Once again, politicians are wailing about the weather. Just over a year ago, the east coast of the US was ravaged by Hurricane Sandy. Now North America is reeling from another bout of heavy snowstorms and record low temperatures. Meanwhile, the UK has been hit by floods and other parts of the world have struggled to cope with hurricanes, heatwaves and so on.
Little wonder that there has been hand-wringing from politicians about climate change and extreme weather shocks. Or that the World Economic Forum declared earlier this month that one of the key risks stalking the world is a renewed round of environmental shocks due to climate change: “Environmental risks, such as climate change, extreme weather events and water scarcity, have become more prominent since 2011, while health-related risks (pandemics and chronic disease) have become less so.”
But as those Davos luminaries ponder the problem of climate change, they should take a peek at a thought-provoking piece of research conducted by David McDermott Hughes, an anthropologist at Rutgers University. Five years ago, he travelled to Trinidad and Tobago to analyse how the chattering classes of that small island country discussed environmental problems in their national political debate and overseas dealings. Unsurprisingly, he found that the Caribbean state was deeply concerned about climate change. Trinidad and Tobago is surrounded by vast, capricious oceans and, in recent years, has suffered from hurricanes, droughts and fires. Since the islands are low-lying, there is also particular concern about the prospect of rising sea levels if, say, the polar ice caps were to melt.