Posted on 01/14/2009 2:36:21 PM PST by NormsRevenge
SYDNEY (AFP) – Australia's outback Aborigines will be among the worst affected by climate change as soaring temperatures likely cause more disease and spur distress about the changing landscape, a new report shows.
The expert report, published in the latest edition of the Medical Journal of Australia, argues that the country's remote indigenous communities are the most vulnerable to changing environmental conditions.
"Their vulnerability to climate change is intensified by the social and economic disadvantage they already experience -- the result of factors that include decades of inadequate housing and public services, and culturally inappropriate medical services," the journal said in an editorial.
"In addition, specific cultural ties between indigenous people's wellbeing and the 'health' of their 'country' create significant indirect impacts of climate change."
Donna Green, co-author of the journal report and a climate change researcher at the University of New South Wales, said rising temperatures could increase the incidence of diseases such as dengue fever and harm the health of elderly and chronically sick people living in remote areas.
"They will just have very low resources to be able to cope with change and to be able to get access to health (services)," she told AFP.
But Aboriginal communities, already the most disadvantaged in the country, would also suffer from seeing the ancestral lands to which they have a spiritual connection harmed by the impact of climate change, she said.
"Many communities, if they are seeing their ecosystems change, plants and animals doing things at different times -- flowering at different times or particular totemic animals breeding or appearing at different times -- then that can cause a lot of social unease," Green said.
"Because people just don't feel like they are looking after their country properly; that they aren't managing their country for their ancestors."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Members of the Aboriginal community sit on a property at Roebourne in the north of Western Australia, just 30 kms from the booming mining town of Karratha in June 2008. Australia's outback Aborigines will be among the worst affected by climate change as soaring temperatures likely cause more disease and spur distress about the changing landscape, a new report shows. (AFP/File/Greg Wood)
That’s retarded. What about people who are now in danger of freezing to death, if global warming is true, then they will most benefit from it.
In the words of Theresa Heinz Kerry, “shove it scumbag”.
"That's a lie! We deserve the biggest share of the carbon credits!"
Women and minorities yadda yadda.
They were there before the white man.
They’ll be there after the white man.
I guess another way to spell hubris is l-i-b-e-r-a-l.
Climate Research NewsClick on POGW graphic for full GW rundown
Ping me if you find one I've missed.
This group has been around for thousands of years. Their culture has probably seen so many climate changes that this is just a yawner. Or have they become spoiled to modern ways as opposed to their “natural” situation? The climate has always changed.
I’ll switch places with them! It’s gonna be -21 here tomorrow night! A balmy -18 tonight and a high of -6 tomorrow.
Ah, another faux article from The Onion.....oh, wait.....
I’d bet my bottom dollar that Australia’s aborigines could care less about global warming. They simply don’t have any money-grubbing lawyers or money-grubbing leftwingers in this dog fight.
Don’t laugh, distress about the changing landscape is very often fatal, especially if you’re a protected minority.
I bet by tomorrow a lot of New Yorkers will be wishing for a bit more global warming.
Wow, that mesa’s a butte!
Cicero,
That is a great photo.
The Polar bears, the polar bears.
The children, the children.
If it keeps getting colder this whole global warming thing could boomerang on the enviros.
I can remember a time when scientific papers were not authored by soothsayers.
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