The Damage Has Been Done - 4

Two years ago on this date Dredd Blog focused on the issue of drought, worldwide drought.

Since then the Texas drought began, and wildfires around the world have worsened.

Here is that post of two years ago:

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The meaning of "the damage has been done" in the context of earth's biosphere does not always mean we can see the effects of the damage at this moment.

It is like when the engines on an aircraft cease to function, the damage has been done but the full effects which cannot be avoided do not appear until contact with the ground takes place.

The U.N. reports that the damage has been done when it comes to worldwide drought and great catastrophe:

"If we cannot find a solution to this problem ... in 2025, close to 70 percent [of the earth] could be affected [with drought]," Luc Gnacadja, executive secretary of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, said Friday.

Drought currently affects at least 41 percent of the planet and environmental degradation has caused it to spike by 15 to 25 percent since 1990, according to a global climate report.

"There will not be global security without food security" in dry regions, Gnacadja said at the start of the ninth UN conference on the convention in the Argentine capital.

"A green deal is necessary" for developing countries working to combat drought, he stressed.

The next meeting on the convention is scheduled to take place in South Korea in 2010.

(Independent). About half of the planet is suffering, at this moment, from drought. This is not a case where substantial damage can be avoided by congress all of a sudden becoming sane, because there really is such a thing as being too late.

Perhaps that is why it appears more and more that all that world governments can do is prepare for the damage.

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The US is fairing better today than the world at large was fairing at that time (41%) two years ago:

Based on the Palmer Drought Index, severe to extreme drought affected about 26 percent of the contiguous United States as of the end of August 2011, an increase of about 1 percent from last month.

(NOAA). Some climatologists are expecting the drought in the USA to continue for some time.

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.