I wish I were an ocean and was poured on Australia‘s forest when it was burning. The indelible images of the animals arming humans to extricate them from the burns were pictures worth a thousand words.
Australia holds a history of being ravaged by the worst wildfires. In December 2019, the news on which the world kept tweeting to show sympathy, was the recent bushfire that left the whole New South Wales (NSW) maimed with its ever-growing climatic catastrophes.
Australia always runs the risk of wildfires due to increasing temperature resulting in creatures running out of breathing.
A few years back in 2009, the deadliest disaster decided in the history of Australia was Black Saturday Bushfires, which killed 173 people in Victoria, which was acknowledged by “A Constant,” short story collection of Alice Bishop.
The fresh sorrowful experience of Australia is pathetic. It has gone through a big gape of the prosperous feel of the future. It is reported that in NWS, the most populated state, 1,588 homes have been torpedoed and 650 have been reported dismantled. In total, more than 7.3 million hectares (17.9 million acres) have been flamed across Australia’s six states. The worst affected state is NSW, with more than 4.9 million hectares (12.1 million acres) flared, according to a report published on BBC on January 14.
Pakistan is, unfortunately, ranked as the seventh most vulnerable country to climate change
Moreover, half a billion animals across NSW have been reported to continue to burn, with millions likely dead. The number of total affected animals could be estimated as high as one billion nationwide, according to ecologists from the University of Sydney.
The films and photos of recent bushfire in Australia made many shed tears. Australians have undergone a suggestion of an advance trailer of the release of a destructive and sorrowful image of an era. In the absence of practical implementation against climate impacts, expressing our concerns and tweeting feeling to the Australian friends are extremely benighted vims that are signs to the unwelcomed world for our next generation to live.
Likewise, Pakistan is, unfortunately, ranked as the seventh most vulnerable country to climate change. Different areas of the country are inimically going through the worst results of climate change, which include water scarcity, famine, flash floods due to glacial melts, frequent heat waves, droughts, food shortage and displacement. These impacts are continuously worsening the culture of bliss and peace in the country.
Today, climate change is considered as big a topic to discuss internationally as terrorism.
The after-effects of climate change took several lives in Pakistan. The statistics acknowledge that 65 people died in the 2018 heatwave and around 1,200 in 2015. The floods in the summers of 2010 erased approximately 1,600 people.
People across the country protested many times to demand proximate public actions on the issue. But, making the issue remain a spoken image of enthusiasm is next to contributing nothing to it as we own an appreciation of contributing less than one per cent to global greenhouse gas emissions.
Similarly, depletion of food without knowing the limit of your affordability is another contribution to the climate crisis because rotting food in landfills results in the emittance of Methane (a powerful greenhouse gas).
Finding immediate solutions to climate change call us to focus on the areas from where we run diverse climate challenges. Planting trees is not the only solution to the problem. In our country, a list of rural areas confronts the absence of natural gas. The non-availability of gas is creating a myriad of problems for people in many areas. As a result, they chop down trees to meet their energy needs. This, undoubtedly, creates a negative impact on our ecosystem and increases deforestation. To put it in short, poverty, deforestation and lack of energy sources are interconnected drives to the issue. The defeat of this grave problem is not based on planting new trees but watering the ones already grown. Once they grow green, they will leave a change. Many trees, due to growing thrust, are denied growth. Meanwhile, the public turns its interest towards planting new plantations. Rather, we should water the planted and grown trees and stop chopping them down for baseless demands.
The writer is a freelance columnist from Turbat, Balochistan, and is currently a teacher at the School of Intensive Teaching. He tweets @ShohazSherjan