Halo and welcome, caring viewers.
Everywhere in the world,we hear reports about global warming. We know that there are more frequent and more intensive disasters,more glaciers melting,farmers struggling with unpredictable weather patterns, and coastal residents whose homes are becoming engulfed by rising sea levels.
On September 23, 2009, the United Kingdom-based The Guardian published a first-person account of a Ugandan.
To him climate change has lately been a visible,tangible,and extremely difficult reality.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/sep/22/united-nations-climate-change-uganda VO (MALE): 『UN leaders should know: climate change is destroying my village in Uganda – flooding our homes and ruining our crops…It rained and rained until all the land was soaked and our houses were submerged in the water.
This forced us to move to higher ground, where we sought refuge. By the time we came back home, all the houses had collapsed, our granaries were destroyed and food was washed away… As the ground in the village remained flooded, there were a lot of mosquitoes around, and five of my family members
became ill with malaria.
Because there was no clean water to drink, some people got cholera and diarrhoea. Many of the people in my village died. Children didn't go to school since they were too weakened by disease and their parents had no money for school fees.
Our farms were ruined, so we didn't have food until the government came to help us. This was so humiliating for us, because we had never depended on aid to survive.
This year, when we managed to get seeds to plant for our own food, we were struck by a drought like we had never seen before.』
HOST: So how do we help? Buying local to minimize the distance that food travels is a welcomed solution for many. But will it really suffice to save the planet?
In an August 2009 article published by Forbes Magazine, James E. McWilliams says it won’t help much, and is even a 『big mistake.』
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2009/0803/opinions-energy-locavores-on-my-mind.html