Year 2, Month 3, Day 15: Who Killed Cock Robin?

The Winnipeg Free Press reports on a study which makes explicit something we all knew was the case:

MONTREAL – A new study suggests climate change will have the greatest impact on the populations least responsible for causing the problem.

Researchers at McGill University found what many have long-suspected — countries that produce the least carbon dioxide emissions per-capita also tend to be more vulnerable to climate change.

“Based on our ecological models, we see that the potential impact of climate change will be the greatest in countries that have contributed very little,” lead researcher and PhD candidate Jason Samson said in an interview.

Sent March 6:

The ongoing tragedy of global climate change is exacerbated by the sad ironies of geography, as it becomes ever clearer that those who will pay for the greenhouse emissions of the developed world are those who have benefited least from industrialization and large-scale agriculture. The McGill study makes these gross inequities evident, clarifying the nature of the grotesque injustice that is being perpetrated on thousands of societies everywhere around the world. Countless local, small-scale cultures with rich lodes of traditional knowledge will be extinguished as climate change destroys the ecologies within which they have flourished for thousands of years. Just as biodiversity is essential for the survival of an ecosystem, cultural diversity is key to the survival of our species. Humanity’s ability to adapt to a radically transformed post-climate-change planet will be severely compromised by the loss of these indigenous cultures, obliterated through no fault of their own.

Warren Senders