Jack & Jill Politics

Cuz climate change is all gangsta like that. Check it:

The snows of Kilimanjaro may soon be gone. […]

Some 85 percent of the ice that made up the mountaintop glaciers in 1912 was gone by 2007, researchers led by paleoclimatologist Lonnie Thompson of Ohio State University report in Tuesday’s edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

And more than a quarter of the ice present in 2000 was gone by 2007.

If current conditions continue “the ice fields atop Kilimanjaro will not endure,” the researchers said. (MSNBC)

It’s that way for all the other African mountains too. Wow. I’ve always dreamed of going to Africa and seeing Kilimanjaro. Looks like maybe I’ll see a bald mountain. Why care, you ask? Who cares about some old snow far away, even if it is in Africa? Well, as I’ve warned before and as Hurricane Katrina taught us, climate change will hurt the black and the brown — first and worst. Business Daily Africa‘s got the news on a recent report:

The report indicates that by 2050 in sub-Saharan Africa, average rice, wheat and maize yields will decline by up to 14 per cent, 22 per cent and five percent, respectively, as a result of climate change.

This decline will lead to more malnutrition, especially of children.

Without adequate climate change mitigation and adaptation, and in the absence of proper investment and trade policies, “food availability in the (sub-Saharan African) region will average 500 calories less per person in 2050, a 21 per cent decline”.