‘Blaming climate change’ is just another way for Robert Abela to ‘blame himself’...

Remember those old investment ads on TVM, which always ended with the same line (presumably, mandated by the MFSA): ‘The past is not a guarantee of the future; and the value of your investment may go up, as well as down’?

Well, I’ve always had mixed feelings about that message, to tell you the truth. Not, mind you, that I don’t appreciate the necessity for such a ‘disclaimer’, from a strictly legal point of view. After all: there certainly ARE people in the world, who need to have even the most obvious contingencies spelt out to them, down to the last detail.

Like, for instance, that old lady who – according the ‘News of the World’, anyway - once accidentally ‘micro-waved her beloved French poodle’... and then successfully sued the manufacturer, for failing to specify that: “microwave ovens are not suited for the purpose of ‘drying pets (or babies), immediately after giving them a bath’...”

So yes, I get the general idea. Some people clearly DO need to be told, time and time again, that there is no such thing in life as a ‘100% guaranteed safe outcome, for any action or decision...’.

... but then again: while that may well be true for ‘investing in stocks and bonds’, it doesn’t quite follow that it would automatically hold good, for every other situation under the sun. And even from my own experience, I can easily confirm that (in some cases, at least) ‘the past really CAN be a guarantee of the future’, you know...

Take, for instance, Robert Abela’s reaction to the recent spate of black-outs. Under the following headline - ‘Abela: climate change to blame for power-cuts’ - the Prime Minister said that: “government will be fast-tracking its investment in the country’s distribution network to reflect the accelerating effects of climate change.

“[...] ‘Climate change effects are being felt at a quicker pace than what was predicted by experts, therefore government investment in infrastructure has to reflect that idea’...”

Now: if any of that already sounds familiar.. it’s probably because you haven’t even had time to forgot an almost IDENTICAL headline (and story), back in November 2021.

At the time, the ‘extreme weather event’ was not a heatwave... but rather, ‘flash-floods’ caused by intense rainfall (although the situation was also ‘climate change-related’; and had likewise caused its own fair share of ‘chaos and confusion’, as I recall).

But just to refresh your memories a little more: this is how MaltaToday reported the Infrastructure Minister’s reaction, a little less than two years ago.

Headline - “Ian Borg: Climate change to blame for excess rainfall that flooded roads...”

Article - “Flooding in recently built roads was not caused by shortcomings by Infrastructure Malta, but the result of freak weather ‘rarely seen before’, Ian Borg said.

“[...] The minister blamed Thursday’s widespread flooding on irregular weather patterns caused by climate change. ‘The circumstances were what they were... we saw rainfall volumes that are not common.’”

Erm... what did I just tell you, a few paragraphs above? ‘The past is no guarantee of the future’, my foot! Those two stories were published a full 18 months apart: yet they still manage to mirror each other so perfectly, that you could literally just swap out the names... and pretty much everything else can stay, precisely as it is.

Not only did Robert Abela and Ian Borg come up with EXACTLY the same excuse, in (almost) exactly the same words... but the excuse itself is equally ‘flawed’ – not to say ‘disingenuous’ – on both those occasions, as well!

Right: from now on, I’ll limit myself only to the more recent example (naturally, on the proviso that everything I say about Robert Abela, is GUARANTEED to apply 100% to Ian Borg, too).

But let’s dissect what they’re both actually saying, first. Like Borg before him, the Prime Minister is presenting us with TWO arguments, not one.

His first is that the power-cuts themselves were not down to any lack of ‘preparation’, or ‘investment’, on his own government’s part... but rather, due to the effects of a global phenomenon known as ‘climate change’ (over which – conveniently enough – Robert Abela himself has no control, whatsoever).

In the same breath, however, he also argues that these climatic effects are somehow being felt more ‘intensely’, today, than anyone had anticipated before (in his own words: “Climate change effects are being felt at a quicker pace than what was predicted by experts”...)

And – much as it pains me to have to flatly contradict our Prime Minister, like this – that’s not entirely TRUE, you know....

In fact, I’m not at all sure which ‘experts’ Robert Abela actually had in mind, when he said that. Last I looked, the the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been issuing regular reports on the subject, ever since the early 1990s...

