Age of Irony

 

Twenty twenty-two was a year and a half. Now, thankfully, we have seen its back with that of one of the existential issues of our times. I speak of Covid-19, of course, which, during its peak, had confined most of us to barracks. Happily, the majority of us survived it, and are now returning to something like normalcy. We are still not yet back to the relaxed ways of pre-pandemic days, though. Whatever satisfaction we may feel at this point, it is well to remember that the pandemic has taken nearly 7 million lives. These dead are not just numbers. They left behind deeply scarred families who watched their loved ones sicken and die. The worst is now over. Probably. We must spare a thought though, for those among us who avoided Covid’s worst outcome, yet survive to contend with the debilitating symptoms of “Long Covid”.

The virus’s other legacy, the economic one, endures too. The pandemic disrupted industrial production and dislocated supply chains everywhere, contributing to the anxiety that haunts many of us, especially among those who could not quarantine because they had to earn a living at-site. By contrast, those who could work off-site and earn from home, did so with smug satisfaction. Thus arose another divide between the haves and the have-nots that intensified appetites for false narratives about Covid, its nature and origins and, indeed, whether it is a real thing, undermining what governments and their public health experts were trying to do to keep us all safe. From that place, it was only a short hop for dissenters to jump on to the bandwagon that was headed for Ottawa, the Canadian capital, where they tried to ransom the city and the rest of the country. On their way, the agitators collected an assortment of antivaxxers and anti-maskers, racists and fascists, putschists and would-be assassins avowing, bizarrely, to kill the Prime Minister, topple the Federal Government and install an alternative that was more to their taste. Canada was headed for its January 6 moment.

The government was prepared. Using special powers, it eventually put an end to what was becoming a national embarrassment, and which had been seeding similar outbreaks elsewhere in the country. Social media had, once again, shown its power to spread false information and stoke up emotions.

The medium remains massively disruptive with that ability to disseminate false anti-science narratives about the pandemic (and other matters) that could have resulted in much worse clinical outcomes while, at the same time during 2022, enabling dissenters to collect and amass a substantial war chest. It is an irony that, quite possibly, escaped the convoy organizers and their followers: The weaponizing of the internet (and diesel-powered trucks) for the war against the very science that devised them.

Meanwhile, Covid’s economic fallout continues into the new year, taking the world to the brink amid forecasts that grow darker by the day.

The year twenty twenty-two also fuelled a couple of exotica, NFTs and cryptocurrency, to illustrate how easy it is for a fool and his money to be parted. As if to emphasize the point, the world’s richest man dropped $44bn lusting after a dysfunctional chat box.

“Loss and Damage” was the 2022 mantra that resounded from Sharm El Shaikh to all corners, as activists call on rich countries to foot the bill for the harm they continue inflict on the environment that threatens to take lives and destroy livelihoods everywhere, especially in poor countries. Yes, the survival of the world itself is at stake, with record high temperatures in many regions including in Europe and North America. The UK’s Met Office recently announced that 2022 was the hottest on record. In the Horn of Africa, drought was relentless, creating and sustaining a famished landscape throughout the region. On the other side, Pakistan and Nigeria drowned in unprecedented floods that displaced millions and killed thousands. The think tank, The Copernicus Climate Change Service, predicts that unless we change our ways, the world will warm up by 1.5 degrees by 2034, and the end will be nigh.

Unless Putin’s special operations does us in earlier.

Tell Fren Tru

Consequences

I have been under the weather over the last fortnight or so, which partly explains why Tell Fren Tru has been silent. Talking about weather, Sierra Leone and its capital, Freetown, has also been, more explicitly, under the weather too. Last Wednesday, in just four hours, enough rain was dumped on the capital to nearly drown it. According to reports, much of the low lying land was under water and hundreds of dwellings were swept away, leaving thousands homeless. In the event, it was a lucky break that casualties amounted to just seven dead.

Freetown is capital to one of the poorest countries in the world and could ill-afford another onslaught following so close on the heels of an Ebola epidemic from which it still has to recover. And then this. But, the city is, in some ways, a victim of its geography, sitting where it does, exposed to the worst excesses of a turbulent Atlantic ocean. Those excesses are most evident during the monsoon season that falls between May and October, the wettest months being July, August and September. The meteorologists say that during the season, moist air from the south Atlantic blows on to the land, dousing the Sierra Leone peninsula with more than 3000 mm of rain every year, making Freetown one of the world’s wettest capitals. 

Freetown’s other geographic disadvantage comes from the way it lies on a strip of land, squeezed between a shoreline in front and a range of mountains behind.  So, when the rain falls, it cascades down in torrents of muddy water that washes over the town. At first glance, this combination would appear to provide the perfect recipe for disaster. But disasters of this kind are unheard of. Why is this so? 

Before we answer the question, let’s go back to the climate gurus and what they have to say about global climate trends. They tell us that global temperatures are set to increase over the next 50 to 70 years to a broiling 2˚C or more, if we are not mindful. That, we are warned, would probably be irreversible. For Sierra Leone itself, temperatures have, since 1960, increased by 0.8˚C, and are projected to rise by 1.0 to 2.6˚C by the 2060’s, and by 1.5 to 4.6˚C by the 2090’s. Meanwhile, recorded rainfall has gone in the opposite direction, decreasing significantly although it is not clear whether this was a trend, since some years were relatively wet whilst others were dryer. Anyway, these are all part of the mix that gives climate-watchers sleepless nights.

And, for the world at large, the prediction similarly, is that a rise in global temperatures of about 1.5 to 4.5⁰C will occur and will be accompanied by various other climate-related disruptive events. In Sierra Leone, there is evidence that at least one of these consequences might be occurring already: One of its outlying islands, Bonthe, is showing signs of becoming inundated (Bonthe Island Is Sinking). The recent rainstorm over Freetown was another.  Perhaps the flooding might not have occurred if the city’s sentinel mountains had been able to soak up the rain that fell. But they could not, simply because the vegetation that used to hold the ground together and absorb the water had been stripped by unregulated and illegal clearing for the building of homes.

So, in retribution for this act of environmental vandalism, 50 years after the stripping of the mountain began, the rain came down and swept away some of those illegal structures in a tide that flooded streets and demolished coastal shanty towns as well. 

And thereby we find ourselves where we are today.

Tell Fren Tru