Extreme Weather Worsens Poverty, Says Study, Which States The Obvious

It's fairly quiet in the weather department here in Vermont this week. A couple of cold fronts are coming in, promising some soaking rains tonight and maybe Thursday night, too.

In this image from Oxfam, drought hits
a region of Africa. A study says extreme weather
keeps millions in poverty.  

It will also turn notably cooler by the weekend.

Still, we're not expecting any extremes, nothing out of the ordinary for October.

With no extremes here, we look to the news and find a study that seems to state the obvious. In vulnerable countries, extreme weather worsens poverty, and makes it more difficult to fight your way out of poverty.

The most interesting part of the study, according to the BBC, is that extreme weather might be the biggest factor in maintaining poverty, more than social patterns, bad health, poor education, political problems or bad infrastructure.

Of course, this is a problem, since weather extremes are getting well, more extreme, due to global climate change.

The study says money usually flows in response to weather disasters such as drought and extreme floods in vulnerable countries. Maybe the money should flow toward preventing disasters, or at least bolstering the region's resiliance against weather extremes.

Unfortunately, death seems to make the money flow. Just last weekend, a massive cyclone caused major damage in a poor region of India. The nation did exactly the right thing in evacuating hundreds of thousands of people from the cyclone's target, and that saved countless lives.

(In 1999, a similar cyclone hit that part of India. The government didn't evacuate people, and about 10,000 died)

But since not that many people died, there might be less relief money going to the hard hit region of India, which would ensure people remain mired in poverty.

It seems that old Boy Scout adage works in everything: Be prepared.