Consequences Of Global Warming Hits Hardest At Those With The Least

A report released by the World Health Organization says that 150,000 people a year are dying from the effects of global warming, and that number could double in the next 15 years. The report is discussed in a Washington Post article by Juliet Eilperin - Climate Shift Tied To 150,000 Fatalities. However fatalities are not the only outcome, and increases in diseases will impact millions more. It is clear that the deaths and illnesses from global warming are only part of the story. Not discussed is an increasingly critical problem of the loss of fresh water supplies. How many might die from wars for water? That number is more difficult to predict, but it will be a struggle across the globe.

The WHO, and others, is fully aware that those areas that will feel the harshest impacts of global warming are those with the poor, and poor nations which have done the least to cause the ongoing climate crisis. The rich nations of the world, and development driven by them, has generated the "greenhouse" scenario that is transforming the planet. Poor nations will bear the brunt. As noted in the Eilperin article:

"Those most vulnerable to climate change are not the ones responsible for causing it," said the study's lead author, Jonathan Patz, a professor at the university's Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies and its department of population health sciences. "Our energy-consumptive lifestyles are having lethal impacts on other people around the world, especially the poor."

The WHO has a good chart of the interlinking issues between changing climate and health (shown below)

They also have one at this link (shown below) that focuses more on actual health effects rather than interlinkages.

The above charts, and associated reports, are chilling. The crisis has started, and it will get worse. Populations across the globe will experience these types of effects. But remember that the impacts are not going to be even across nations - nor within them.

Underlying the causes of global warming - largely driven by the excesses and exploitation of the "rich" nations. Those "rich" nations are predominantly "white" nations - the Northern Hemisphere. The "poor" nations are primarily Southern Hemisphere with "brown" nations. While the North has benefited at the expense of the South, it has also stripped the South of its ability to respond to the crisis.

In the U.S., it is common to try and turn everything into an issue of money or social class. The rough divisions of North and South are framed within a money system - particularly a capitalistic money system. The resource availability is in part monetary, but also natural resources. Land has been stripped or converted to mono-agriculture. This has not only displaced populations, but created a situation where people cannot even feed themselves. Millions of people live by fishing - that has been eroded by decimation of fish stocks through commercial fishing and ecosystem destruction. The natural resources of the planet are going to create a artificially high quality of living in the North, while removing those resources from the people of the South. Their ability to respond to any disaster - much less global warming - is dramatically undermined.

However, this is not just a North / South issue on a planetary scale. The inequalities persist internally as well. Once more we see that in a world where life has been converted to currency, that the "poor" are dramatically at risk. Those "poor" are disproportionately represented by racial and ethnic minorities in much of the globe - particularly in the North. In the United States, numerically, there are more "whites" in poverty than any other population group. However, racial and ethnic minorities are two times (or more) likely to be poor than are whites. Further, the poverty of most racial and ethnic minorities is deeper and more persistent. This is not just an issue of monetary resources, it is an issue of race.

This is clearly seen when we look at the Reservation system in the U.S. Reservations across the nation are likely to have toxic waste sites or disposal facilities, destructive and toxic resource extraction sites, or natural resources (such as water) siphoned away from them. These reservations are also largely rural. This further restricts access to other social resources such as health care, or even communication (phone, satellite, cable, etc). In urban areas, people of color are much more likely to live near industrial and waste sites, or in housing built on dumps containing toxic materials. The poor in general, and racial minorities in particular, are in the least desirable and highest risk areas of the country.

Further, both in the United States and globally, these exploited populations are largely seen as expendable. This was clearly shown in watching the unfolding of disaster in New Orleans.

The poor are disproportionately impacted by disaster and its fallout. The poor are also disproportionately those who are not considered white. Racism, poverty, and enthocentrism interlink and magnify the ability to respond. Whether it is lack of access to social resources such as food and medical care, or inability to move out of the way of disaster, or having the natural resources that could be used to respond, all are lacking or missing. It only magnifies the problems further that globally the poor are living in the most toxic places - frequently right on dumps and in raw sewage.

Plans for addressing the multiple crises of global warming largely do not consider these populations except as an after thought. Or the plans actively further undermine their ability to cope and survive. The U.S. (and to some extent the world) are reportedly suffering from disaster relief overload. Giving is down, people turn the other way - except for those trapped. Global warming will only increase the scope and depth of disasters. Inequality will increase, not decrease as we move forward. As the disaster strike more and more of the "rich" populations, they will balance their survival against the "underprivileged." The ideologies of inequality will legitimate turning away - if not something much more hostile. Resource wars are not only the province of the people sitting on top of the resources. They are the province of "wealth" controlling those resources.