Bogotá-area residents evacuate their home, while protesters at the South Africa climate talks demand action. |
But, while Colombia has generated little of the world's global warming gas, it is no innocent bystander in either its domestic tragedy or the growing global climate tragedy.
Deforestation, cause of climate change and climate victims. |
Deforestation also contributes to global warming by taking carbon out of trees and pumping it into the atmosphere, where it causes the greenhouse effect.
Pres. Juan Manuel Santos also vowed that Colombia would "demand concrete actions" from the "big countries."
"I've given very concrete instructions," Santos said, while visiting a town whose flooding the government blames on global warming. Our representative to the climate talks "has to demand that the big countries which today don't want to make their contribution, don't want to make committments, commit themselves. This (flooding) is affecting too many people."
Out of the ground and into the atmosphere: Coal mining in Colombia. |
Colombians are also burning more and more fossil fuels domestically, driven by record automobile sales - which will only accelerate when new free trade agreements with the U.S. and Korea take effect.
Up, up, and away: Colombian coal production. (Source: Simco.gov.co) |
By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours
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