It’s been clear for decades that those who will suffer the most as climate warms are the poorest and most vulnerable, many of whom are in the developing world, and places like Sub Saharan Africa.
The counter narrative we’ve heard, notably from Secretary of Energy and Oligarch Wannabee Chris Wright, is that ramping up fossil fuel development and use is vital to provide a better standard of living for the poor. No explanation for how a transmission system, which took a century to build in the Western world, and which no Oil Oligarch has magnanimously offered to build, would somehow magically appear in Africa and Asia, as Oil companies puncture, pollute and plunder their way thru the global south.
No acknowledgement of the path of pollution, poverty, and disease already done in places like Nigeria, Ecuador, and elsewhere.
With the inauguration of the most nakedly pro-fossil administration in history, the very first official act was to cut off aid to precisely those vulnerable populations that Wright, and other fossil operatives claim to love so much.
They would literally rather cut off a market to some their most fervent. supporters in the US farm community, and watch tons of good food rot in warehouses, than have it be distributed to people, especially brown people, in desperate need.
Within hours of being sworn in, President Trump signed an executive order for a “pause” to all foreign assistance. Secretary Rubio sent a cable suspending every program outright. No program staff could be paid. No services could be delivered. Medicines and food already on the shelves could not be used. No warning had been given to the governments that relied on them. It was immediately obvious that hundreds of thousands of people would die in the first year alone. But the Administration did not reconsider; it escalated. Elon Musk exulted in swinging his chainsaw. Within weeks and in defiance of legal mandates, he and Rubio purged U.S.A.I.D.’s staff, terminated more than four-fifths of its contracts, impounded its funds, and dismantled the agency. Neither Congress nor the Supreme Court did anything to stop it.
We are now witnessing what the historian Richard Rhodes termed “public man-made death,” which, he observed, has been perhaps the most overlooked cause of mortality in the last century. Brooke Nichols, the Boston University epidemiologist and mathematical modeller, has maintained a respected tracker of current impact. The model is conservative, assuming, for example, that the State Department will fully sustain the programs that remain. As of November 5th, it estimated that U.S.A.I.D.’s dismantling has already caused the deaths of six hundred thousand people, two-thirds of them children.
Former Russian President and close aid to Vladimir Putin was quick to congratulate Elon Musk, who implemented the cuts thru the DOGE program.
No wonder, as Russia and China look forward to filling the vacuum left by withdrawal of American aid.
In the US, Farmers who operate on the edge of viability may not survive the withdrawal of one of their primary markets.
Have I ever told you how much I hate these bastards?