The Return of a Deathly Silence.

Student Essay 1

Carolina Teixeira, Portuguese, Aged 17

Climate Academy 2016-2019

My childhood in Mozambique, followed by four years in Brussels, threw together two entirely different worlds in my mind. Brussels represents centuries of democratic development, with its bureaucracies, legal systems and parliament that have emerged from fighting, dispute and negotiation. Here, fundamental rights, values and principles are advocated and a wellestablished norm.

In contrast, Mozambique is still struggling to reconcile democracy with a society that is divided by ethnic tensions, gross inequality, environmental pressures and post-colonial scars. As a child, I felt only confusion and helplessness, like it was the established norm. I was driven by emotions but advised to not question openly, later realizing that I lived in a society under implicit censorship. This oppressive atmosphere has had severe social and developmental consequences.

After Cyclone Idai and Cyclone Kenneth hit Mozambique in 2019, I felt helpless once more. The cyclones and their disastrous consequences in Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe demonstrated how the people who have least contributed to climate change can suffer the most. Infrastructure was destroyed, hundreds were killed, and thousands displaced. Life came to a halt. The United Nations (UN) described it as “the worst weather disaster in history in the Southern Hemisphere” and Graça Machel, former Mozambican and South African first lady has stated that Beira,

Mozambique, “will go down in history as having been the first city to be completely devastated by climate change”.

When confronted with this I could not help but reflect on the issue of responsibility regarding climate change. People in developing countries have fewer resources to protect themselves when faced with these catastrophic storms but will be the ones affected the most. Across the world, storms are becoming more common, more powerful and more vigorous. Nevertheless, following the cyclones in south-east Africa, there was an almost deafening silence on how we should truly deal with climate change. I continually question myself on what exactly must happen for politicians to acknowledge that our system is failing. Deaths of innocent people are not enough for us to change, even if deep down we know that these are the consequences of our actions, culture and society. For most people, these disasters happen “far away”, but what we are facing here are just signs of what is to come in the near future.

As Europeans, we like to think that we live in an open and free society where censorship is reduced to a minimum. But not only are we almost deaf to the depth of suffering in places like Mozambique, we have also censored out of our minds the most devastating horrors of climate change that will hit the global systems within our lifetimes – unless we are brave enough to confront the reality that science so clearly describes.

The Heart of Darkness

History is full of examples of how the greed of a few can brutally crush the lives of millions. Thus, it should not be a surprise to find that a deathly silence is happening today. Our ability to censor disturbing truths remains just as common as our capacity for inhumanity.

The case of Belgium where I now live is an interesting one. Here I am at the centre of Europe, home to fundamental diplomatic decisions. Europeans are responsible for the majority of the CO2 that has been added by humans to the atmosphere, and our high consumption lifestyles continue to be one of the leading causes of climate change. However, Europeans like to think of themselves as ‘green’.

This strange silence in Brussels over its guilt is not new.

I live close to the “Parc du Cinquantenaire”.

The controversial African Museum and the Royal Palace, with its enormous greenhouses, are only a tram ride away. They are all products of King Leopold II’s (1835-1909) control over the Congo (at the time, “Congo Free State”). Leopold’s and the subsequent Belgian rule over the Congo were ruthless and horrifying. The former gave birth to the first international human rights movement, together with the term “crimes against humanity” which was first used by George Washington Williams (1890) during his investigation.

The African Museum in Tervuren has just opened after five years of renovations, as an attempt to demonstrate the reality of the unscrupulous, obscure regimes. What happened under Leopold II was utterly appalling.

When Leopold acquired the Congolese territory during the Berlin Conference, his stated aim was to “civilise” the people through missionary work. Nonetheless, Leopold’s interests were fundamentally economic, as he gave areas of the country over to private enterprises for exploitation – most famously through the celebrity figure of Henry Morton Stanley.

Once a territory had been taken over, “La Force Publique” enforced rubber quotas by torture, flogging and killing. Moreover, they burned entire villages and chopped off the hands of victims to prove that bullets had not been wasted. In 40 years, the population is said to have declined by 10 million .

However, when the true facts of the rule over the Congo were exposed and published in a 150-page document, King Leopold created an organization called the “Western African Missionary Association” to send a heavily censored version to several newspapers. There was a vast difference between the two versions . Indeed, key Belgian documents and information about the time were completely concealed from the public until 1983. Consequently, Belgians had very little idea of the terrors and atrocities happening in the Congo. Censorship and self-censorship happened essentially everywhere during colonisation. It was an endemic and essential characteristic of Belgian rule over the colony.

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad depicts the true reality behind the “progress” and “civilising” narratives imposed on the colonies. Conrad depicts the confrontation with the Congolese environment, together with its implications on the human mind. It illustrates its horror, cruelty and the normalisation of dreadful situations that originate and dictate each character’s persona. Although Conrad reveals the inhumanity of the regime, the common humanity between Europeans and the indigenous people is persistently emphasized. Marlow and Kurtz have become symbols of the colonial past and the internal struggle of the individual concerning the ruthlessness of European history.

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Today with climate change the same is happening. Governments, media, educational institutes and the international bodies are concealing key information about the environment and sustainability for the shortterm corporate interests of a tiny few, notably of Very Highly Developed nations. Just as there was a shadow over the brutality of Belgian rule in the Congo, there is now a shadow over our negligence of climate change.

“…the Horror, the horror”, in numbers.

Indeed, this is the censorship of our time, and it is inherent to the infrastructure of our life and our thinking. Our corrosive system has been diminishing our possibilities of solving the most crucial problem of today – climate change. People are being tricked into thinking that recycling and new forms of energy are reducing the colossal amounts of emissions released every year. What they do not know is that only 0,7% of all extracted materials are being recycled globally and that 80% of the economy is still powered by fossil fuels (IEA Global Energy Review). Why are we so proud of recycling? Why are we so preoccupied with plastic? If there was any honesty in public life about the horror of the situation we are in with the climate, these actions would just look absurdly limp.

Some people broadly trust their politicians and believe that international agreements are enough to resolve the problem. Do people really understand the dangers of going over nature’s tipping points? Why are so few people willing to think about whole systems collapsing? How would they react if they knew how far behind we are in achieving the ambitions of the Paris agreement, to halt temperature rises well below 2°C? How many people know that emissions are still increasing, not falling? Do people understand the issues of responsibility in reducing emissions, and how the amount differs according to whether they are low (LD) or very highly developed countries (VHD)?

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