Ignore Mother Nature’s warnings at your peril

Some parts of Cape Town felt the earth move in the early hours of yesterday, after a light 3.5 magnitude earthquake struck at a depth of 5km about 60km from Saldanha on the West Coast.

The tremor lasted roughly 10 seconds. It follows less than two months after a 6.2-magnitude earthquake was detected 1 600km offshore in Cape Town on 26 September. Subsequent 2.5- and 2.9-magnitude tremors followed, with some people feeling them in the northern suburbs.

The Council for Geoscience urged the public not to panic, even though they admitted it was unusual.

The tremor came on the same day the Red Cross released a report in which it warned that climate change was a bigger threat than Covid-19.

The relief organisation urged the world to react to climate change with the same intensity with which they are treating the pandemic.

Since the World Health Organisation declared the pandemic in March, the report said the world had been hit by more than 100 disasters – many of them climate-related. According to the report, more than 50 million people had been affected. Since 1990, the number of climate and weather-related disasters has surged by nearly 35%.

While most are in agreement that climate change does not cause earthquakes and tremors, it would be silly to not take heed of Mother Nature’s warnings.

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