The Global North isn’t ready for climate breakdown
European responses to extreme weather demonstrate post-industrial nations have much to learn from people in the Global South, writes Aranyo Aarjan
Flooding in Tilff, Belgium, July 2021 (Photo: Regine Fabri; licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0)When I was growing up in Kolkata, every monsoon the streets would get flooded. I remember looking forward to the days when school would get cancelled and I would get to stay home and watch cartoons. I would look out from the balcony to see life carrying on, people wading through sometimes waist-deep murky brown water. Somehow it all still seemed fun through the eyes of a child, like an adventure.
This summer, however, as I’ve watched places around the world face historic levels of flooding, I’ve felt nothing but a sense of creeping horror at the onset of the realisation that climate change is here. It’s all happening even sooner than predicted, and will get far worse.
Of course, climate change has already been here for a long time, its effects felt most acutely by the people in the Global South who have contributed the least to the current state of affairs. Yet in the face of unprecedented amounts of rainfall, multiple countries around the world, including some of the richest and most technologically advanced nations, faced deadly flooding in the month of July alone. It would appear that the Global North’s preparedness for climate catastrophe is also far from what many may have expected.
Climate systems are incredibly complex and it is difficult to conclusively prove that this summer’s flooding was caused by climate change. However, these types of weather events certainly fit the model that many scientists have long predicted…
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