By Basheer Luqman Olarewaju
The world is getting dangerously hot. Storms have been ferocious. Whole land masses are disappearing. Have you noticed this incredibly bad weather of late?
Not fully, scientists say. New research demonstrates a terrifying adaptability of 21st century human beings: in the face of unprecedented climate change, we are normalising the weather temperatures, and not realising how truly bad things have become.
There’s a famous analogue for this phenomenon; one that’s both fitting and frightening. It’s called the boiling frog effect – the notion that a frog immersed in gradually heating water will fail to notice the creeping change in its circumstances, even as it’s literally being boiled alive.
Contemporary scientists no longer subscribe to this now discredited observation, but as a metaphor for the way in which humans are sailing unfazed into a dire-looking future of irreversible climate change, it’s perfectly apt.
“This is a true boiling-frog effect,” says climate scientist Frances C. Moore from the University of California, Davis.
“People seem to be getting used to changes they’d prefer to avoid. But just because they’re not talking about it doesn’t mean it’s not making them worse off.”
People are all the time getting used to harsh, unusual weather without even realising it.
“There’s a risk that we’ll quickly normalise conditions we don’t want to normalise,” Moore says.
“We are experiencing conditions that are historically extreme, but they might not feel particularly unusual if we tend to forget what happened more than about five years ago.”
Taken to an extreme, does this mean humans will never realise they’re in a pot of boiling water?
Everyone who has heard a political speech knows this story: You put a frog into a pot of boiling water, and it jumps right out. But if you put it in a pot of nice comfortable water and then turn on the heat, the frog will complacently let himself be boiled. One standard version of the story is here. The reason it’s so popular in politics is that it’s an easy way to warn about the slow erosion of liberties or any other slow threat you want to talk about.
Here’s the problem. It just isn’t true. If you throw a frog into a pot of boiling water, it will (unfortunately) be hurt pretty badly before it manages to get out — if it can. And if you put it into a pot of tepid water and then turn on the heat, it will scramble out as soon as it gets uncomfortably warm.
Relatably, Ilorin metropolis consists of three Local Government Areas-Ilorin West, East, and South. From the past, the metropolis (Ilorin) is often polluted with heaps of refuse that are occasionally caused traffic hold-up in some strategic areas of the urban centre. A lot of health incidence resulting from water, air and pest borne diseases are not uncommon within and areas where prevalence of effluents prevailed. Management of waste in Ilorin and Kwara State in general has been the sole responsibility of the Kwara State Environmental Protection Agency (KWEPA) and other health management sectors in the recent.
New Kwara of our dream is truly achievable as the executive governor of Kwara State, Mallam AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq led-administration is bridging the Gap of environmental pollution with decisive policy and provision of resources needed to clean up the metropolis and the generality of the state. Clean environment is an important goal of the sustainable development goals and a major agenda of this administration is to ensure that Kwara State ticks all the right boxes and achieves the SDGs by 2030. This is beyond empty slogans.
The efforts must be appreciated and the state government is working tirelessly to develop the state and the sole purpose in making our state healthier is to promote a safe and healthy environment for the people of Kwara State to live in, and to ensure sustainable development for the purposes of the use of the environment.
