Winds of Change: Short Stories about Our Climate

by Robert Sassor

  We, the United States, have contributed significantly more to current climate change than any other nation, and, for this, we are deeply sorry.

  It is incumbent on our nation and the international community to respond to the altered circumstances of States suffering from the effects of climate change. Our nation's response will be to lead the international community in developing an effective mechanism to administer and protect maritime rights—to provide social, cultural political, and economic support and guidance for people forced to abandon their lands, without hope of return. I will introduce measures to welcome environmental refugees to our protecting shores and support them. We owe them that, and more.

  Today, the decision-making elite includes thousands of environmental agencies in nations across the world. Collectively, they rule over the Earth's natural resources. These officials now make decisions that are good for themselves but bad for society and future generations. Behind a veil of environmental law, their decisions push the entire world toward collapse.

  I have witnessed throughout the world that agencies implementing laws that are designed to protect the natural environment have become perpetrators of legalized destruction of the environment. New environmental laws can be passed, but if they remain bound by the frame in which we've operated for the last forty years, governments will continue to squander our natural resources. Legal systems can support either the politics of scarcity or the politics of abundance, but Earth's natural systems can support only the latter.

  A nation that fails to protect its natural resources consigns its citizens to misery and often death. Environmental regulation remains accountable to a supreme set of mandates, the laws of nature.

  Despite entrenched assumptions that environmental law remains effective, the proof lies in the health of the ecosystems themselves. Society now violates nature's laws not only at the level of species and individual ecosystems but also at the level of atmospheric function, ocean health, and biodiversity. On a truly global level.

  Moral principle is the foundation of law. Law must tap the deepest moral understanding of humanity not only to maintain credibility and respect in society at large but also to inspire citizens to participate in democracy. Environmental law has lost much of its citizen support. It long ago strayed from the populist movement that gave rise to its hopeful inception.

  I have a vision of what our human experience could encompass if liberated from the need to dominate and control the natural environment. As our defensive walls of separation and domination start to disintegrate, we become more open to a world of increasing richness, complexity, and beauty. In bonding with the natural world we are confronted with mystery, wildness, and danger. Facing nature on its own terms means becoming acquainted with the chaotic, strange, and frightening aspects as well as the familiar and comfortable.

  Humans have the idea, now centuries old, that we are above natural processes rather than immersed in them. We have thought, and continue to teach our children to think, that we control nature, at least most of the time, and we have felt validated in this belief by the modest success of some of our inventions.

  Despite the international community's increasing acknowledgement of the differential experiences and skills women and men bring to development and environmental sustainability efforts, women still have lesser economic, political and legal clout and are hence less able to cope with, and are more exposed to, the adverse effects of the changing climate. Drawing on women's experiences, knowledge, and skills—and supporting their empowerment—will make climate change responses more effective. The impacts of gender inequalities and women's recurrent socio-economic disadvantages must no longer be ignored.

  Climate change is not gender-neutral.

  Women play a pivotal role in natural resources management and in other productive and reproductive activities at the household and community levels. This puts them in a position to contribute to day-to-day strategies adapted to changing environmental realities. Their extensive knowledge and expertise make them effective actors and agents of change.

  Communities fare better during natural disasters when women play a leadership role in early warning systems and reconstruction. Women share information related to community well-being, choose less polluting energy sources, and adapt more easily to environmental changes when their family's survival is at stake. We have witnessed women in South Asia displaying enormous strength and capacity when natural disasters strike. Preparing for hazards, managing after a disaster and rebuilding damaged livelihoods. They secure food and water for the family, securing seed and other productive material, and taking care of the sick and elderly.

  Women's greater participation will enhance the effectiveness and sustainability of climate change projects and policies. Women are better at mobilizing communities in the event of disaster risk management and reduction, and have a better understanding of what strategies are needed at the local level.

  Because economic, legal, and socio-cultural constraints can lead to women's capacity gaps, climate change responses need to address women's historic and current disadvantages. As such, policy and programming should recognize that because of their central role in environmental, social, and economic development, women's empowerment and gender equality is beneficial for family and community wellbeing and livelihoods and is key factor in promoting the resilience of economies and communities. Actions, technologies, and strategies need to be pro-poor and gender responsive in their design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation. We will lead on putting in place all necessary measures to deliver that.

  We must be a source of hope to the poor, the sick, and the marginalized. Peace and security in our time requires it. The patriots of 1776 fought to give us a nation for the people, entrusting each generation to keep safe our founding creed, and we must continue to do that. We are the keepers of this legacy.

  There is now a case for an amendment to the Constitution of the United States for protection of the environment. The drafters in 1787 did not foresee the severe impacts that unprecedented expansion of population, technology, and economic power would have upon the environment—and made no provision for its wise governance in the public interest. We have witnessed that protection of the environment has now become an urgent responsibility, to which our traditional legal system has responded inadequately. We have reached a point in the development of our society at which the fragmentary bases of our environmental laws are inadequate to support the actions that may be necessary to attain national and international environmental policy objectives. Our lack of constitutional protection of the environmental basis of our health, security, and prosperity contrasts sharply with our commitment to civil rights.

