Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Dr. Willie Soon; Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate, who was “accidentally” cropped from a picture of white climate activists in Davos in January, thinks people need to be better educated about the dangers of climate change.
Vanessa Nakate: ‘Many people are not yet aware of the dangers of climate change’
As a prominent Fridays for Future activist, Vanessa Nakate tells DW how climate activism looks different in her native Uganda and why she’s recently been tweeting in German.
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How does climate activism in your country differ from what it looks like in Europe? We’re used to seeing big Fridays For Future strikes here, but what does it look like in Uganda?
Well, of course there is a big difference between the activism in Uganda and in Europe. This is mainly because of two things.
One is awareness. Many people are not yet aware of the dangers. They don’t have the facts. They don’t have the clear science about what is happening when it comes to the climate crisis.
And then the other thing is freedom of expression. Freedom of expression is not the same as we see it is in Europe and it’s also harder for students here to walk out of school and do the climate strikes.
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Recently, you’ve actually been tweeting in German to try and get the message across. What made you do this?
Well, I did that because I was really angry and disturbed by the fact that Germany chose to push coal to 2038. I feel like that helps them and that doesn’t help communities that are already being affected by the climate crisis. I feel like 2038 is too late. It’s unnecessary and very dangerous for communities that are already facing devastating impacts of climate change.
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Read more: https://www.dw.com/en/fridays-for-future-uganda-climate-change-africa-activism-food-security-water/a-54732304
Despite being a climate activist, Vanessa seems quite an impressive person.
Her own country doesn’t care about climate change or hasn’t heard of it. Europe pretends to care, but I mean, they cropped her out of at least one picture of climate activists. Who knows how else she is being mistreated.
Despite lip service to climate activism, Germany and other European countries are pushing ahead with coal projects.
Yet Vanessa is still determined to try.
What a waste of talent. I hope one day soon Vanessa wakes up to how she is being used, and applies that remarkable determination and guts to achieving something genuinely useful, for herself or for her country.
Climate change, anthropogenic?, significant?, sustainable change over a 30 year period?
While in the Navy back in 1965 I was in port in Guam for over two weeks in late July. To this day it still amazes me that I noticed those that were born and raised there were essentially not bothered by the heat/humidity. On visits to the Navy Exchange it was very obvious who was born there and who was a military dependent or contractor. The Guamanian women looked like they had just left a beauty parlor whereas the American women looked like they just got caught in a rainstorm. Same for the men. The majority of the “Night Spots” had no air condition other than the louvered windows. I noticed the same native acclimation to the tropical heat in any of the tropical ports of call. I just can not believe two degrees is going to change that – there is that big a difference within some of these countries normally due to closeness to the equator.
I guess she is too young to remember the 1 million or so deaths 26 years ago, or the madness of Idi Amin? Uganda has much much more to worry about than climate change.
I didn’t read all the comments so what I write here has probably been said somewhere in the previous 50 comments.
The tragic situation in Uganda in terms of extreme poverty, failed governance, poor infrastructure, and continual warfare is surely made worse by the cycles of lake floods and droughts that devastate this tiny country wedged in between DRC and Kenya. In the climate change era, there is an ongoing effort by the UN, by activists, and by do-good-nicks of all colors to relate these tragic hardships to climate change but there is no scientific basis for these attributions.
For one thing, the “internal climate variability” issue in climate science makes it impossible to make these attributions. Briefly, the internal climate variability issue is that AGW is a theory about long term trends in global mean temperature and it is not possible to relate localized climate events to AGW because natural internal climate variability dominates under those conditions.
It is noted that the study of climate change impacts in Uganda, a country with less than 0.05% of the world’s land surface, contains an extreme form of geographical constraint. A much larger regional context is needed over a sufficiently long time span. It should also be noted that cycles of extreme drought and extreme rain with lake floods are the norm in this part of Africa as it has been at least since colonial times.
https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/07/16/the-internal-variability-issue/
Recently there was a meeting of the German Chancellor Mrs. Merkel, with Greta Thunberg-Sweden, Luisa Neubauer-Germany, Ahun de Wever-Belgium and Adelaide Charlier-Belgium. All these girls are climate activists. They called on Merkel to take the lead in the global fight against climate change. They also criticized Germany’s decision to shut down all coal-fired power plants by 2038. This was much too late, they said.Unfortunately it is not known exactly how the Chancellor reacted to these teachings from little girls about how the world works…and yes, the girl from Uganda was not invited. The fight against the climate armagedon is probably only a matter of little girls from Europe.Unfortunately it is not known exactly how the Chancellor reacted to these teachings from little girls about how the world works…and yes, the girl from Uganda was not invited. The fight against the ‘climate armagedon’ is probably only a matter of little girls from Europe.
Translated with http://www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)