Essay by Eric Worrall
But lets ignore the obvious solution.
Why we need to talk about older people and climate change in Africa
Published: September 30, 2024 6.28pm AEST
Gary Haq
Senior Research Fellow at the Stockholm Environment Institute, University of York…
By 2050, older adults in Africa are projected to face significantly higher heat exposure due to rapid population growth and climate change, with an increase in extreme heat events. This will heighten health risks and put pressure on local services, especially in low-income areas with limited ability to cope with the strain.
…
Urgent strategies are therefore needed to protect older people from extreme weather such as heatwaves. These include cooling infrastructure (air conditioning) and early warning systems that tell older people when it is getting dangerously hot. Climate change adaptation plans must be integrated with policies on ageing to protect older people.
…
In Africa, older people are at greater risk because the continent has limited basic infrastructure. This is especially the case in rural areas, where access to healthcare, clean water and emergency services is often poor. Poverty, living alone, and depending on small-scale farming make them even more susceptible to extreme weather.
…
… social protection systems such as cash transfer programmes must be improved to give financial help to vulnerable older people. Programmes that provide direct support and jobs in projects that protect against climate impacts are also a good idea.
…
Read more: https://theconversation.com/why-we-need-to-talk-about-older-people-and-climate-change-in-africa-239107
I’ll give Gary Haq half marks for mentioning air conditioning. It is pretty courageous these days for an academic to suggest energy expenditure can help solve a social problem.
But overlooking the obvious solution to funding that air conditioning, the solution which worked in the West, is just disappointing.
The only genuine solution to Africa’s money problems is capitalist prosperity. And the only route to lasting capitalist prosperity in today’s world is fossil fuel powered industrialisation and trade with other nations.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
The anti-CO2 agenda has been a MASSIVE hinderance to development in Africa.
The World Bank, International Monetary Fund, UN, WEF etc know this, but… JUST DON’T CARE.
Oh, they care, but not about Africa. They care about power and control, dictating energy and economies.
“By 2050, older adults in Africa are projected to”… blah, blahhhhh
Way too much projection !!
Way too little fact.!!
By 2050 it is projected that most all current African Octogenarians will be dead…we must act now to save them!
Given that today’s life expectancy for a child of either sex born today in Africa is under 80 that sounds a safe bet.
I don’t think that many get past 60.
Before CO2 atmospheric enrichment life expectancy in Africa’s most populous nation, Nigeria, was 33 years. It is now 56 years. With the ongoing enrichment, life expectancy is forecast to reach 80 years by 2100.
Pre CO2 enrichment, the population of Nigeria was 37M. It is now 232M and projected to reach 513M by 2100. I suggest the latter will only be achieved through massive increase in CO2 enrichment and some of the enrichment will be achieved by Nigeria using its extensive natural fuel wealth to harness its exiting water resources.
Add capitalist prosperity and you will have nailed it.
Lots of aid money has been poured into Africa, but it all ends up in the bank accounts of corrupt dictators.
One of the worst things first world nations do to Africa is send foreign aid. The money goes to dictators, armies, and Swiss bank accounts. The food is surplus that doesn’t fit their needs, that they don’t really know what to do with, and which suppresses their own farms.
The best thing first world nations could do is stop sending all aid and drop all tariffs and import quotas to zero, to encourage their own industrial growth and self-sufficient farms.
In other news, the Sahara is turning green:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjFBWNU-GE4
This, of course, is a bad thing.
We MUST protect our deserts!
Anyone remember that proclamation?
A former USA president went to Africa to tell them that they could not have what the rest of the world had – cars, air conditioning, etc. – because if they did “the Earth would boil over!” He told them, a room full of young adults, that they were on their own. WHAT HE DIDN’T TELL THEM was that he and the rest of the First World were going to take away from them by force the fossil fuels and technology that they needed to survive, the fertilizer they needed to grow food, the diesel and gasoline they needed to grow their economies. It had nothing to do with “climate change,” and everything to do with population control. (Go find the video of that speech. The smirk on that man’s face must have been the same one Reverend Jones had when he offered his followers all that Kool-Aid.)
So now someone realizes that old people need air conditioning in Africa. It took them this long to figure that out? They’ve had air conditioning forever in Washington, DC and in Martha’s Vineyard.
Search for the video would be easier if the President was named.
Based on the last sentence, I’d say it was Obama.
