Friday, June 13, 2008

SHARING THE PAIN



I remember Fidel Castro saying to me in the early sixties that when the problem of equality had been solved, men would still face challenges from nature.

I haven't been back to Cuba since 1965, but I understand the government has implemented projects that show considerable awareness of the climate crisis, while the Bush administration has blocked scientific information about global warming.

I'm wondering whether any people are checking out the following: The media tell us that in a given place there hasn't been a similar incident in fifty years, but we would need to know, for each year, going back say fifty years, how MANY places each year have had weather incidents that break their previous records.

As floods and tornadoes batter the midwest and west of the United States, there is talk of preparedness, and FEMA, but when will the news media draw attention to the fact that an increasing number of Americans are going to be facing the same inescapability of nature's violence as people in Ethiopia, after six years of drought, or the inhabitants of the Irruwadi Delta in Myanmar?

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