Tag Archives: Climate Change

Carbon Credit or Carbon Con?

Posted on by
Reply

–– Mark Christopher

Listen and subscribe: YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

As I write this piece, the COP28 Climate-Change Conference is underway in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in Dubai. Every year for the last 28 years, at this time of the year, the United Nations hosts the COP meetings with up to 70,000 people flying in from all over the world for the two-week extravaganza. The goal of COP and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change is to meet to discuss ways to limit CO2 emissions.

But what does COP28 have to do with Africa? One of the topics of discussion at this year’s COP28 conference concerns negotiations by wealthy oil barons, in the UAE, buying up land rights in Africa to plant trees on protected land to serve as carbon offsets for wealthy polluters in the West and Middle East. Carbon offsets are purchased by those who can afford them to offset the carbon footprint of jetsetters by planting CO2-absorbing trees. So, rather than curbing their own activities, the wealthy continue to live their extravagant lifestyles and purchase what amounts to pollution permits in other parts of the world — like Africa — where trees are planted as CO2 compensation.

Continue reading →

TARIF: Discerning Climate Exaggerations

Posted on by
Reply

The Africa Review in Five highlights African current affairs from a Christian perspective. Listen and subscribe through Youtube, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

Today is Tuesday, August 15th, A.D. 2023. This is The Africa Review in Five, written by Mark Christopher and presented by Yamikani Katunga.

The daily headlines regarding climate change are relentless. The calls for the African continent to do its fair share and get its fair share are endless. 

For Africa to do its fair share the heralds of climate change propaganda make pointed proclamations. They say the limited resources that Africa has should be devoted to developing technologies and finding solutions for the patterns we observe in the climate. They presumptuously attribute many of the deaths from natural disasters and much of the poverty to climate change and prophesy that it will only get worse. This fear-mongering is meant to divert the people of Africa away from rational thinking and scientific reasoning. Only such effective means as fear can cause a people to hastily abandon the more abundant and affordable resource of fossil fuels; which at present remains the best chance Africa has for raising her people out of poverty and developing societies that are less susceptible to the effects of natural disasters. 

Continue reading →

TARIF: Sudanese Strife and the Climate Change Conundrum

Posted on by
Reply

The Africa Review in Five highlights African current affairs from a Christian perspective. Listen and subscribe through Youtube, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

Today is Tuesday, July 18th, A.D. 2023. This is The Africa Review in Five, written by Mark Christopher and presented by Yamikani Katunga

Strife in Sudan

On April 15, 2023 fighting erupted in Sudan’s capital city of Khartoum. The fighting quickly spilled over into other regions of the troubled nation. After the overthrow of long-time dictator Omar al-Bashir in October 2021 there has been a power vacuum that has sparked growing tensions between the Sudanese Army and the rival para-military faction known as Rapid Support Forces (RSF). 

The carnage of Sudan’s war is beginning to mount and take its toll on the general population. There are the usual tragic reports of hunger, rape, disease, broken supply chains, and causalities with over 3000 deaths being recorded in the last few weeks alone. In recent days, there was a total communications blackout in Khartoum and the surrounding areas with residents forced to flee because of aerial bombings and tanks and soldiers fighting in the streets while rampant looting took place. It is estimated that 2.4 million Sudanese people have been displaced so far with refugees pouring into surrounding border countries like South Sudan, which has its own civil war uprising. 

Continue reading →