Malta trims down for climate change

Last year, I wrote a long, controversial article titled, "Global warming - will Malta vanish from the face of the Earth?" This was followed by a series of shorter articles.

Until last year, there was little awareness on climate change in Malta and Maltese academics and experts in this field seemed to be reluctant to speak about this "inconvenient truth" (the title of Al Gore's documentary on climate change now being shown in our cinemas). One professor even tried several times to ridicule my writings but he failed, and only last November, on another newspaper, I read that "...he (I) is on a mission to make sure the Earth does not turn into a crisp before our grandchildren get a chance to enjoy it".

Now we're all supposed to know what catastrophic events we will unfortunately have to face. We are continuously reading about melting glaciers and sinking islands...

Last month, Gerry Meehl, an international climate scientist who contributed to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), warned that continued global warming could eventually lead to an ice-free Arctic. If this happens, seas will rise between four and six metres, and some scientists fear that much of that may happen before the end of this century.

However, a paper by Timothy M. Lenton et al says that potential climate changes could be much greater than is being forecast. This scientific paper, "Climate Change on the Millennial Timescale" says that the combined effects of climate change are predicted to lead to a rise of over 11 metres in the sea level.

Marika M. Holland, a scientist at the National Centre for Atmospheric Research projects, said that by 2040, the Arctic may be ice-free. Her research team points out that open water absorbs more sunlight than does ice, which reflects light, meaning that the growing regions of ice-free water will accelerate the warming trend.

After reading all this, I ordered a customised contour map of Malta from MEPA. Then I carefully followed the 10 metre contour lines and came up with two versions of the map.

From the present and predicted future maps of Malta, it is clear that politicians and contractors will have to start thinking about a different project. This has nothing to do with the usual "demolish, dig, cram and build high" strategy. It is about saving the densely inhabited low-lying areas of Malta that are threatened with inundation. But I leave this in the hands of the architects of course!

We just cannot sit down and simply adapt while continuously receiving international criticism such as "Malta is the EU's worst performer on renewable energy" and "Malta gets three warnings on climate change obligations". It is true that Malta is very small and its contribution towards global warming is insignificant when compared to giant polluters such as the US, China, Japan and the UK.

It is also true that a certain degree of environmental damage has already been done to our planet, even if tomorrow all the world would miraculously cut down completely on greenhouse gas emissions and forests would flourish everywhere (this is what I call wishful thinking!). Ice, unfortunately, responds with a delay to a warming climate. The global warming that took place in the 1970s is just now being registered by the melting sea ice and retreating glaciers.

Therefore, sometime or other, we definitely have to defend our islands physically from rising sea water levels. Rising sea levels could also penetrate our groundwater supplies, thus contaminating our borehole waters.

So, for a change, I advice our contractors to save some concrete for defending our small islands from shrinking further. To our politicians, I suggest they put climate change on the very top of their electoral agendas.

For most people, the million euro question is, "but when will all this happen?" Although I tried to give some indication of when this catastrophic change would take place, no one really knows for sure. Imagine two huge volcanoes erupting during the same period, and half a dozen forests around the world are on fire. This leads to a sudden, unpredicted vast amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that will lead to further increase in global warming.

But even if nothing of this occurs during this century, it is not right that we do not preserve Malta's limited space and infrastructure for future generations. We still admire and enjoy architectural buildings that date hundreds of years. With this in mind, does it ring a bell for the developers and investors of Tigné Point and Smart City?