"It's Not About The Climate Changing - The Climate Has Changed. And We're Not Going Back".

[hatrack]

EDIT

The climate news is as grim as ever. Despite the stated ambitions of the international community to take action, the world’s nations have shaved just 1 percent off their projected greenhouse gas emissions for 2030, according to a new U.N. report. The meager outcome places the planet on a path to warm by 2.4 degrees Celsius (4.3 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century — below some of the greatest fears of climate watchers but still beyond the safe temperature threshold set at 1.5 degrees Celsius. It precipitates a dangerous future of extreme weather, rising sea levels and “endless suffering,” as the United Nations put it itself.

Two other reports this week from U.N. agencies compounded these woes. An analysis by the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change found that few countries had adjusted their climate pledges since a major U.N. climate conference last year held in Glasgow, Scotland. This year’s conference is set to be hosted in Egypt next month. Another study by the World Meteorological Organization found that methane emissions are rising faster than ever. The evidence raises “questions about humanity’s ability to limit the greenhouse gas that is 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide in the near term,” my colleagues reported.

EDIT

In some places, that future is now. The Horn of Africa and many parts of East Africa are in the midst of a devastating drought. A fifth consecutive rainy season has failed and analysts expect the sixth — starting next March — to also be a dud. As fields go fallow and millions of livestock die of thirst, there is a staggering crisis of hunger in countries throughout the region. According to the U.N.’s World Food Program (WFP), some 22 million people in Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya are at risk of starvation.

In Somalia, in particular, aid groups and international observers warn of the imminent onset of famine. The conditions appear worse than in 2011, the last time famine was declared in the war-ravaged country, when some 250,000 people died. Every minute, one Somali child is being admitted for medical treatment for malnutrition, a spokesperson for the U.N.’s children agency said earlier this month. There are harrowing tales of mothers and families trudging through parched terrain in search of medical assistance for ailing babies. Thousands may have already died.

EDIT

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/28/somalia-famine-climate-change/

[Delphinus]

1. The last paragraph

in the article - so true and so hard to know how to move forward.