The extraordinary cold snap that has so far seen the deaths of at least 10 people in the Kingdom can seem like startling proof that the world’s climate is indeed undergoing radical change. And the oddity is that we are supposed to be suffering from global warming, not freezing. The exceptional cold events of the last two months — the ice storms in North America, the snow that has hit the Middle East, including some northern Saudi cities seem to indicate that the term “global freaking” is indeed more appropriate than “global warming”.
While global temperatures are indeed rising according to all legitimate peer-reviewed science, by about 0.74 degrees Celsius in the past century, and temperatures are expected to rise more rapidly in the next 100 years, this doesn’t necessarily mean it gets hotter everywhere. Climate is influenced by countless complex interactions. Melting ice caps can change weather patterns — from sending Arctic air further south in the winter to delivering more rain to deserts.
But just as no single weather phenomenon can be used to deduce larger, long-term climatologic trends, unusual cool weather in Saudi Arabia does not undermine the science of global warming. In fact, while the temperatures are indeed unusually low, there have been lower readings in the past. But certainly the argument is still out about what exactly is happening, and what we can do about it. And that increasingly politicized debate can be argued without end until huge parts of coastal cities from Jakarta to New Orleans disappear beneath the waves, and until Bangladesh and low-lying Pacific Islands face even more severe environmental crises.
What needs to be done is to draw up global contingency plans for a phenomenon that is as real and observable as the rapidly disappearing glaciers of Greenland. Just as every country is being affected — in one way or another — so every country that has the means must be preparing to assist those that do not. The danger is that the developed world will focus entirely on protecting what it has. Should the day come when great cities like London and New York are under real threat from rising sea levels caused by melting polar ice, then those with the most power to influence change will retreat from global action and focus on local damage control.
That is why work need to begin now, almost certainly at the UN, to lobby for a treaty by which all countries will commit to help each other in the face of the changes ahead. This is not altruism on the part of developed countries.
If they want to do something about the growing problem of immigration, they must — in their own self-interest — be willing to invest in elevating the quality of life of the rapidly growing population of people who live in abject poverty. Flooding and natural disaster will only encourage them to flee to the safety and stability of the developed world. If radical climate change prompts a free-for-all, there will be no winners.
