A wake up call and our fortunes

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EDITORIAL
A wake up call and our fortunes
Kaieteur News, 10 July 2007

On Saturday high winds ripped across coastal Guyana leaving a trail of
destruction in their wake. Houses lost roofs, large trees collapsed,
some falling on houses and people panicked. The winds howled and people
in relatively sturdy houses became afraid.

The reality is that we in this country have never had to build houses
to withstand hurricanes or earthquakes. We have learnt and it has been
clearly established that we are outside the hurricane belt. This, to
our credit, is due to the vagaries of nature.

From time to time we have experienced earth tremors, some so violent
that people ran out of their homes. In one case in 1968 there was a
tremor that caused motorcyclists to crash and cracks to appear in
buildings and roadways that had withstood the worst the local climatic
conditions had to offer. Saturday should be a wake up call for those
who have a say in the climate changes rocking the world but not many in
the developed world that insist on clearing the trees in the interest
of development, in burning fossil fuels by the ton recognized the
threat to states like ours.

We have never even touched our forests but recognizing that they
represent a portion of the lungs of the earth we have made them
available for conservation. But for us with most of our coastland way
below sea level this can never be enough for our salvation. It is as if
we need to reverse the trend that the developed world on which we
depend has exacted its toll on us for the money it has loaned us over
the years.

For some time the scientists have been talking about the shrinking
polar caps and about the threat of rising sea levels. But many of us
always believed that we are safe from any disaster because in the same
way that a young person fails to contemplate death, those of us who are
obsessed with life never think about disaster.

Now there is a move by some countries to reduce the dependence on
fossil fuels particular in the vehicle industries. There is a drive for
substitutes that would include fuels made from vegetable oils and from
sugarcane.

Sometimes, gift horses come in unrecognizable forms. The drive to save
the planet may be offering Guyana a chance not only to save itself but
to reverse its poor state. With its abundant land space, albeit on the
same strip of coastal plain that is threatened by the very global
warming, Guyana stands a chance to produce the alternative to fossil
fuel.

Brazil has gone a long way toward producing ethanol long seen as an
alternative to the oil on which the Middle East seems to have a
monopoly and which poor countries like ours are paying a fortune for.
We have the land to produce acres upon acres of sugarcane but the issue
is whether we have the people to cultivate the crop. Already we need
even more sugarcane to make the multi-million-dollar sugar factory
worth the investment. But the way things are we may never be able to
capitalize on the windfall that seems to be coming this way.

We cannot call for help from the developed world because the people
there still insist on primary products and we have never gone above
being primary producers. This has been the case ever since, because we
were never allowed to do otherwise. We produced bauxite that others
converted to aluminium; we produced dark sugar that others refined; and
we produced timber that others fashioned.

Today, even if we tried we do not have the skilled people to capitalise
on the windfall that seems to be staring at us from beyond the horizon.
But the clock is ticking. Unless we join in the apparent move to save
the planet then even the coastal plain that hosts the breadbasket of
the nation and which holds the promise of feeding all of CARICOM will
be lost.

Saturday may have been a wake up call. In one case a house collapsed
and some children narrowly escaped serious injury. There were no
reports of people being injured by flying debris. There was no flooding
but the absence of these things may cause some of us to believe that
all the talk about global warming is nothing but hot air.

The time is now for our national leaders to shift focus. They should
begin to examine anything that threatens to halt global warning because
we are certain that the solution lies in our corner of the world.We
have been poor for too long and there is no crime in making money at
the expense of others who created the conditions for us to in the first
instance.