From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

Extreme poverty and vulnerability to adverse weather will be a thing of the past, if everyone participates in exploitation of fossil fuel.

Climate change is not just a problem of physics but a crisis of justice

Friederike Otto
Fri 18 Apr 2025 19.00 AEST

In an exclusive extract from Friederike Otto’s new book, she says climate disasters result from inequality as well as fossil fuel.

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So how does weather become a disaster?

We can’t say exactly how the effects of climate change vary by location and type of weather, but what is absolutely clear is that the more people are in harm’s way and the more vulnerable they are, the greater their risk.

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For example, one of our studies from 2021 showed that the food insecurity linked to the drought in southern Madagascar was caused mainly by poverty, a lack of social structures, and heavy dependence on rainfall, but not by human-induced climate change. Nevertheless, just as with the Nigerian floods, international reports talked only of the weather and climate. The international media barely mentioned that, in fact, the local infrastructure, which had remained unfinished for decades, played a decisive role in the disastrous drought.

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But it always proves true that the people who die are those with little money who can’t readily obtain all the help and information they need. And that doesn’t have to be the case, no matter where they are.

…Read more: 

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/apr/18/climate-change-is-not-just-a-problem-of-physics-but-a-crisis-of-justice

The above was taken from an excerpt of Frederike’s book “Climate Injustice”, which will be available from the 24th April.

I left a fair bit out in the quotes above, most of the guardian book excerpt in my opinion is social justice gibberish.

But when you cut away the obligatory assertions of white male dominated climate science and complaints about colonial exploitation of the Global South, the central point seems clear. Weather disasters, climate driven or not, are mostly a problem for poor people. Rich societies can afford advance tornado and typhoon warnings, flood mitigation, rescue operations, fast personal transport on good roads, insurance, alternative accommodation and food imports to cover crops lost to adversity.

The good news is Africa is already addressing their poverty problem, by massively ramping up exploitation of fossil fuel resources.

Study: Africa’s Green Energy Transition “Unlikely”

Climate Activist European Companies Rushing to Exploit African Oil

Granted a lot of the profit from such activity will end up in the beloved leader’s Swiss bank account or be distributed to his Wabenzi cronies, but you can’t have economic activity on that scale without local workers getting their hands on some of the money. For projects on this scale, it is always cheaper to train locals with low wage expectations than to import 10s of thousands of expensive foreigners. Even the UN admits the African fossil fuel boom is driving rapid economic growth.

An important benefit of all this economic growth is it will foster the development of civil society and will eventually increase people’s resilience and ability to survive climate disasters – just as it did in the West. If nothing else, better weather forecasting and flood management will be essential to protect the fossil fuel infrastructure.

The message seems clear – if you want poor people to become more resilient to weather disasters, climate driven or otherwise, you can help by buying their oil, gas and coal exports.