Climate and energy

You might not have thought the poor could get poorer – but with climate change, they can. Citizens of poorer and developing countries already suffer from more health problems than citizens in developed countries. As a new report from the UN concludes, with the advent of climate change those problems will only get worse.

Quotable, from coverage of the report (NPR): the phrase “adaptation apartheid” to describe what is occurring as a result of climate change. As report lead author Kevin Watkins explains Bishop Desmond Tutu’s use of this term:

Rich countries – who, let’s face it – are largely responsible for the problem (of climate change), are able to use their financial resources to protect their citizens while the world’s poorest people are in a very literal sense left to sink or swim with their own resources.

Climate change raises important an question for countries that provide aid to less fortunate ones: Where do you put your resources? Does it make sense to build a school in a community that has no water – what about funding drought recovery first? Since one of the effects of climate change is extreme weather, what about spending money on flood control, too?

Nutrition, education, transportation, health care – climate change impacts all of these aid initiatives.