Local heroes to fight climate change

Extreme weather causing damage to life and property on a large scale is no more happening in some faraway places in the southern hemisphere. Such natural calamities are now commonplace in parts of the world that are advanced in science and technology. Recent floods in Germany, heatwaves in the Pacific northwest of the US and Canada, wildfires in California in the US and New South Wales in Australia, all points to how pervasive the impact of global warming is. The rich nations with their wealth and technology are helpless before the wrath of Nature. Climate change is indeed a great leveller!

There is, however, no point gloating over the fact that climate change affects the rich. For climate change is equally punishing both rich and poor nations. As such, when it comes to fighting the war against this destructive force of Nature, the rich and the poor are required to participate in the struggle on an equal footing. As every war has its hero or heroes, so has this one against climate change. Africa had its hero in Kenya's Nobel Laureate for Peace, Wangari Maathai, the pioneer of the Billion Tree Campaign. Being in the pantheon of the greats, she could inspire millions of lesser mortals. But the truth is it is the lesser mortals, the unsung heroes, who bring about real changes in the world. Consider the story of selfless Abdul Samad Sheikh of Faridpur. Tree planting for the likes of Samad is not just a hobby, or a passion. It is as good as worship. Every day from his modest earning as a rickshaw driver, he would buy a tree sapling from a local nursery and plant it on a government-owned land so no one might uproot or cut it down. To him it was a command from God that he must plant trees and, as such, he had been doing this since he was a twelve-year-old boy, he told a reporter. Perhaps, he had never seen or heard of great people like Wangari Maathai to be inspired by. If anything, he just followed the tradition. Our ancestors held trees with regard as their foliage gives shade and protect us from the sun. They bear fruits for birds and other animals including humans to eat and timber for people to use. Modern-day youths like Mahmudul Hoque Fahim of Sylhet or Mahbub Islam of Sirajganj have a different kind of inspiration to plant trees. Fahim seems to be inspired by youths like Sweden's environmental activist Greta Thunberg and as such he travels from one corner of Bangladesh to another planting trees. Small wonder that his activism has drawn a lot of media attention. Mahbub Islam, on the other hand, is more like a horticulturist who has a passion for growing rare trees. However, they are also kind of heroes in their own right in the global effort to combat the impacts of climate change through planting trees.

Trees act as carbon sink. They absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. But in many less developed societies people in the past would plant as well as protect those as part of tradition without knowing the science behind it. The younger generation on those countries now know the science. And their love for trees, unlike Samad Sheikh's, emanates from their scientific knowledge. In the Western societies, on the other hand, technology is more affordable to their youths than in the less developed ones. In the advanced world the youths look for technology-based solution to the problem of global warming. Solarpunk, for instance, is essentially an art movement. But it wants to build a future for the world based on resolving the challenges like the sustainability issues that it faces. They want technology to meld seamlessly with Nature. A data centre service in Iceland, for example, is run solely by renewable energy. Renewable energy is a manifestation of solarpunk aesthetic, the centre's technology officer, Tate Cantrell, tells the BBC. At that centre they practice what they call circular economy by way of eliminating waste through continual use of resources. There are also other ventures like the Clime works of Switzerland. Though they have nothing to do with solarpunk, they follow a similar philosophy of circular economy as they use carbon capture and storage (CCS) machines to suck carbon directly from the atmosphere. Their machines are run by renewable energy from waste. Like the Billion Tree Campaign of Wangari Maathai, those behind these CCS technology also want to build an ecosystem of a billion users of their machine to catch carbon from air.  The Carbon Uptake Technologies (CUT) of Canada has a similar approach to removing carbon from air. The organisation makes consumer items under the banner of the brand name, Expedition Air. Its products including paintings and T-shirts are made of materials created by their carbon capture technology. If these art and consumer products are able to catch the imagination of the common consumers, the pioneer of the company, Expedition Air, Madison Savilow, hopes big companies will come forward to include her items in their product lines. In this way a larger section of the population could be involved with the movement as consumers of 'carbon sink' products. The idea is to involve local heroes to join hands on a global scale. They can inspire the millions in the fight against climate change through planting trees or using products made by carbon capture technology.

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