Africa is Burning (Global Warming)
December 5, 2006My first posting… welcome to my blog!
Here is a great article from , which highlights the sheer ignorance and arrogance of the U.S. when it comes to global warming. And England & Australia aren’t exactly saints, if you know what I mean. Mark my words for it: Africa will be the first country to truly experience the full effects of global warming.
Africa Is Burning
Roxanne Lawson and Elizabeth Bast
December 04, 2006
Elizabeth Bast is an International Policy Analyst at Friends of the Earth-U.S. Roxanne Lawson is an International Policy Campaigner for Friends of the Earth.
The effects of the Great Warming are not fairly shared. Fourteen percent of the world’s population lives in the 57 countries on the African continent. However, because the majority of Africans live with little to no access to electricity and personal transport usage is among the world’s lowest, Africans contribute only 3 percent of the global greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming.
The United States, conversely, with only 5 percent of the world’s population, contributes nearly 25 percent of worldwide greenhouse gas pollution annually. In the United States, with our consumption of electricity, our ecologically harmful industries and our 230 million passenger vehicles, we are literally fueling the destruction of the planet’s environment.
Last month, at the United Nations Climate Change summit in Nairobi, Kenya, climate change experts from around the globe reported to 165 countries on the impacts of global warming, which will be felt most harshly by poor developing countries. If that weren’t bad enough, the former World Bank chief economist Sir Nicholas Stern recently released a report that suggests that global warming could shrink the global economy by 20 percent over the next 50 years. From the report and the summit, it is clear that climate change is as much a humanitarian, security and economic issue as an environmental one.
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