Mozambique's food riots – the true face of global warming
Raj Patel The Observer, Sunday 5 September 2010
It has been a summer of record temperatures – Japan had its hottest summer on record, as did South Florida and New York. Meanwhile, Pakistan and Niger are flooded and the eastern US is mopping up after hurricane Earl. None of these individual events can definitively be attributed to global warming. But to see how climate change will play out in the 21st century, you needn't look to the Met Office. Look, instead, to the deaths and burning tyres in Mozambique's "food riots" to see what happens when extreme natural phenomena interact with our unjust economic systems.
The immediate causes of the protests in Mozambique's capital, Maputo, and Chimoio about 500 miles north, are a 30% price increase for bread, compounding a recent double-digit increase for water and energy. When nearly three-quarters of the household budget is spent on food, that's a hike few Mozambicans can afford.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/sep/05/mozambique-food-riots-patel-----------------------
Anyone who pays any attention whatsoever to the condition of our foods here knows all
is not well --
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