... and while some of those early reports may have been occasionally ‘off-target’, with hindsight: they nearly always erred on the more ‘catastrophic’ side of caution. (In other words: they predicted consequences that were often WORSE, than the ones we are actually experiencing.)

For instance: the first ICCP report, issued in 1992, stated that: “We are certain of the following: emissions resulting from human activities are substantially increasing the atmospheric concentrations of the greenhouse gases. These increases will result on average in an additional warming of the Earth’s surface.”

The report specifically predicted “a global temperature rise of about 2C by 2025, compared with the period before the industrial revolution sparked the mass burning of fossil fuels”.

In 2023, the rise has been measured at 1.4C (i.e., well on its way to reaching that target; but not quite there yet)...

Having said all that: the report I reckon Robert Abela himself is actually referring to, was the one issued by the ICCP in 2018... which had starkly warned that: “Climate change is occurring earlier and more rapidly than expected...”

By an interesting coincidence, there was another report that year – given wider media prominence in Malta (seeing as it appeared to predict the future ANNIHILATION, of our entire country) – in which researchers from Newcastle University “analysed changes in flooding, droughts, and heatwaves for 571 European cities between 2050 and 2100 using all available climate models. They found that Valletta – and, indeed, the whole of Malta and Gozo – will be among the cities worst affected by drought and heatwaves.

“Even under the most optimistic scenario, Malta will experience 38 per cent more heatwave days each year and a maximum rise in temperatures of about 4˚C. Drought, lack of rainfall, will become 1.29 times more severe. The changes to our climate will be more apocalyptic under the higher impact scenarios...”

So yes: in a sense, Robert Abela is certainly correct to say that ‘climate change is happening faster, than earlier predicted’... except that this realisation has been common knowledge, to the rest of the entire world, ever since 2018...

... which just happens to be two whole years BEFORE Robert Abela himself even became Prime Minister of this country, at all!

As far as I can make out, then: from the very first day of his entire premiership – in January 2020 – Robert Abela has been (or SHOULD have been) aware of the existence of numerous scientific reports: all clearly and unequivocally predicting the exact same (if not, even worse) ‘extreme weather conditions’, that we are currently experiencing in 2023.

At which point: the question becomes: what has Prime Minister Robert Abela actually DONE, over the past three years, to ‘prepare’ this country for those predicted calamities? And what has he ‘invested’ in, exactly, to safeguard us against those potentially ‘apocalyptic’ effects?

Let’s see now. Ever since 2020, Abela’s government has embarked on a never-ending series of ‘road-building/road-widening’ infrastructural projects – the ones which were ‘not responsible’ for those floods of November 2021, remember? – evidently, without ever pausing to consider other scientific reports...

... which separately argue that ‘roads’ – especially if made of ‘black tarmac’ (as opposed to tarmac of a lighter, and therefore less ‘heat-absorbent’, shade) – both exacerbate the problem of ‘flash floods’, and also contribute to a problem known as “urban heat island effect”...

Meanwhile, another of this government’s great accomplishments, since 2020, has been to strip the entire island of virtually anything even remotely resembling a ‘tree’ (or indeed, anything that can cast any form of ‘shade’, at all)...

... and this, by the way, is another the reasons that the recent heatwave may actually have felt ‘hotter’, than it even needed to feel. For while the actual temperature was ‘only’ around 40/41C – it probably felt more like ‘48C’, simply because the heat is being permanently ‘stored’ by the earth beneath us (and beneath our buildings, too)...

All of which, naturally, leads us to the one thing Abela very clearly FAILED to do, in all this time. He evidently did NOT either ‘prepare’, or ‘invest’, enough in the country’s energy distribution network, to cope with those temperatures (to the extent that he’s promising to ‘fast-track it’, only now)...

... even though he must surely have known, all along, that he would HAVE TO, sooner or later; and not just because of ‘climate change’, by the way... but also, to accommodate the ever-growing demands, of a population that is currently skyrocketing... BECAUSE OF HIS OWN GOVERNMENT’S POLICIES!

And after all that... Robert Abela still has the gall to ‘blame climate change’, for his own failures?! I mean, come on. There’s a limit to how ‘predictable’ you can actually be, you know...