Suffering Without Contributing

Africa makes a relatively miniscule contribution to global heating. In spite of this, experts believe that this continent will be really badly hit by climate change. In deed, the think tank Shift Africa, notes that African countries are already being forced to annually spend billions of dollars in attempts to cope with the effects of the climate crisis (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/26/african-countries-spending-billions-to-cope-with-climate-crisis). Spending money to counter climate change (e.g. dealing with droughts, wild fires etc), limits the cash poor African countries can spend improving their schools and hospitals. This drives these countries ever further into poverty. For example, for every $20 of national income generated in Ethiopia, $1 is spent on dealing with the climate crisis. This economic effect is, of course, compounded by the failure to get adequate numbers of Covid19 vaccine doses to these very same countries. This not only makes the generating of new viral variants more likely (endangering us all), it further impoverishes these countries.