Prime Minister, like this – that's not en- tirely TRUE, you know.... In fact, I'm not at all sure which 'experts' Robert Abela actually had in mind, when he said that. Last I looked, the the UN's Intergovern- mental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been issuing regular reports on the subject, ever since the early 1990s... ... and while some of those early reports may have been occasional- ly 'off-target', with hindsight: they nearly always erred on the more 'catastrophic' side of caution. (In other words: they predicted consequences that were often WORSE, than the ones we are ac- tually experiencing.) For instance: the first ICCP re- port, issued in 1992, stated that: "We are certain of the following: emissions resulting from human activities are substantially increas- ing the atmospheric concentra- tions of the greenhouse gases. These increases will result on av- erage in an additional warming of the Earth's surface." The report specifically predicted "a global temperature rise of about 2C by 2025, compared with the period before the industrial revo- lution sparked the mass burning of fossil fuels". In 2023, the rise has been meas- ured at 1.4C (i.e., well on its way to reaching that target; but not quite there yet)... Having said all that: the report I reckon Robert Abela himself is ac- tually referring to, was the one is- sued by the ICCP in 2018... which had starkly warned that: "Climate change is occurring earlier and more rapidly than expected..." By an interesting coincidence, there was another report that year – given wider media prominence in Malta (seeing as it appeared to predict the future ANNIHILA- TION, of our entire country) – in which researchers from Newcastle University "analysed changes in flooding, droughts, and heatwaves for 571 European cities between 2050 and 2100 using all availa- ble climate models. They found that Valletta – and, indeed, the whole of Malta and Gozo – will be among the cities worst affected by drought and heatwaves. "Even under the most optimistic scenario, Malta will experience 38 per cent more heatwave days each year and a maximum rise in tem- peratures of about 4˚C. Drought, lack of rainfall, will become 1.29 times more severe. The changes to our climate will be more apoc- alyptic under the higher impact scenarios..." So yes: in a sense, Robert Abela is certainly correct to say that 'cli- mate change is happening faster, than earlier predicted'... except that this realisation has been com- mon knowledge, to the rest of the entire world, ever since 2018... ... which just happens to be two whole years BEFORE Robert Ab- ela himself even became Prime Minister of this country, at all! As far as I can make out, then: from the very first day of his en- tire premiership – in January 2020 – Robert Abela has been (or SHOULD have been) aware of the existence of numerous scientific reports: all clearly and unequivo- cally predicting the exact same (if not, even worse) 'extreme weather conditions', that we are currently experiencing in 2023. At which point: the question be- comes: what has Prime Minister Robert Abela actually DONE, over the past three years, to 'prepare' this country for those predicted calamities? And what has he 'in- vested' in, exactly, to safeguard us against those potentially 'apoca- lyptic' effects? Let's see now. Ever since 2020, Abela's government has em- barked on a never-ending series of 'road-building/road-widening' infrastructural projects – the ones which were 'not responsible' for those floods of November 2021, remember? – evidently, without ever pausing to consider other sci- entific reports... ... which separately argue that 'roads' – especially if made of 'black tarmac' (as opposed to tar- mac of a lighter, and therefore less 'heat-absorbent', shade) – both exacerbate the problem of 'flash floods', and also contribute to a problem known as "urban heat is- land effect"... Meanwhile, another of this gov- ernment's great accomplishments, since 2020, has been to strip the entire island of virtually anything even remotely resembling a 'tree' (or indeed, anything that can cast any form of 'shade', at all)... ... and this, by the way, is an- other the reasons that the recent heatwave may actually have felt 'hotter', than it even needed to feel. For while the actual temper- ature was 'only' around 40/41C – it probably felt more like '48C', simply because the heat is being permanently 'stored' by the earth beneath us (and beneath our buildings, too)... All of which, naturally, leads us to the one thing Abela very clear- ly FAILED to do, in all this time. He evidently did NOT either 'prepare', or 'invest', enough in the country's energy distribution network, to cope with those tem- peratures (to the extent that he's promising to 'fast-track it', only now)... ... even though he must sure- ly have known, all along, that he would HAVE TO, sooner or later; and not just because of 'climate change', by the way... but also, to accommodate the ever-growing demands, of a population that is currently skyrocketing... BE- CAUSE OF HIS OWN GOV- ERNMENT'S POLICIES! And after all that... Robert Abela still has the gall to 'blame climate change', for his own failures?! I mean, come on. There's a limit to how 'predictable' you can actually be, you know... 'Blaming climate change' is just another way for Robert Abela to 'blame himself'... Raphael Vassallo