ROWLEY’S HYPOCRISY ON CLIMATE CHANGE

PORT OF SPAIN was flooded at the time Planning Minister Pennelope Beckles-Robinson was telling the global climate change conference that Trinidad and Tobago is committed to ending the environmental crisis.

“We must move beyond pledges, to action,” Ms. Beckles-Robinson told the United Nations’ 27th Conference of Parties (COP), in Egypt.

She called for “transformational implementation.”

The minister’s home city, meanwhile, was deluged as a result of her government’s refusal to deal with the well-known causes, in the midst of the climate change emergency.

In typical political-speak, Ms. Beckles-Robinson told international leaders: “This must be an implementation COP.”

But in the land in which she is a senior Cabinet minister, about a third of the landmass was bathed in floods a few days earlier, again because of the absence of preventative action.

The lack of timely dredging and maintenance led to the destruction of vast acres of farmlands, livestock, and poultry, and the wrecking of homes, furnishings, and appliances.

Major rivers and important tributaries in Trinidad and Tobago have been neglected to the point where some are a mere few metres deep and unable to efficiently transport heavy water flows.

Who is in the kitchen feels the heat, and if you are a victim of dreaded floods you face risks of deadly contagious diseases.

Repeated anguished pleas from opposition politicians and civic society for deterrent measures have been ignored by the administration of Dr. Keith Rowley.

Indeed, Rowley was proudly living it up on the golf course while victims counted losses from yet another woeful flood disaster.

Not a single government official has focused on the flood catastrophe or proposed an action plan of measures.

 For her part, Ms. Beckles-Robinson told the climate change conference with a straight face: “This COP must send a clear signal to people everywhere, especially the youths.”

The Rowley regime has also been inactive on other devastating effects of climate change on these tiny islands, including coastal erosion and the horrible impact of heat waves.

But that did not deter Ms. Beckles-Robinson, who told the conference her government was implementing “widespread policy reform.”

She did not identify such transformational undertakings.

For sure, the Rowley administration is coldly silent on the international drumbeat for petrochemical companies to quicken their pace of reducing fossil fuel emissions.

In fact, the government has not reported to the nation on any climate change initiative, and the matter is not part of the national discourse.

Gaston Browne, Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda, has become the voice of Caricom on the crisis, and he has called for increased taxes on fossil fuel firms and financial assistance from wealthy nations.

Browne and other regional leaders have been advocating a shopping list of specific measures, including the preservation of forests.

But the Rowley Government is moving to construct houses on a vital green space in the heart of an already cluttered San Fernando.

Similarly, the ruling regime is converting the treasured St. Augustine Nurseries into a public housing scheme.

But, speaking about the overall crisis, Mr. Beckles-Robinson said that Trinidad and Tobago “understands it is an imperative and not a choice.”

The government, she said, has embarked upon “ambitious plans,” but she did not detail any plans for storm surges, protecting the ecosystem, or safeguarding against widespread forest fires.

There were no pronouncements on attracting international technical aid or domestic civic support to stem the onslaught of climate change.

“Step by step, we are creating the architecture that will guide us toward a just and equitable transition to a low carbon development pathway,” Ms. Beckles-Robinson told COP delegates.

That “architecture” may well be under early construction design.

In contrast, Barbados’ leader Mia Mottley embellished her international image by cautioning the world leaders that a two-degree Celsius rise in global temperature “would be a death sentence for island and coastal communities.”

Ms. Mottley has offered a roadmap for driving the required urgent change.

The Rowley administration remains guilty of issuing lip service and grandiose language even as the destructive effects of climate change hit T&T with increased regularity and ever-more dramatic force.

Ms. Beckles-Robinson’s international mouthing is in sharp disparity with the pain being felt by victims of the worsening weather patterns and the urgency of addressing the overall crisis.

It is typical of an administration that is sitting blankly at the steering wheel as the world evolves, bringing fresh challenges and fleeting opportunities.

The absence of immediate and far-reaching action on climate change could render Trinidad and Tobago a sitting duck in an inflamed crisis with terrible effects.

The window to take urgent climate change action is closing rapidly, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said.

The Rowley Government is engaging in blatant hypocrisy while the emergency engulfs us.