The melting clocks of Valencia
It is simply impossible to overlook the devastation in Valencia, Spain. Even if you were to try, the rivers of mud, the piles of cars, the rising number of victims, remain etched in your mind. The death toll has passed 200, the highest in any European country in half a century. For now. Because the continent has not managed to prepare itself for the onslaught of the climate crisis. So, as extreme weather events increase in frequency and impact the lives of more and more Europeans, averting a catastrophe is no longer an option. All we have left is efforts to reduce its consequences, which basically means, as European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen put it, “civilian preparedness.” Europe, she said, has before it the “dramatic reality of climate change. And we must prepare to deal with it, all across our Union, and with all tools at our disposal. We need to change our mindset. Preparedness must become part of the underlying logic of all our actions,” she said.
What does this mean, practically? That we, the citizens, need to start worrying about how we’re going to protect ourselves against extreme weather, among so many other things? That we need to be in a state of constant preparedness because our states are incapable of dealing with the threat?
Such questions can sound aggressive, accusatory or sarcastic; but they need to be asked anyway because they document a reality, a warning by the most official of channels, that the means at our disposal are unequal to the rising challenge of climate change, so everyone needs to be on their toes. This, however, does not absolve states of their responsibilities; indeed, it increases them. The change of mindset von der Leyen referred to is not something that can happen without some form of education. States will need to start raising awareness among their citizens by any means possible, tapping into the power of social media too, which have proved so useful to politicians in other areas that interest them. As far as Greece more specifically is concerned, sending out warnings of imminent threats through the 112 emergency number is certainly not enough, nor can it be used as an excuse to shrug off responsibility when disaster strikes (“We did warn people”).
Thursday’s cartoon by Kathimerini’s Ilias Makris blended elements of Salvador Dali’s famous painting “The Persistence of Memory” with a photograph of the incredible disaster in Valencia, placing the artist’s melting clocks on the debris of a street in the Spanish city. When art critics first saw the 1931 painting, they interpreted it as a surrealist meditation on the collapse of the notion of a stable cosmic order – what we, today, call dystopia.