Aha! Someone found the clue! :o)
It was Barak Obama, and the year was 2013. Here’s part of what he said when asked about US foreign policy re the environment:
“Ultimately, if you think about all the youth that everybody has mentioned here in Africa, if everybody is raising living standards to the point where everybody has got a car and everybody has got air conditioning, and everybody has got a big house, well, the planet will boil over—unless we find new ways of producing energy.”
https://reason.com/2013/07/02/obamas-climate-worries-about-africans-ge/
Old people in Europe are particularly vulnerable to climate change policies too.
Old people everywhere are vulnerable to climate change policies. Policies, but NOT climate change itself. No one is going to suffer from man made climate change anymore than they might suffer from the natural climate change we’re experiencing as we emerge from the Pleistocene ice age into the current interglacial warming period. But let’s be honest with ourselves – governmental policies enacted out of fear and ignorance are screwing with nature, with national economies, and causing far more deaths than if things were simply left alone. The most vulnerable victims of bureaucratic thoughtlessness are the very young, and the very old. It’s time for a bit of compassion.
They are also, in fact, causing climate change.
Massive alteration of local ecologies changes long term weather patterns, which is the definition of climate change.
Instead of pictures showing a melting thermometer and a grey-headed man mopping his brow a few time series graphs substantiating the claims made would be more convincing.
The links supposedly substantiating the claims make the same claims similarly without substantiation.
The atmosphere above Africa has warmed generally about 0.7C in forty five years in line with the Earth generally (UAH), it’s hard to conceive how the negative consequences mentioned can be attributed to such an imperceptible temperature rise alone.
On the other hand the point about population growth causing distress during the occasional heatwave in cities is no doubt true, take Lagos (pop ~18m) or Kinshasa (pop ~17m) for instance.
Gary Haq has evidently not been to Africa – or stayed awake if he has.
Africa is an extreme heat event. Its temperatures vary daily.
Never got hot in Africa before the fossil fuel era. Nope. Nosiree.
The funny thing is, Africa is a HUGE continent that spans from 37°N to 35°S, and encompasses many different elevations and climate regimes, yet everyone’s popular view is that all of Africa is represented by that narrow, arid band near the equator called the Sahara desert.
Fossil fuel = hydrocarbon fuel = cheap and reliable energy.
Nuclear fuel = cheap and reliable energy.
The only genuine solution to Africa’s money problems is capitalist prosperity.
Fact.
“Aid” goes mostly to benefit the WaBenzi, various apparatchiks who administer said funding, mostly for themselves.
The 2024 life expectancy for the Congo is projected to be 62 years
Saving others the Google:(US News and World Report chart)Countries With the Shortest Life Expectancy
Country Average Life Expectancy
Chad 53 years
Nigeria 53 years
Lesotho 53 years
Central African Republic 54 years
South Sudan 55 years
Somalia 55 years
Eswatini 57 years
Côte d’Ivoire 59 years
Guinea 59 years
Mali 59 years
Oof. On 10 countries on planet Earth, living to 60 years old beats the average. People for other countries, especially where the average approaches living to 80 years old, fly 12,000 miles on private jets to talk about how to stop Earth from getting 2C warmer. Who and what are important to the people on the jets?
Oil consumption
Rank Country Yearly World Share
1 US 19,687,287 20.3 %
2 China 12,791,553 13.2 %
3 India 4,443,000 4.6 %
4 Japan 4,012,877 4.1 %
5 Russia 3,631,287 3.7 %
6 Saudi 3,302,000 3.4 %
7 Brazil 2,984,000 3.1 %
8 S Korea 2,605,440 2.7 %
9 Canada 2,486,301 2.6 %
10 Germany 2,383,393 2.5 %
Top 10 oil consuming nations occupy 4 continents
Which 3 are missing? How are they doing?
I suppose Australia has only about the population of US state Florida.
Antarctica is empty.
Climate isn’t nearly the threat to seniors as is crappy government.
Since Africa straddles the Equator, does that not mean that the temperatures will not change much? I thought the temperature is rising near the poles and not so much near the Equator. That would mean no problem for African seniors.
Hmm. Well let’s see. “Climate change” is some chimeric average that no one really experiences, such as 1.5C of warming. Are they saying that old people can’t handle a temperature change that one might experience moving from one room to another? Or from 9am to 10am?
How do supposedly intelligent people come up with such utter nonsense?