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Turkana nomads understand global warming

Fergal Keane of the BBC wrote a sad piece about the desiccation of the way of life of the Turkana in northern Kenya. The always dry climate has been suffering years of deepening drought. Decades of lethal corruption have also done their part to make life increasingly impossible. The whole article is well worth reading (and if there was some way to watch his and Darren Conway’s film, Nomads of the Shore, on BBC News24 this weekend, I would), but I wanted to mention one sentence in particular that leapt out at me. Keane is sitting around the campfire after dinner, talking.

They ask me about Iraq: “Why are people fighting?”

Some of them believe the steadily heating climate is being caused by the war.

They have a better grasp of world events than some world leaders I could mention. After all, we wouldn’t have the war if nobody needed oil, and if we didn’t burn oil, we wouldn’t have global warming.