Reflections by comrade Fidel
The Threatening Dangers
It is not an ideological issue related to
the definitive hope that a better world is, and should be, possible.
It is a known fact that the homo sapiens has existed for about 200
thousand years, which is no more than a tiny span of the time passed since the
emergence of the first basic forms of life on our planet approximately three
billion years ago.
The answers to the unfathomable mysteries
of life and nature have fundamentally been religious. It would be senseless to
pretend otherwise and I am convinced that it will forever be this way. The
deeper science delves into the explanation of universe, space, time, matter and
energy; the infinite galaxies and the theories of the origin of the
constellations and the stars; the atoms and the fractions of them that made
possible life and its briefness; the more questions man will have in search of
ever more complex and difficult rationalizations.
The more involved human beings are in the
quest for answers to such deep and complex endeavors related to reason, the
more significant the efforts will be to release them from their enormous
ignorance on the true possibilities of what our intelligent species has created
and can still create. Living and ignoring it is tantamount to a complete denial
of our human condition.
However, something is absolutely certain:
very few even imagine how close we might be to the extinction of our species.
Nearly twenty years back, at a World Summit on the environment held in
Hardly anyone talked about climate change
then. George Bush senior and other dazzling leaders of the North Atlantic
Alliance enjoyed victory over the European socialist camp. The
The former superpower that had contributed
the lives of over 25 million of its people to World War II was left with only
the nuclear power capability for a strategic response, something it had been
forced to create after the United States secretly developed the nuclear bomb
that it dropped on two Japanese cities when the adversary, already defeated by
the irrepressible advance of the allied forces, was unable to fight.
Such was the beginning of the Cold War and
the production of thousands of increasingly destructive and accurate
thermonuclear weapons capable of annihilating the population of the planet
several times over. Nevertheless, the nuclear confrontation continued while the
weapons grew more accurate and destructive.
For the first time, in a globalized world full of contradictions the human species
has created the capacity for self destruction. This in addition to
unprecedented cruel arms such as chemical and bacteriological weapons: like
napalm and white phosphorous used with total impunity against the civilian
populations, the electromagnetic weapons and other forms of extermination. No
place on earth or in the sea, no matter how deep, is beyond reach of the
current means of war.
It is known that tens of thousands of
nuclear devices have been produced, even portable ones.
The greatest risk stems from the judgment
of leaders with such decision-making power that mistakes or madness, so common
in human nature, could lead to unspeakable catastrophes.
Almost 65 years have passed since the
explosion of the first two nuclear artifacts due to the decision of a mediocre
individual who was left in command of the rich and mighty American power after
The military industry is the most
prosperous of all and the
If our species can escape the
abovementioned risks, there is still a greater one or at least less
unavoidable: climate change.
The population of the world today is seven
billion, and soon, within 40 years, it will be nine billion. This figure is
nine times what it was barely 200 years ago. I dare assume that in the days of
ancient
What’s amazing in our times is the
contradiction between the imperialist bourgeois ideology and the survival of
the species. The need for justice among human beings is no longer the issue;
this is not only possible but unwavering. The issue now is the right and the possibility
of survival of the human species.
The farthest the horizon of knowledge
expands to previously unknown limits, the closer humanity is brought to the
abyss. All sufferings known so far are hardly a pale reflection of what could
lie ahead of humanity.
Three events occurred in only 71 days that
humanity cannot overlook.
On December 18, 2009, the international
community sustained the most important setback in history as it tried to find a
solution to the most serious problem threatening the world at the moment: the
necessity to urgently put an end to the emission of greenhouse gases which are
causing the gravest problem that mankind has faced until today.
All hopes had converged on the Copenhagen
Summit after years of preparation following the Kyoto Protocol that the
government of the
The States that make up the international
organization were invited to sign a document that is no more than a travesty, a
document that relates purely theoretical future contributions to curb climate
change.
