Nicholas Kristof on Burundi
Sometimes, even with all the hype about the upcoming Live Earth Concerts and Al Gore, it is difficult to comprehend the human factor in global warming. But it turns out that the African nation of Burundi is one of the nations that will bear the main brunt of global warming:
Against that grim backdrop, changing weather patterns in recent years have already caused crop failures — and when the crops fail here, people starve. In short, our greenhouse gases are killing people here.
“If the harvest fails in the West, then you have stocks and can get by,” said Gerard Rusuku, an agriculture scientist here who has been studying the impact of global warming in Africa. “Here, we’re much more vulnerable. If climate change causes a crop failure here, there’s famine.”
Guillaume Foliot of the World Food Program notes that farmers here overwhelmingly agree that the weather has already become more erratic, leading to lost crops. And any visitor can see that something is amiss: Africa’s “great lakes” are shrinking.
This is what the Global Warming Deniers can't comprehend -- the direct effects of human-induced global warming on peoples' lives. They can talk about their ivory tower denial theories all they want. They can play the persecution card all they want as well. But they cannot explain away the direct effects of global warming that easily.
The modern-day environmental movement was jumpstarted through just such an observation by Rachael Carson. And even though we have safely banned DDT, there are other threats to our existance and survival as a race that are just as deadly if we do not act to stop them. This is proven scientific fact.
And the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change weighs in:
In contrast, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned this year that the consequences for Africa will be particularly harsh because of the region’s poverty and vulnerability. It foresees water shortages and crop failures in much of Africa.
“Projected reductions in yield in some countries could be as much as 50 percent by 2020, and crop net revenues could fall as much as 90 percent,” the panel warned. It also cautioned that warming temperatures could lead malaria to spread to highland areas. Another concern is that scarcities of food and water will trigger wars. More than five million lives have already been lost since 1994 in wars in Rwanda, Burundi and Congo, and one factor was competition for scarce resources.
Africa is now Ground Zero in our efforts to stem the tide of human induced global warming. And on top of the wars mentioned, we have endless wars in Somalia and Darfur as well. This is why going with an isolationist like Ron Paul is the wrong way to go. He would have us retreat from the international scene right when our influence was needed the most.
And like Cote D'Ivoire, we see absolutely no effort by the Bush administration to reverse this trend of global warming, leading directly to the starvation of millions of African people. This is the sort of thing that happens when you rely on the kind of junk science that the Bush administration has been relying on for the last six years.
I wrote elsewhere tonight about the loss of respect for this country around the world. Here is one typical example:
Yoweri Museveni, Uganda’s president, describes climate change as “the latest form of aggression” by rich countries against Africa. He has a point. Charles Ehrhart, a Care staff member in Kenya who works full time on climate-change issues, says that the negative impact of the West’s carbon emissions will overwhelm the positive effects of aid.
“It’s at the least disastrous and quite possibly catastrophic,” Mr. Ehrhart said of the climate effects on Africa. “Life was difficult, but with climate change it turns deadly.”
We need a president who will reverse the loss of respect that other leaders have had for us and who will lead the world away from the threat of human-induced global warming. For a long time, this was all considered to be ivory tower theory. But now, the effects of human-induced climate change are starting to be felt.
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