‘People have to move; otherwise, governments will have to move people for their own good.’
ONCE again, we’ve seen the images — rising floodwaters, streets turned into rovers, people on rooftops hanging on to dear life, sometimes even inside vehicles as they are carried away by torrential rains.
To think that “Enteng” was not even a typhoon of super proportions. It was a “mere” storm, but one that dumped far too much water on the major urban centers of our country that for 24 hours or so we almost came to a total standstill.
This occurrence is not happening once in a hundred years, or once in a hundred months. It’s happening once in a hundred days, and may very well happen once in a hundred hours.
It’s the new reality, the new normal. Rains pouring down more than ever before, onto an earth no longer arid enough to absorb every drop. So comments like “this has never happened before” quickly become passe, as the inundation happens again and again and again.
There is no denying that the climate is no longer what it used to be. And there’s no changing that back to what it was a decade or more ago. There’s only now the urgent need to react and respond to the new normal.
What to do?
We have to move. People have to move. We cannot remain where the floods can get at us because they will keep getting at us more and more frequently.
A good friend and expert geologist told me that he had traveled to the polar regions as part of a study. There, he saw for himself how the ice covering the Arctic Region was decreasing at a faster and faster rate — faster than the increase of ice cover in the Antarctic. Our planet’s weather systems are related to the fact that we have frozen regions at both poles and so any dramatic changes in these regions will result in dramatic changes to our weather.
Changes such as those we are seeing now. Changes that will include a rise in sea levels to an extent that many of our towns and cities will find themselves inundated, situated below sea level.
All these can only mean that every rainy season, those who get flooded can only expect to get flooded. And if they got flooded worse this year than last, they can expect to get flooded worse next year than this year. And that is why, difficult as it will be, people will just have to up the stake and move on their own, because things will only get worse.
There is no fighting Mother Nature even to a draw. If we don’t give way, she will barrel through and just get her way.
People have to move; otherwise, governments will have to move people for their own good.
There is just no other way.
