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CLIMATE CHANGE: BEYOND FOSSIL FUEL
Effects of metals on the sun could be contributing more to climate change that fossil fuel emissions, argues Victor C. Ariole
Those who think they have a right to remove whatever they find in the ground also follow a human extractivist mode where the dignity of the local people is extracted, they are slaves, people discarded left on the streets like garbage…The Pope.
About six thousand years ago, the Sahara Desert and Namib Desert both encroached from the eastern flank of Atlantic Ocean, north and south, were according to archeologists and Malian folkore tales, lush vegetations and multiple-lake space, like it is seen today in the Amazon forest of South America bordering south west side of the Atlantic. What has not been completely explained about desert encroachment in the Sahara is whether it is entirely human made or part of what is seen as force majeure bordering on natural climate disaster or tectonic shift, given its miraculous right for Europe to separate itself from Africa by creating the Mediterranean Sea to synchronize with another miraculous end flow of Nile River; still rich resource flow from Africa, from Great Lakes region, another poverty stricken people.
A priori, before humans start giving a scientist cloak to positive or negative phenomena as they perceive them, their occurrences are dependent on what the sun or the moon find abnormal and must create terrestrial crises within lush biodiversity or infinite gaseous or stratosphere jurisprudences’ management; or the contention of all of them to correct imbalances or degrade what is degradable to restore equilibrium.
That is why climate change as expressed currently could not be effectively satisfactory if hinged on reduction of the use of fossil fuel, and seen as the cause of carbon emission.
The Pope seems to be hinting at that when he pronounced his “Laudate Deum”; appealing to the most powerful of this world to rethink their attitudes, as providence with constant values, existentially, proved by the presence of the sun and moon, like the ocean, throw out what is not healthy for terrestrial sustainability; that is great energy acting a priori for the sustainability of the earth yet to be scientifically understood like el-Niño and la Nina of the Pacifics.
To the Pope, extractive industries and the use made of the rocks or minerals extracted, and in some cases discarding the local people from where they are extracted, could be ominous to the expected balance or equilibrium that makes the earth a shared space for both humans, animals, plants and whatever exist on it. “Economic policies that promote scandalous wealth for a privileged few and degrading conditions for many others spell the end of peace and justice”.
Opulence is what King Mansa Musa of the Mandigo or Malinké Empire of Mali was known of; a space that is now part of the 6.7millionkm2 Sahara Desert, almost 30% of Africa’s surface area and a poverty-ridden population.
That population, combining those of Kabyle, Berber, Kanem and Shua of about 20 million and the Fula or Peul of about also 20 million in west, central Africa and greatly decimated in Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco and Libya, have folklore tales that relate how they were great connoisseurs of happenings in the celestial realms as the lakes and the biodiversity nature of their space point to them the positions of the stars.
Hypothetically like it is known of Namib desert in Namibia, as living ocean of sands as valuable rock dominated area, flowing into Atlantic Ocean, so also Mali was known to be geologically endowed with rocks, gold and diamond making it the envy of past civilisations before that of the Romans and the Ottomans. Penetrating Africa, then, was a herculean task by most predating civilisations, including that of Arabs.
Diagonally, Sahara Desert to Amazon Forest is about 7000km and the President of France Emmanuel Macron was forced to cry out on 23rd of August 2019 when the place was burning, so that the most powerful of this world-G7-could propose policies to stop the burning and the mining activities going on there creating grievous obnoxious gas emission, and as today the Colombian and Brazilian authorities have been adequately empowered to stop, to an extent, all the illegal mining activities going on there. In minning, both humans and the ozone layer are degraded.
Why is it that from Kyoto to current COP28 no one is talking about the extractive industry disaster that goes on in Africa and throwing many Africans to the street like garbages and quite undegradable or upgradable to either be part of throwaway human culture or deserving of dignity, respectively. In everywhere mining activities, as well as smelting activities, are going on, humans are degraded as well as the ozone layer; not even the new coinage of reduction of methane emission reduces those effects.
It is baffling that Africans are still lacking in negotiating skills in this world that seems to be completely against them notwithstanding nature’s intervention, a priori mediated by Atlantic Ocean and still available lush vegetation.
I hear that most satellites shot into the space are revolving around the equator, and the metals used in building them are part of Sunspots, 2,500 times stronger than what the Earth expects, decreasing atmospheric pressure, just like making the sun finds it difficult to do its natural work of clearing the earth of any suffocating object.
That is why I like how the French expresses climate change: Gas à effet de serre (gaseous emission that creates noose tightening of the climate, like strangulating the climate) not necessarily carbon emission. Effects of powerful metals like gold and diamond used in crafting satellites and spacecraft on the sun could be a weightier reason for climate change that mere fossil fuel emission because till today India, Russia, China are still making great use of coal and, so, why debar Africans from making use of crude oil that remains what is their own comparative advantage if in deed market forces still reigns. The most confusing language now is: Net Zero emission, distinct from limiting average temperature to 1.50C pre-industrial level; and no one is stating that, as it is seemingly 0.40C, before, as recorded by the data of the West. Between 0.40C and about 30C, the greed of the most powerful is evident, and with it another impending Sahara Desert is waiting elsewhere.
Ariole is a
Professor of French and Francophone Studies,
University of Lagos
