(4) Symptoms of a Warming World: Worst Drought in Memory Strikes Kenya

This is a continuation of the discussion I started with my column Athens on Fire: Why More Than Just Archaeologists Should Be Paying Attention. Droughts have long afflicted the driest regions of Eastern Africa but now, as Jeffrey Gettleman of the New York describes, “the sun somehow feels closer here, more intense, more personal.” Droughts are now becoming longer and more severe as our planet continues to warm. Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, experienced the hottest and driest decade on record between 1985 and 1995. The thirsty, malnourished, and economically devastated Kenyan people are the unfortunate externalities of the greenhouses gases that have been emitted here in the U.S. and throughout the developed world since the onset of the industrial revolution.  Their stories need to linked more closely and assertively to the processes of climate change. They are stories that not only demand a global response, they are  possibly one of the only forces that can catalyze one.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/08/world/africa/08kenya.html?_r=2&hp