Another beautiful morning for a 25 minute run through the woods. Sunny, but green, moist & mild. Unlike sub-Saharan Africa, where drought is increasing in frequency and severity as a result of global warming. The situation is compounded by land-grabbing, as richer nations (and individuals) buy up massive areas of the most fertile parts of these drought-threatened countries to export food back to their own populations (ref). Moreover, as the lovely World Bank discovered and suppressed, production of biofuels, driven by demand from the EU & US, has pushed up global food prices by 75%.
Consequently, in drought conditions, as well as being deprived of water, many more people can neither grow basic food nor afford to buy it, which is precisely the situation now arising in Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia & Uganda.
Meanwhile, as the global situation continues to take its relatively modest toll in the UK, and hundreds of thousands of people come out on strike against the government’s policies of reducing pay & pensions, at least one person must be feeling secure and well fed. Our very own publicly-funded heir to the throne, Prince Charles, has increased his annual income by 5% to nearly £20 million (ref & ref). To put that into context, it is equivalent to the average annual income of 46,000 Ethiopians.
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