No plan, no leader. Slovakia politically unprepared to face climate change

We need a positive vision of a country entering a time of crisis we know won't be short, says journalist and climate activist Jakub Filo.

Inhabitants of Valaská Belá, village in central Slovakia, hit by the floods in early August, remove damages after water. (Source: TASR)

Whatever we do, the globe will be 1.5 degree Celsius warmer by 2040, reads the first part of the sixth report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published earlier this week.

Although the alarming state of the world's climate is no news to Slovak journalist, author and climate change activist Jakub Filo, he does not believe the report could be a wake-up call for his country.

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The Slovak Spectator (TSS): What will Slovakia look like in 2050 with regard to climate?

Jakub Filo (JF): We shouldn't imagine that there will have been a fundamental and complicated change in physical space. Neither a desert nor dramatic fire. Yet Slovakia will have suffered from many demonstrations of the climate change by then.

There will be many more storms, torrential floods, days with extreme droughts and heatwaves. Climate change will affect eco-systems. Slovakia's spruce forests will especially suffer, unable to adapt to climate change.

Slovakia's nature as we know it will be pushed toward the north and higher elevations. In the short-term horizon, the world will still seem normal when we look out of the window or walk in the countryside, but there will be many more instances of extreme weather.

Think of June and July this year, when we witnessed many extreme events on a global scale. Our years, our summers, will look ever more like that.

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