Earth Protect Blog

Will 2010 be remembered as the year when nature struck back? We’ve witnessed the devastating Earthquake in Haiti, the toxic oil gusher in the Gulf, and now, historic floods in Pakistan that have killed over 1,000 people and displaced millions more.

And those are just the international headlines. Dig a little deeper and you’ll find the stories about record heat in Russia, hurricanes slamming Mexico, or raging infernos in southern California.

Yet, despite the horrors – and they truly have been horrors, just take a moment to watch this week’s video footage of entire towns wiped off the map in Pakistan – it’s likely that when our collective memory looks back on 2010 we’ll remember protagonists like Obama, LeBron, and Gaga, not Mother Earth.

Our rapidly degrading planet, and the human suffering that accompanies its decline, is a storyline that the mainstream media just can’t quite seem to grasp.

Let’s take the current crisis. As the flood waters in Pakistan recede, will the media dig into the causes of these floods with the same gusto with which they’ve tracked terrorists, imams, and leaks?

Doubtful. The coverage I’ve seen over the past few days has made no mention of climate change and its role in intensifying monsoons like the one now devastating the Himalayas. Of course, the destruction of human homes should take the headlines, but the narrative of how we’re wrecking humanity’s home should be in the articles.

Just as war correspondents connect a car bomb to a conflict, we need reporters who can connect a crisis to the climate.

But isn’t it impossible to connect local weather events to climate change, though? Sure, just like it’s impossible to say that a suicide bomber is strapping on dynamite because of US foreign policy – couldn’t it be the death of a father, the peer pressure of radical friends, the promise of heaven?

In a time of war, we look at an isolated incident as part of a larger pattern of violence. In the era of global warming, it’s time to start seeing isolated floods, droughts, and fires as part of the larger violence we’re inflicting on our increasingly fragile planet.

Only when we see our problems as interconnected can we start to create the innovative solutions necessary to solve them.

There are already great efforts to tackle two challenges with one loan, or take on two problems with one home. Take the Barefoot College in India, which trains women to build and maintain solar panels for their communities, helping solve pollution and poverty. Or Architecture for Humanity, who are helping rebuild Haiti to build stronger and more resilient so it can face a future that guarantees more natural challenges ahead.