Climate Change Yet Another Way Rich Countries Fuck Over Poor Ones

edger is one of my fellow trouble-bloggers at They Gave Us A Republic ..., who also blogs at Antemedius.

On Monday, edger posted a terrific piece on Republic about the grossly unequal effect of global climate change.

It features these two spectacular maps:

The first map shows the world in terms of carbon emissions. America, for instance, is huge. So is China. And Europe. Africa is hardly visible.

The second map shows the world in terms of increased mortality -- that is to say, deaths -- from climate change. Suddenly, America virtually disappears. So does Europe. Africa, however, is grotesquely distended. South Asia inflates.

In Barack Obama's commencement address Sunday May 17, 2009 at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, Obama exhorted the graduates to recognize that "that our fates are tied up, as Dr. King said, in a 'single garment of destiny.'" and "Your generation must decide how to save God's creation from a changing climate that threatens to destroy it."

But the peoples of the world are not bound equally.

"Loss of healthy life years as a result of global environmental change (including climate change) is predicted to be 500 times greater in poor African populations than in European populations," states the UCL Lancet Commission report bluntly.

Read the whole thing.