#60) Consequences

April 4, 2017

Dear Mr. President,

Remember the other day when I told you that you should care about climate change because it was expensive?  Well let's take a closer look at the flooding and landslide that happened in Mocoa, Colombia this week.

So far 254 people are confirmed dead but hundreds are still missing after torrential rain caused massive and sudden landslides.  The government has pledged financial compensation to the families of the dead. They are paying hospital costs for the injured, funereal costs for the dead, and reimbursing victims for lost homes.  They will rebuild schools, stores, hospitals, roads and bridges.  President Santos has promised to make whatever financial investment is necessary to rebuild Mocoa and make it "better than it was before", but no amount of money can replace lost loved ones or heal families torn apart by this horror.

Of course President Santos' critics say he should have done more to protect the area from disaster.  But who wants to invest in the environment?  Who wants to be the one to slow economic growth by limiting the timber industry?  Adriana Soto said, "When the basins are deforested, they break down.  It is as if we removed the protection for avoiding landslides." And President Santos himself is on record saying that climate change is to blame for this disaster. 

Like I said before, this is where we live.  This is the only home we've got and when we destroy it through deforestation or shortsighted environmental de-regulation, we all pay the cost.  Colombia is paying a particularly heavy cost at the moment because the Mocoa landslide isn't their only one.  In October 2016 10 people were killed in the north of the country when sudden, extreme weather ripped through a particularly deforested area causing flooding and landslide.  There was also one in El Tambo in November 2016 which killed 9 people.  This is a painful wake up call to both the people and the government of Colombia that they need to invest in their land, in their trees, in their infrastructure and they (and WE) need to stop emitting the chemical pollutants that cause global warming and extreme weather. 

As a species there is precious little that we share.  We don't have a common language, religion, culture or legal system.  But what we do share is this planet that we live on and the environment that it is nestled within. It seems hard for you to understand that there are geopolitical, financial, and human consequences to climate change. But there are and you need to wake up to this fact before it is too late.

Sincerely,

Amy "The People" Beaton