Nicholas Kristof: Global Warming creates Radicalism.
Nicholas Kristof, who has written a lot about the consequences of global warming, says that one of the consequences will be increased fundamentalism and radicalism around the world. For instance, he says that they are burning people for being witches in Tanzania, just like they did back in the Middle Ages.
As we pump out greenhouse gases, most of the discussion focuses on direct consequences like rising seas or aggravated hurricanes. But the indirect social and political impact in poor countries may be even more far-reaching, including upheavals and civil wars — and even more witches hacked to death with machetes.
In rural Tanzania, murders of elderly women accused of witchcraft are a very common form of homicide. And when Tanzania suffers unusual rainfall — either drought or flooding — witch-killings double, according to research by Edward Miguel, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley.
“In bad years, the killings explode,” Professor Miguel said. He believes that if climate change causes more drought years in Tanzania, the result will be more elderly women executed there and in other poor countries that still commonly attack supposed witches.
There is evidence that European witch-burnings in past centuries may also have resulted from climate variations and the resulting crop failures, economic distress and search for scapegoats. Emily Oster, a University of Chicago economist, tracked witchcraft trials and weather in Western Europe between 1520 and 1770 and found a close correlation: colder weather led to more crackdowns on witches.
Although the repressive dictators of Sudan are the primary cause of that tragic war, Kristof argues that one secondary cause is global warming. So, what we have to worry about is more wars over water and oil as the earth's resources and habitable places dwindle as the result of man-made global warming. So, what is needed is more aid so that we can bypass corrupt governments so that the aid will go directly to the people who need it. And an Obama administration would get us out of Iraq so that we can free up billions of dollars so that we can prevent World War III from happening.
Obamathon