  If we are unable or unwilling to place environmental protection high among our constitutional obligations, we will hardly be a credible leader among nations in this aspect of public and international policy. More is expected of the United State than of most nations. Amending the United States Constitution to recognize the fundamental importance of the environment in national and international affairs will greatly facilitate the movement toward global environmental protection, which must succeed if we are to preserve the richness and renewability of the living Earth. This will be delivered under my presidency.

  Our nation's courage must not diminish. We must not allow the free and courageous use of our minds to diminish. This is not the time for soft-mindedness. We must find new ways to communicate with the peoples of the world, with belief in our hearts, to be better understood. We can invest in, and redefine, our spiritual and moral values. We must not let the mistakes of this nation dictate our future. And we must right the wrongs of our past.

  Thank you. God bless you.

  Eleanor G. Allan

  Sand, Conor Corderoy

  The child had never seen his father cry. Now the father wept like a child. And his mother screamed, clenched her fists, and stamped her feet while his father, sitting in the green armchair, rocked and covered his face, keening.
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  "You have to do something, Ibrahim!" she screamed and stamped her foot again, standing over him. "They have a duty! An obligation! Talk to them, Ibrahim! Tell them! What shall we do about Babacar? How shall we feed him?"

  Babacar heard his name and looked at his mother and wondered if he was going to starve. He looked back at his father, waiting for an answer, but his father just shook his head and covered his face. And keened. Now his mother also covered her face and began to walk in circles around the room, crying out to God for help for her family.

  His father spread his hands, hunching his shoulders, and looked up at his wife. His face was begging her to stop. He said, "Awa, Awa, what can I do? I am nobody. The order comes from Munich. Our Senegal plant is closed. They have gone. What can I do?"

  Babacar thought, "He still calls it our plant, as though he owned it."

  His father went on, his pink hands open in appeal. "They can't work here anymore. It is too hot for them. There are no crops. There is no rain. They need to move and do their work somewhere else…"

  Awa stopped in her circling and stared at her husband. Her eyes were huge. So suddenly that it shocked Babacar and made his heart race, she leaned forward and screamed, "We are going to die! We are going to die! We are going to die!"

  * * *

  More than three and a half thousand miles away, the child watched his father. He had never seen his father cry, and somehow knew he never would. He felt his father was dry. Like sand. There was no water in him. But his mother was crying. She was sitting at the bar in the vast, open-plan room, holding a tall gin and tonic with lots of ice. He could see the ice-cubes through the frosted glass and imagined her tears rolling down her face, past the corner of her mouth, dripping into the icy drink.

  Her eyes were puffy, and she said, "I don't want to go to fucking Canada! I don't fucking want to go to Canada! What fucking part of I don't fucking want to fucking go to fucking Canada do you not understand, Peter?"

  Peter watched his wife with eyes that were oddly like the cubes in her drink. He flicked those eyes at his son on every other cuss as if to check the impact and waited for his wife to finish. When she paused to drink, he said, "Do you think you can refrain from swearing in front of our son? This discussion is inappropriate now. This is not the time or pl…"

  "When then? When? When is it appropriate for you to discuss my life and my future?" She was holding her glass up like the Statue of Liberty, but leaning past it to thrust her face towards her husband.

  He raised his left eyebrow, and hardness seemed to seep down from his eyes into his jaw and mouth. His voice was arid, barren, like frozen desert earth. He said, "I have explained, Moira, that we have to pull out of the plant in Senegal. There is a fucking drought out there…"

  "So you can swear?"

  "…there is a drought out there that isn't going to stop. We experiment with food cultivation, Moira. You can't cultivate food in a perpetual drought. We need to change the conditions. Canada has those conditions. Munich tells us we need to change the operation, so we change the operation."

  "I don't give a fuck about Munich!"

  He droned on over her, as though he hadn't heard her scream, "We have to move to Canada to set up the operation!"

  "Why?" She climbed off the stool where she was sitting at the bar and took a step towards him, where he was sitting on the sofa. He regarded her without expression. She leaned forward, her face red and her neck swollen. "Why?" she repeated. "Why? You've been ten fucking years in Senegal and you've never set foot there."

  "I've been there ten times."

  "Once a fucking year for a week at a time!"

  "Stop swearing."

  "Now we have to fucking live in Ottawa?"

  Peter sighed and rubbed his face. "Nobody asks questions in Senegal, Moira. You know the score. The move to Canada is politically very sensitive. Greenland or Denmark might complain. I have to be there to negotiate. We do not want to be in the public eye! I have explained this. There are environmental issues. It's a hot potato."

  "Fuck you! Fuck you and your fucking potatoes!"

