We got through the hurricane season;

Unscathed.  

For us, Ernesto aside, we had good fortune this year.  Not a single named hurricane came to our shores in the 2024 season despite projections.

We are grateful and should let that gratitude be known.  Prayer has its place but it is so misused in BVI officialdom that suspicion surrounds any mention of it outside of its designated spaces.

But the future is uncertain.  We are living with climate change but the incoming leader of the free world does not entertain such beliefs.  The confusion of the moment is:

Is it climate change or is it weather that is cyclical?

It is expected that the US will withdraw from the Paris Agreement.  And that will render, almost useless, the world’s resolve to limit the increase in global temperature to 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels.  

The Caribbean Community Climate Change Center fought hard to sensitize the global village to this necessity and to the impacts on people who do not possess a ‘FEMA’ with its healthy budget and whose declarations of ‘states of emergency’ do not carry any predictable financial largesse.

Small island developing states are already disproportionately impacted and it does not help that there is little credence to sea level rise and much speculation that the hurricanes are controlled and influenced by powerful government forces seeding the atmosphere.

The world is in the extremely dangerous place where no one knows what to believe; Where lying has become a national pastime and the very perpetrators no longer demonstrate that they know for sure if their utterances are lies or truth.

So, we should probably better concern ourselves with an issue that impacts us all and admits to some degree of personal maneuverability.  

Safety.

Increasingly, people are, daily, on the public roads exercising.  And while their health is being improved, their lives are at risk.  

Motorists are moving at breakneck speed, some trying to catch boats or planes; Others going about their daily affairs; Some going nowhere but going fast.

We hope that the current improvements to the road infrastructure spearheaded by the Works Minister have sidewalks as a part of the package.  

We were pained to see in the online news that a motorist, who was kind enough to pick up a hitchhiker, ended up in an accident that cost the hitchhiker his life and left others in the vehicle in serious or critical condition.

Perhaps the Works Minister, who is also Minister for the Department of Motor Vehicles, may use this misfortune to put together a public transportation system.

He can begin by subsidizing designated taxi drivers to run prescribed routes for a reasonable fee to the public.  Some of this may already be happening so it may be a matter of expansion and predictability.

Such actions would relieve motorists from the obligation of picking up hitchhikers and the guilt and perhaps financial ruin should accidents occur.

The complexity of BVI is, daily, manifesting itself.  Are the 13 aware?  Do they concern themselves about the public’s health and wellbeing?

Our hearts go out to those who have lost loved ones to accidents on the roads and especially, to the family of the recently deceased.  R.E.M. told us:

“Well, everybody hurts sometimes
Everybody cries
Everybody hurts, sometimes.”

As we do, for the country, on Fridays.

Happy Friday!