Climate change is devastating Africa
The rest of the world seems to either not notice or not care.
In the 16th century, the Kassena people built a magnificent palace. Sharing their collective history and personal stories by drawing them on the wall, Burkina Faso’s Royal Court of Tiébélé is instantly recognizable by the distinctive geometric patterns on wavy-wall houses.
Not surprisingly, the Royal Court of Tiébélé is on the Unesco world heritage list. It is one of only four Burkinabé sites to earn that recognition. Yet according to a recent report in The Guardian, the site is deteriorating due to climate change. The unpredictable rains make paint-based restoration projects difficult if not impossible. Surrounding that establishment, the Burkinabé people are uniquely vulnerable to the droughts, heat waves, extreme storms and other freakish weather caused by the climate change since 80 percent of their population works in agriculture and other land-based work.
I’m reminded of a 2021 news story that, though I only covered it briefly for Salon, struck me in my solar plexus when I read it: Africa, which is home to only three glaciers, will lose all of them by the end of the century, per the World Meteorological Organization. Even though Africa’s 54 nations only contribute to 4 percent of climate change, the sins of non-African nations will inevitably melt the glaciers that currently cover Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, the Rwenzori Mountains in Uganda and the Mount Kenya massif in Kenya.
“The rapid shrinking of the last remaining glaciers in eastern Africa, which are expected to melt entirely in the near future, signals the threat of imminent and irreversible change to the Earth system,” WMO Secretary-General Prof. Petteri Taalas explained in a foreword to the WMO’s report.
“If this continues, it will lead to total deglaciation by the 2040s,” they later added. “Mount Kenya is expected to be deglaciated a decade sooner, which will make it one of the first entire mountain ranges to lose glaciers due to human-induced climate change.”
At Nairobi’s three-day African Climate Summit in 2023, African world leaders unsurprisingly called for the world that destroys their natural wonders to start literally paying for it.
“We can be a green industrial hub that helps other regions achieve their net zero strategies by 2050,” Kenyan President William Ruto said at the summit. “Unlocking the renewable energy resources that we have in our continent is not only good for Africa, it is good for the rest of the world.”
Africa, the cradle of civilization itself, is foreshadowing humanity’s collective fate if we continue to ignore climate change. In the same year that President Ruto called for green energy, University of Pennsylvania climate scientist Dr. Michael E. Mann gave me a broader view of the stakes involved with our warming climate.
“Life on Earth has been around for 4 billion years, and so for billions of years, conditions have been conducive to life and life has played an increasingly important role on the climate itself,” Mann said. “Two and a half billion years ago, we had a Snowball Earth. Then we step forward — you can think of telescoping in on finer and finer timescales — we get from the billion year timescale to the hundreds of millions year timescale. And, at 250 million years, we have the greatest mass extinction event on Earth.”
He concluded, “There are lessons that we draw from that. Then we zoom in again: Now, we're talking 65 million years ago, and we have the episode that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs. Then we zoom ahead to just a few million years ago, and primates are on the scene. At every step, you have climate changing and climate impacting life.”
Mann knows, as all who understand climate science know, that humans are pumping greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, methane, water vapor, nitrous oxide and chlorofluorocarbons into the atmosphere. We do this by burning fossil fuels, tearing down rainforests, poor agricultural practices and various forms of industrial pollution.
Twenty-four/twenty-fifths of this activity is performed outside of Africa. As such, Mann’s observation about climate change impacting life has a cruel double meaning for Africa, a continent climate change is disproportionately walloping despite its comparative innocence.
The humane position is for us to compensate them and transition to renewable energy. The contrasting position was best summed up by “michael” (lower case his, not mine) in the comments section in the Yahoo! News syndicated version of my original Salon piece on the African Climate Summit. He posted a pair of posts that I find oddly revealing. The first is full of pseudoscience that “michael” (who, unlike Mann, has no scientific credentials) seems to have pulled directly from his derriere. The second reveals his real motives for opposing aid to the African nations that have been wronged by climate change.
Post #1:
"The last part of this article is the cult lies and distortion," michael wrote. "The Sahara is actually greening a bit in the south from climate change. Not that long ago in planet time it was a grassland with rivers running through it. With warming it might reach that point again rather than an over populated desert that cannot fed itself. Further south the problem is not water, it is an exploding population and 100% corrupt governments which have not spent a dime on increasing the infrastructure to support the larger population. A warming world will make for a wetter world unlike the IPCC noted 7000 year cooling trend which has made for a dryer world. The sun warmed up a bit 200 years ago, google it, and the world warmed up out of the little ice age."
[Here is the "last part" of my article in full: "Not everyone was happy with the document, with some arguing it did not do enough to advance the interests of low-income Africans. Africa is expected to suffer a disproportionate blow from climate change, including losing all of its glaciers. Large parts of the continent will be uniquely vulnerable to compound drought and heatwaves events as well, all while temperature records continue to shatter as climate change spirals out of control."]
Post #2:
"Having been in Africa the problem is Africans," michael wrote. "Currently they are busy murdering each other over religion, muslims hate christians, murdering each other over tribe, a few years ago they were busy hacking off arms and heads in Uganda and still are in a number of countries in Africa. When not busy killing each other the politicians they "elect" if you can call the elections elections rather than tribal pissing contests are corrupt to the core. The fractions in many countries are busy staging coups and contra coups every other hour so they can get into the corruption game. Loaning any of those countries money is the equivalent of putting the money in a big pile in the street and burning it up. To add to the problem they are busy making babies. Example. Kenya went from 1.7 million in 1900 to 53 plus million in 2021 to 88 million projected in 2050. The people and politicians never fixed anything, everything just gets worse every year. We owe them zero, they owe us for all the problems they cause."
No doubt, “michael” has spent exactly as much time in Africa as he has college degrees in science hanging from his den wall. I juxtapose these two comments, though, to illustrate that the climate change deniers aren’t really motivated by an understanding of science.
They disbelieve climate change because the political right-wing, with which they identify, is hostile to the scientific establishment. This is because, just as the doctors who proved cigarettes cause cancer became a conservative punching bag in the late 20th century, climate scientists who warn about climate change are the conservative punching bag in the early 21st century. In the former case, it was because conservatives were in the pocket of Big Business, which sided with Big Tobacco over scientists; in the latter case, it was because conservatives are still in the pocket of big business, which sides with Big Oil over scientists.
Right-wingers, of course, don’t really love Big Business. But Big Business long ago learned that individuals will vote against their self-interest if their otherwise-hostile ally gives them license to hate and hurt others they dislike.
That’s the entire political philosophy of the lower case Michael. I fear that he may still prevail over the upper case one.
Back Seat Socialism
Column by Matthew Rozsa who is a professional journalist for more than 13 years. Currently he is writing a book for Beacon Press, "Neurosocialism," which argues that autistic people like the author struggle under capitalism, and explains how neurosocialism - the distinct anticapitalist perspective one develops by living as a neurodiverse individual - can be an important organizing principle for the left.