The top environmentalist Al Gore has pointed out that 30 per cent of global carbon emissions come from woodfires in southern Asia and Africa, where people have no electricity.
Woodfires are a huge health problem, with smoke killing 2.2 million people per year.
All of which, naturally enough, leads to this.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
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I visited South Africa in the mid 1990's, and made the terrible navigation mistake of driving into Soweto. This was at the height of the fighting between the ANC and Inkatha, which was leaving 100's dead each week. Soweto was way off limits to unarmed white people.
What saved us was this:
It was near dusk, so presumably the locals didn't spot our white faces until it was too late, and we were gone.
They were probably so shocked to see white tourists, they forgot to run home and collect their tyre necklaces and petrol.
The air was so thick with woodsmoke, no one could see where they were going. The smoke was like an impenetrable smog over the whole town, and this was a township on the edge of one of the richest cities in the richest country on the continent. We coughed for days afterwards.
Thinking back, I don't remember seeing a tree for miles around either.
for once, Al Gore gets something right.
Not only is he on the money with the facts, he's located and publicized an actual problem.
Go Al!
Now, if he'll just stop whining about global warming, we'll have some serious progress.
Apparently it gets a mention on page 227 of Al's book (see point 22 here): http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YmFiZDAyMWFhMGIxNTgwNGIyMjVkZjQ4OGFiZjFlNjc=
...so is not really one of the major points he is campaigning about. Maybe if he diverted the power usage from one of his houses to Soweto he could at least postpone the time when we are all inevitably warmed to death.
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