IN Italy six months of rain fell in 36 hours. The cost of rebuilding will be in the billions of euros.
By the end of the century the world risks losing 15% of its species if global temperatures climb 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels, according to new research.
Spain is in a mega-drought. Out of the 55 hottest temperatures ever recorded in Spain, only five were recorded before 2020. On land and at sea, 2024 could be even hotter.
READ MORE: Mike Small: As the world burns, the UK media points out alternatives for a holiday
A report by the World Meteorological Organisation released last year showed that the last eight years are on track to be the hottest on record. It said still soaring emissions mean humanity’s hopes to hit global temperature targets in the coming decades may not be achievable.
Every time a climate-related disaster occurs, some shady elderly businessmen or indolent uneducated hacks, who aren’t real scientists, will declare that that the science of climate change is wrong.
Only those with a vested interest in the status quo, and the gullible they have manipulated, continue to deny reality. Climate scientists are not talking about climate model predictions anymore. The reality of extreme weather is here now.
READ MORE: Food security unit launched to monitor and mitigate potential crises
Capitalist governments across the globe took no meaningful action on global warming, and humanity is confronted with a catastrophe.
As global warming claims thousands of lives, threatens food supplies with devastating droughts and produces severe flooding, the approaching catastrophe is already visible. Although the earth has only warmed by 1.15 degrees since the end of the 19th century, extreme weather events such as heatwaves, heavy rain and hurricanes are destroying millions of livelihoods. The rise in sea levels as a result of the melting of glaciers and polar caps will lead to even greater disasters.
The destruction of climate change has been brought about by capitalism, this Ponzi scheme designed to enrich a wealthy elite while trashing the planet. The rest of humanity has to pay the price.
Alan Hinnrichs
Dundee
I WRITE to say how much I enjoyed Mike Russell’s somewhat nostalgic although enigmatic musings on his recent meanderings in Bucharest in Saturday’s edition (Life is more full outside the Union – and so are the shops, May 20). It’s certainly easy to agree with him that the EU countries “have moved on from Brexit and no longer have any interest in it except as a baleful example of a foolish self-harming mistake by what is now a poorer country. The damage to our citizens, companies, communities and country caused by Brexit is simply going to get worse.”
His Saturday piece was both ironic and enigmatic, because if anybody knew the abominable act of political and economic folly that was Brexit, Mike knew in his various capacities as Minister for UK Negotiations on Scotland’s Place in Europe and more recently as Cabinet Secretary for the Constitution, Europe and External Affairs.
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I enjoyed revisiting his speech that wound up the Holyrood debate on the refusal of consent for Boris Johnson’s Brexit trade deal (overwhelmingly approved) and considered by some to be the best of what our Edinburgh parliament has had to offer. It was good to be reminded about what a proper parliament it used to be rather than the whiter shade of pale of the current county council chamber.
Why oh why, however, with his insight, did he not refuse to toe the Sturgeon line of a gold-standard referendum when he should have been in the vanguard of a campaign to enforce our Claim of Right and withdraw from the Treaty of Union in the face of such flagrant self-harm to our country that was Brexit?
Mike claims to be a serious nationalist on a lifelong crusade for Scottish independence and takes serious umbrage if that’s brought into question, but with his position at the epicentre of a cluster-bourach on steroids, he like other senior SNP members chose to put party before country.
The SNP are a busted flush and if we are to achieve a free Scotland, all right-thinking “independistas” need to get behind Salvo and the Scottish Liberation movement.
Iain Bruce
Nairn
WHILST LibDem leader Ed Davey isn’t playing his hand yet, Stephen Flynn has apparently indicated there might be a possibility of supporting Labour without the promise of an immediate referendum. That presumes of course that the SNP return in significant numbers.
READ MORE: Stephen Flynn dismisses reports of trade-off with Labour over indyref2
Mr Flynn may not recall the difficulties facing the late, great Paddy Ashdown when he attempted negotiations with that ghoul Blair who still keeps popping up on our screens. In the end Labour didn’t need a coalition. But the current Labour Party is not even worthy of the name, refusing as it does to reverse legislation against protest, address the disaster of Brexit, tone down the rhetoric and grapple with the reality of those seeking refuge here, and reverse the disastrous privatisations of rail, water and other public services, including the unacknowledged creeping privatisation of the health service.
It seems that Westminster politicians of all parties, cushioned as they are from the realities of their constituents’ daily lives, are happy to spout execreta whilst their people swim in it.
Marjorie Ellis Thompson
Edinburgh
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