  * * *

  Two thousand miles away, to the North and East, in a tiny settlement in Greenland called Qasigiannguit, the child watched his father sleep and snore. He had seen his father cry many times. Every time, in fact, that he had got drunk and beaten him. The child was dimly aware of the pain of his bruises, but familiarity is a powerful anesthetic, and as he watched his father, lumpen and grunting, drooling slightly from the corner of his mouth, with the empty bottle by his fallen hand, despair was a deeper pain than his bruises. But Dr. Petersen was helping him to overcome despair. Dr. Petersen was teaching him a lot.

  He stepped out into the cold. The summer melt had peaked. It had been, yet again, the biggest in recorded history. Dr. Petersen had told him so. Now cold air was coming down from the North, but it was not cold enough. Dr. Petersen said it should be a lot colder. The snow that had fallen lay melting and turning to sludge on the roads.

  He looked up towards Dr. Petersen's big, wooden house, and the towering ice cliffs that rose one and a half miles into the cold blue air behind it. It was true there was more melt and sludge this year than other years, but it was still cold. Ice-cold. He started to walk towards Dr. Petersen's house. There was a black Land Rover parked outside. It was new to him. He had never seen it before.

  Dr. Petersen had given him a key, and he unlocked the door and stepped in. The house was warm, and he could smell coffee. He heard voices. Petersen and another man. Petersen sounded angry.

  The boy stepped through the living room and climbed the stairs towards Petersen's office. Petersen's voice grew louder. "Have you any idea? Have you any understanding of the impact it will have? Do you even understand the function of plankton?"

  The other man's voice droned an answer the boy could not make out. He climbed a little higher. Petersen seemed to interrupt: "Don't talk to me about jurisdiction. It's in our backyard, three hundred miles across the strait. You have to appeal to the UN. Take action in the ICJ. Talk to the Canadian Consulate, or the embassy in Copenhagen. Do something!"The other man's voice was louder now, placating: "Lars, Lars, come on. You have to stop seeing catastrophe in every event. You are a researcher, a scientist. You have to be objective. Keep a cool head. How many times has the IPCC got it wrong? How many times have we heard that we've gone over the tipping point? Positive feedback…?" He waved his hands in an "on-and-on" gesture.

  The boy reached the door and looked in. Petersen was sitting, perched against his desk. His face was tight and flushed.

  There was a man in a suit, sitting in an armchair and looking up at him. He had heavy-rimmed glasses, and the reflected light from the window hid his eyes. He was smiling, humouring, 1atronizing. He spread his hands and shook his head. "Remember the Gruyere cheese? The whole Greenland ice sheet was like a Gruyere cheese riddled with moulins. The whole ice-sheet was going to disintegrate. What happened? Nothing happened. Remember Jay Zwally? The canary is dead. It's time to get out of the mine!"' The man burst out laughing. "Here we are, almost a decade later, and nothing has happened. Nothing ever happens."

  Petersen leant forward. His face was rigid, and his hands gripped his desk. He spoke through his teeth. "Are you stupid? For crying out loud! The Arctic is navigable for the second year running. Do you know what that means, you fool? Do you know what will happen if we lose the northern icecap?"

  The man in the suit sighed and flopped back in his chair, but Petersen pressed on. "Do you know what will happen if that plant goes into operation? All their toxic waste will be pumped into the straits. That waste will kill the plankton and create ocean deserts. Do you know what will happen if the plankton dies?"

  The man sighed and moved to rise. "This is going nowhere…"

  Petersen got to his feet and stepped towards him, stabbing at him with his finger. His voice rasped. "The plankton is a sink. It consumes the CO2. What will happen? What will happen? Think, you fool! Think! What wil
l happen if they kill the plankton?"

  And then the man in the suit's face went hard. He stared at Petersen and spoke very quietly, "The CO2 in the far North will grow exponentially, warming the Arctic and accelerating the melting of the northern ice-sheets. And then we will have access to the oil fields in Greenland, and we will be able to sail from Europe to Asia in a fraction of the time."

  Petersen took a step back. His face had turned white. Like ice. He said, "But the icecaps are our cooling system. Without them the planet will burn. Millions might die."

  "Wake up, Dr. Petersen. It is already too late. It has been too late for a century. There is no way back. There is no way out of the mine. The markets dictate the planet must get hotter. It would not be the first time that millions died in the service of the market. Live with it!"

  A cold dread drained through the boy's skin. A bloodless, cold numbness touched his face, like a whisper out of time, and he knew, without fully understanding it, that something terrible was happening. He heard himself speak in a small voice, "Dr. Petersen…?"

  Dr. Petersen turned and saw a small, frightened Inuit boy standing in his doorway. He felt his heart contract, and he said, "Akycha…"

  * * *

  Four thousand miles away, Babacar's father had stopped crying. His face was drawn, and his eyes looked sickly. Awa was sitting on the sofa now, still sobbing. Babacar wanted to cry with his mother, but he was paralysed, listening to his father.

  "We have to go. Awa, we have to go. The whole town is going. The crops have failed. The animals are dying. There is no food. It is too hot. The old ones and the babies are dying with the heat. And now the plant is closed. We cannot stay. We have to go."