The main culprits in the changing of the climate causing stronger typhoons and longer weather disturbances are the rich or industrialized countries. The front runners here are the USA, China, Japan, Russia and the European countries.
Who are bearing the brunt of such typhoons, etc.? We the citizens of poor countries.
Just this recent super typhoon Karding, that visited as, our agricultural sector suffered P1.3 billion, mostly by rice farmers. That is easy to mention but the hardships those farmers had suffered and are still suffering cannot be fathomed. From having to go hungry for months, to the disruption of the education of the kids. Worst would be the situation if their families have members undergoing some expensive medical treatment due to some serious diseases.
Are the main culprits liable to pay us damages for these? They should! Sadly, there is no legal mechanism to enforce that liability.
How about the United Nations? In that respect, that organization is al most inutile. Any measure it might adopt or pass will surely be vetoed by any member of the Security Council. Conclusion—we are helplessly at the mercy of these rich nations.
They know their moral obligations but they are not doing anything revolutionary enough for us to feel some relief from more climate related calamities. They are just organizing summits resulting in commitments but are never followed. And such are always never revolutionary enough, or are just lip service.
We are left on our own, helplessly expecting to suffer more.
As of now, the rich countries are spending their resources developing war machines or weapons of mass destruction. How to be more militarily powerful is their main pre-occupation. In short, it is to further bloat their big egos to our big detriment.
Their military power is also to make sure we, the smaller and poorer nations, cannot complain or fight back. That we remain too weak to have any effective answer to their “obey-or -else” threat in so many forms.
So where are the so-called civilized souls in this world? We just have to hope some of them will ascend to positions of power in the strongest nations to be able to direct their policies towards more humanitarian directions in respect of the adverse effects of climate change.
Meantime, we have no other choice but to do whatever individual effort we can contribute to lessen the causes of climate change.**