I consider myself reasonably well read and passably well-informed. I try to keep up with what is going on. I believe one of the surest defences of democracy is a citizenry which cannot easily be fooled since it keeps up to date with events and developments.
So I find myself a little bemused and embarrassed to realize how ignorant I am of a multitude of things which suddenly come to my attention almost on a daily basis. Out of many here are three items which I should have known about but didn’t.
- In common with all Guyanese I have been appalled at this nation’s top ranking in the World Health Organisation’s suicide index. In 2012 there were 44.2 suicides per 100,000 population in Guyana with North Korea, of all benighted places, a distant second at 38 suicides per 100,000 population. The world average is 11.4 suicides per 100,000. Can it be that the curse of Jonestown still haunts us?
However, I did not know that it is thought that our high incidence of suicides might be partly due to chemistry. Professor Gerard Hutchinson, a psychiatrist who heads the department of clinical medical sciences at the St. Augustine campus of UWI, has noted that Guyanese agricultural workers and farmers may be overusing organophosphate herbicides and insecticides which 
international studies suggest can lead to impulsive suicidal behaviour. I was not aware of this. Is this being followed up by our own scientists and medical experts? Any straw should be grasped which might lead to action which sees us rapidly descend from top standing in that infamous world ranking.
- I read quite extensively in West Indian literature and in particular try to keep up with the poetry being written, and performed, in the region if only because such poetry is as good as any being written and performed anywhere in the world today. I am therefore mortified to admit that I hardly know anything about the work of Kei Miller who is emerging, it is clear, as a worthy successor to such masters of the art as Derek Walcott, Kamau Brathwaite and Martin Carter. This young Jamaican, aged 36, has just won the Forward Prize, which is one of the leading prizes for poetry in the world, for his book The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion.
We need to get to know much more about Kei Miller and his writing. His first book, Kingdom of Empty Bellies, was published in 2006. Since then he has published books of poems, novels, volumes of essays and collections of short stories. Kei Miller is fast beginning to shine as one of the brightest stars in our literary firmament. We should get to know his work well. I like these lines from his Speaking in Tongues: “…. and the poem will not care that some walk past/afraid of the words we try out on our tongues/hoping this finally is the language of God/ that he might hear it and respond.”
- I know, of course, that the world is seriously threatened by global warming leading, as it does inexorably, to climate change. We can already observe the destructive effects which in a few decades will overwhelm us if nothing gets done to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
However, I did not know that the simplest way to make a quick and immediately effective change for the better is to build on an international Protocol which already exists. In 1987 world governments, acting with swift responsibility, negotiated the Montreal Protocol designed to phase out the use of CHLOROFLUORCARBONS (CFCS) which release chlorine into the stratosphere and break down the ozone layer protecting the earth from dangerous ultraviolet radiation. This Protocol was highly successful and has preserved the ozone layer which had begun to disappear before the Protocol. It actual happened that men moved rapidly and decisively to save mankind.
It also happens that one consequence of this Protocol is that the climate as a whole has benefited since CFCS are powerful greenhouse gases and the Protocol has reduced these by the equivalent of 135 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide. This makes the Montreal Protocol by far the most effective action taken so far to combat global warming.
What is more, this Protocol can easily be expanded. At present it does not cover HYDROFLUORCARBONS (HFCS) which do not harm the ozone layer but do act as greenhouse gases. If the Protocol was amended to cover them, it could reduce greenhouse gases by the equivalent of another 4 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide a year. It would reduce greenhouse gases more than any other single climate-change action.
The Economist article from which I have taken this information concludes as follows: “Expanding the Montreal Protocol would not, by itself, keep the rise in global temperatures within safe bounds. That will require cutting carbon emissions by around 26 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide a year by 2030 (or almost halving the current rate of emissions). A broad carbon treaty will still be necessary; so will stopping deforestation, slashing subsidies to fossil fuels and much else. But expanding the Montreal Protocol would get more than a tenth of the way towards what is needed.”
Guyana should take the lead in CARICOM to press for this simple amendment to the Montreal Protocol as a valuable preliminary to a full-fledged treaty on carbon emissions to be signed in Paris by the end of 2015.
