Daily Times

At his speech at the Republican National Convention in Florida, Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney spoke of America’s choice thus: “President Obama’s promise was to slow the rising waters and heal the earth. My promise, as president, is to help you and your family.” He thus dismissed climate change as an issue for America, and emphasised instead that America’s economic problems must be fixed first. New York is having financial problems at present. However, its future lies under water even if its current financial problems are fixed. The absence of a sound environmental policy today will cause the drowning of New York tomorrow. What part of this continuum does Romney not understand?

Romney’s comments ridicule attempts to protect and preserve the natural ecosystem of the earth. As the most polluting nation in the world, the US must set its environmental policy on a track that redeems the earth’s future. Indeed, Romney’s comments are silly and divorced from reality. He wants America’s economic prosperity restored while he ridicules its environmental woes. It just so happens that right now, 90 percent of the US is suffering from severe and unprecedented drought and 28 states have declared a state of emergency. The “earth” of Romney’s America literally needs to be healed in order to continue to feed American families. Romney should not have used the words, “healing the earth” as a source of ridicule at a time like this.

The drought affecting the continent after 2010 massively increased in 2012, as 90 percent of the US is affected by drought at some level, with severe drought covering large areas. Twenty-eight states have declared an emergency. The drought has already inflicted a severe economic crisis on the entire country, and will continue to do so. Since food is involved, it might also threaten the health and lives of human beings outside the US. A cycle of unemployment and credit crunch kept the US’s depression going for four years, but this new drought is not like anything before. The solution to this crisis does not lie in creating jobs or restoring the health of banks. It lies in taking care of the earth.

Yet Romney is mocking the idea of environmental reform in the face of pressing evidence. The North American drought is caused by a record lack of snow and therefore melt water providing moisture, and by the extreme heat waves that are making water evaporate. Temperatures have suddenly started to go up in recent years. This is caused by climate change. Although being a natural disaster, there is little a politician can do to stop it in the short-term; in the long-term, climate change will increase such disasters and harm human societies. Therefore, it is important for politicians to take action to lessen the severity of what is ahead of us.

Since late 2010, the US has had more than its share of natural disasters. There has been a bad combination of storms, blackouts, and heat waves in 2010. There were severe storms, floods, and tornadoes last year. Various agricultural pest infestations such as the stinkbug, and this year, severe heat waves caused a massive continental drought. The outbreak in Texas of the tropical disease called West Nile virus, as well as the category one hurricane on Katrina’s anniversary that breached the levies of Louisiana and pounded the very state in which Mitt Romney’s Republican Convention took place, are events that are crying out loud and clear for a sound policy on environment.

For a country dealing with economic problems, Romney should know that the damage caused by tornadoes, storms, floods and hurricanes costs billions. The drought is not something to be ignored. It is a major catastrophe that will affect the US’s economy severely. Indeed the trend might continue with the higher temperatures as America’s farmlands continue to dry up. Whoever becomes the next president will find that fixing the economic structure is not the only thing that will heal the US; he will also have to cope with the natural disasters.

Focus on the environment is what is needed to prevent and limit the present and future natural calamities striking the US. Yet Mitt Romney laughs this off as irrelevant to getting America back on its feet again. Romney says the economy is more important than the environment. The economy is dependent on the environment. The environment is the source of the economy. The greatest threats facing the economy are not Obama but environmental changes. The drought is caused by record temperatures and weather, which have nothing to do with the economic and financial policies of successive US administrations.

As a 15-year-old who has to face the future ahead of us, unlike this 65-year-old man, I am alarmed that Romney might become the next president of the United States.

The writer is an O-level student, published poet and writer, awarded artist from the Smithsonian, environment activist and documentary maker. His work has earned commendation from Barack Obama for outstanding achievement in environmental stewardship. He blogs at http://www.jshahzebkhan.wordpress.com