MSNBC ran a segment from a reporter in northern Kenya, where people are starving. It showed men, women and children digging through soil, looking for gold. They searched for days to find a speck, which they would trade for much-needed food.
This is the fourth year the rains failed. Ethiopia and Somalia are also at risk. Livestock are dying of hunger and thirst, as are wildlife.
Exacerbating the problem are inflation, which makes the supplies aid agencies need more expensive, and the war in Ukraine, which has impacted grain supplies. Grain is not as fungible as, say, oil; as a relatively low-value product, it doesn’t make economic sense to ship it across the world. So East Africa generally gets its grain from nearby Russia and Ukraine, not the U.S. (And we have climate issues of our own.)
The MSNBC report noted that Kenyans aren’t the ones who caused climate change, but they are the ones suffering. I fear this is going to be an increasingly common problem. The countries that contributed least to climate change will suffer the most.
There are a lot of charities collecting money for famine relief, but I have no clue which ones are best. If you know, leave a comment.