Many moons ago I was assigned to go and produce a travel feature about an island off Saudi Arabia, which meant a stop in Dubai. It was barely springtime yet but the temperature was already extremely stifling.
“Ah, this is nothing,” our guide told us. “In summer it keeps on soaring… although officially, it never goes beyond 49.9°C,” he said, looking shiftily around him to check if there was anyone who could be a tell-tale government aide.
Then he whispered: “The law states that if the temperature exceeds 50°C workers can stop,” wink, wink. Coincidentally, the temperature there never exceeds 50°C.
Well, that’s Dubai for you: an autocracy bang in the middle of prevailing winds from the hot dry deserts of Iran, Saudi and Oman and bang in the middle of the Tropic of Cancer which means an abundance of rays of direct sunlight. So, scorching temperatures are not surprising.
What is surprising though is the Dubaiesque temperatures being registered this week in Canada. The country is recording for the first time ever sizzling heat close to the 50°C mark, leaving many deaths in its wake. This week we could all truly understand how something is seriously wrong with our world climate.
Malta is no exception: this June was the hottest recorded in hundred years. And it’s leaving its marks on everything. Last week we had to cut off a 25-year-old ivy creeper covering the garden wall because it was attacked by the wiggly wingless white mealybug. This insect is gorging on many plants on the island this summer, simply because it has thrived in winterless and rainless weather. Diseases and burnt vegetation are rife and God help us next summer if we’ll have another dry winter.
It is definitely becoming overwhelmingly depressing. As things stand, by the time my daughter is my age, the world will be a very different place.
According to a draft report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 30 years’ time, this is the legacy our children will inherit: species extinction, more widespread disease, unliveable heatwaves, water scarcity, ecosystem collapse and coastal cities menaced by rising seas. In the case of Malta, all that will be enhanced by the complete annihilation of farmland and claustrophobic overpopulation (close to one million).
The only way this won’t happen by 2050 is, of course, if politicians pulled up their socks and took proper concrete action, but this seems to me like a lost cause. So, there’s nothing for it except for each and every one of us to start to do something about it, in our own little way.
We don’t necessarily have to single-handedly go and save a kelp forest or monitor melting icebergs. We can do little things, such as eating less meat and more veg (if my carnivore stepsons can do it, anyone can) or buy more local produce or use less plastic (recommended read: How to Change the World by John-Paul Flintoff).
Which brings me neatly to Neil Agius, the 35-year-old who broke the world record on Wednesday for the longest unassisted open-water swim challenge, when he crossed 125.6km from the Italian island of Linosa to Xlendi. His aim? To create awareness about marine litter.
He is an inspiration to all of us- Kristina Chetcuti
Clearly the man is a merman. He says that at the age of three, he nearly drowned in his grandmother’s pool but as soon as he was fished out, he jumped right back in. By age 18, he had already qualified for the men’s 400-metre freestyle at the 2004 Olympics in Athens. When competitive swimming came to an end, he turned to making the world a better place through his strokes.
I don’t know Neil and I never met him, but I was intrigued when a few months ago he swam across the Gozo Channel while pulling his, ahem, overweight friend Michel Galea lounging on an stand-up paddle board as a bet to make him change his eating habits. I’ve been following him since, fascinated by his motto: “stopping is not an option”.
He founded Wave of Change when once during night-time training in the open sea he nearly suffocated in a plastic bag. That’s when he realised his calling: to fight against plastic pollution in our waters and urge people to live more sustainably.
Last year, while we were all scoffing lockdown food, he swam for a record of 28 hours between Sicily and Malta – again to highlight sea pollution.
This week he nearly doubled that – he swam for 50 hours to record the ‘Longest Ocean Swim’. There was no AFM following him, no Super One filming his every stroke, no flippers, no ministers tweeting and gushing – he just swam and swam with his team of friends around him.
As many other millennials like him, Neil is very aware of the planet he lives in and is not shying away from doing his part to save it. He is an inspiration to all of us – at the very least we’ll all start picking up any discarded litter that we come across when we’re at the beach. At the most we could all adopt his philosophy that we can do anything as long as we put our minds to it.
A little note on Lara Vella, Neil’s girlfriend, part of his team and very clearly his right-hand woman. She proposed to him just before the swimathon kick-off in Linosa. I am a sucker for love stories anywhere but this was so cool, so in with the times. Very few women actually brave going down on one knee – it’s estimated that not more than five per cent of proposals around the world are by women. So, Lara’s proposal was certainly very refreshing and empowering.
You see, we can change the world one bent knee at a time too.
krischetcuti@gmail.com
twitter: @krischetcuti