Barely three weeks had passed when at
sunset on January 12, Haiti, the poorest nation in the hemisphere and the first
to put an end to the horrible slavery system, was hit by the greatest natural
catastrophe in the history of this part of the world: a 7.3 degrees in the
Richter scale earthquake only 6.25 miles deep and very close to its coastline
struck the capital of the country where most of the dead or missing people
lived in fragile houses built with clay. A mountainous and soil-degraded
country of 16, 875 square miles where wood is practically the only source of
domestic fuel for nine million people.
If there is a place on Earth where a
natural catastrophe has become an enormous tragedy that place is
The event came as a shock to the entire
world; people in every corner of the planet were shaken by the filmed images
that seemed almost incredible. The injured, bleeding and moribund, crawled
among the dead asking for help while the lifeless bodies of their loved ones
lay under the debris. According to
official estimates, the number of lethal victims exceeded the figure of 200,000.
The country was already occupied by the
MINUSTAH forces sent by the United Nations to restore the order subverted by
Haitian mercenary forces that instigated by the Bush administration had
undertaken actions against the government elected by the Haitian people.
Several buildings that sheltered soldiers and commanders of the peacekeeping
forces collapsed, too, adding to the painful toll in human lives.
The official reports estimate that, aside
from the dead, about 400 thousand Haitian were wounded and several million,
almost half the total population were affected. It was a real test for the
world community that after the shameful Danish Summit had the duty to show that
the rich and developed countries could be capable of tackling the threats of
climate change to life on our planet.
You can believe it or not, challenging the
data –in my view irrefutable—of the most serious scientists of the world and
the overwhelming majority of the most knowledgeable and honest people
worldwide, who think that at the current pace the planet is warming up, the
greenhouse gases will rise temperature not only by 1.5 degrees, but up to 5
degrees, and that the medium temperature is already the highest of the past 600
thousand years, long before the existence of human beings as a species on the
planet.
It is absolutely unthinkable that nine
billion human beings who will inhabit the world by 2050 could survive such a
catastrophe. There is still the hope that science may find a solution to the
energy problem that today forces to consume in 100 more years the remaining
gas, liquid and solid fuel that it took nature 400 million years to create.
Perhaps science can find a solution to the energy required. The crux of the
matter would be to know how long it would be, and how costly, before human
beings can cope with the problem, which is not the only one since many other
non-renewable minerals and grave problems demand a solution, too. There is one
thing we can be sure of based on everything known until today: the closest star
is four light-years away from our Sun, at a speed of 187,500 miles per second;
maybe, a spaceship could cover that distance in thousands of years. The human
beings have no other choice but to live on this planet.
It might seem unnecessary to deal with the
subject if only 54 days after the disaster in
But, while in Haiti they waited for hours
the occurrence of a tidal wave that never happened, the earthquake in Chile was
followed by a huge tsunami, which showed up in its coasts almost thirty minutes
or an hour later, depending on the distance and the data that are still not
accurately known, one whose waves made it as far as Japan. If it had not been for the Chilean experience
in facing earthquakes, its sounder constructions and larger resources, the
natural phenomenon would have taken the lives of tens of thousands or perhaps
hundreds of thousands of people. Yet, it did cause about one thousand fatal
victims, according to official reports, thousand of wounded and maybe more than
two million people sustained material damages. Almost the entire population of
17, 094,275 people suffered terribly and still endure the consequences of the earthquake
that lasted more than two minutes, its repeated aftershocks and the moving
scenes and suffering left behind by the tsunami along its thousands of miles of
coastline.
Our Homeland fully sympathizes with and
morally supports the material effort that it is the international community’s
duty to make in favor of
I think it is the duty of the international
community to objectively report the tragedy sustained by both peoples. It would
be cruel, unfair and irresponsible to fail to educate the peoples of the world
about the threatening dangers.
Let truth prevail above selfishness and
the lies used by imperialism to deceive and confound the peoples!
Fidel Castro Ruz