"It's getting hot in herre..."

When you live in a hut with no electricity, options for passing the time are limited once the sun goes down. My new nightly ritual is to make myself a mug of hot chocolate (yes, even the Wisconsinite is cold during the "winter" nights), take my shortwave radio out to my courtyard, and sit looking up at the stars, listening to NewsHour on the BBC. The night sky in the desert is absolutely amazing, and there is something peaceful and almost symbolic about hearing about wordly events while gazing off into space.

A few nights ago, while partaking in this ritual, Julian Marshall informed me that polar bears have now been added to the list of endangered species. The cause cited: climate change.

Countless studies are published showing that temperatures are rising, warning us of how destructive greenhouse gas emissions are, and cautioning that global warming has the potential to wreak havoc on the earth, but somehow this message always gets brushed off. Often people refer to the overly publicized study about how polar ice caps are actually getting thicker, and these silly environmentalists are just paranoid. Then they go on driving their huge SUVs, confident that their individual actions have no impact on the rest of the world.

The idea of global warming has always sort of been a non-issue for me. While I believed that what we are doing to the earth cannot be good for it, I had a hard time believing that we were actually causing this big huge planet to change temperature so drastically that it would actually affect humans. A turning point for me, was reading an article by the scientist who conducted the study that I mentioned about the thickening of polar ice caps, the study that is frequently cited to show that global warming is not as serious as some scientists say it is. While I do not remember the exact details and do not fully understand the science behind it, I clearly remember the scientist saying that he deeply regretted that his study has been used as an excuse for people who continue to deny that climate change is an issue, even going so far as to say that he himself believes that climate change is happening. Unfortunately, although it had an impact on me, this article did not receive nearly as much publicity as his original research, so people continue to use this "evidence" against environmentalist campaigns to stop global warming.

It is strange for me to think about global warming from here, and to hear scientific reports from the BBC continuing to warn that it is happening, because the whole idea of climate change never comes up in conversation. My village does not seem to really know or care about greenhouse gas emissions...but that is because they do not really emit them.

Energy consumption and CO2 emissions here are drastically lower than those in the US or other parts of the western world. Very few people in my village, including my counterpart, ride motos, which emit CO2, but at a much lower rate than cars, which are a rarity here. If I see a car driving down the road, it is usually a tourist who has rented a car, other than that, it is just the large camions and trucks used for public transportation, which only run once or twice a day, and then only if they are full. And believe me, they have the art of "carpooling" perfected, as most of the time, motos hold at least two people, and they cram hundreds of people in a camion meant to hold only sheep. While they might not be intentionally trying to be energy friendly, they are doing a pretty good job of keeping emission levels down.

My deviation from my usual ramblings about poverty and life in an African village to ramble about climate change does have a reason that is relevant to my life here, so bear with me.

Life in village is entirely dependent on the weather. People depend on the rains to grow their only food supply, and to fill the wells and replenish groundwater for pumping. It rains only two months out of the year during June and July, so if the already short rainy season were made shorter by global warming, people would have no choice but to starve. During the hot seasons in April and May, I have been warned that people are unable to cultivate or do much of anything except search for shade because the sun is so oppressively hot. I cannot even imagine what would happen if the hot season were extended...the country would be unliveable.

It strikes me as horribly unfair that while global warming is occuring because of emissions from the western world, it is here, in Africa, where people would be most affected by it. And what makes things worse is that the western world continues to be so blasé about it, taking for granted that the earth will still be here no matter what we do to it. The US, specifically the current administration, long ago abandoned the Kyoto protocol, and has made no effort to create new regulations curbing greenhouse gas emissions. While trying to adhere to the Kyoto protocol would now be unrealistic, the fact that there have been proposals to modify it or at least do something is enfuriating.

Although there is not too terribly much I can do from here to persuade people to consider the problem of climate change and alter their behaviors, I am using my blog as a way to reach out to people who possibly can do something.

We all have to share this little planet, you way across the ocean, and me and everyone else here in Africa, so if we want to stay on it, we have to start taking care of it. I used to love seeing polar bears at the zoo, and while I am sad that they are now endangered because we are melting their natural habitat, I did not write this blog to persuade people to "save the polar bears."

Yes, that's right, I have yet another bleeding heart issue to add to my usual rantings about poverty in Africa. Because I realize that all of these people I am here trying to help will not be here if the world continues to burn up the ozone layer at the scary rate it is going...I will not be here either...No one will.