One of the World's Wealthiest Oil Exporters Is Becoming Unlivable

[Eugene]

Source: Bloomberg

One of the World’s Wealthiest Oil Exporters Is Becoming Unlivable

Fiona MacDonald
Sun, January 16, 2022, 3:15 AM

(Bloomberg) -- Trying to catch a bus at the Maliya station in Kuwait City can be unbearable in the summer.About two-thirds of the city’s buses pass through the hub, and schedules are unreliable. Fumes from bumper-to-bumper traffic fill the air. Small shelters offer refuge to a handful of people, if they squeeze. Dozens end up standing in the sun, sometimes using umbrellas to shield themselves.

Global warming is smashing temperature records all over the world, but Kuwait — one of the hottest countries on the planet — is fast becoming unlivable. In 2016, thermometers hit 54C, the highest reading on Earth in the last 76 years. Last year, for the first time, they breached 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit) in June, weeks ahead of usual peak weather. Parts of Kuwait could get as much as 4.5C hotter from 2071 to 2100 compared with the historical average, according to the Environment Public Authority, making large areas of the country uninhabitable.

For wildlife, it almost is. Dead birds appear on rooftops in the brutal summer months, unable to find shade or water. Vets are inundated with stray cats, brought in by people who’ve found them near death from heat exhaustion and dehydration. Even wild foxes are abandoning a desert that no longer blooms after the rains for what small patches of green remain in the city, where they’re treated as pests.

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Unlike countries from Bangladesh to Brazil that are struggling to balance environmental challenges with teeming populations and widespread poverty, Kuwait is OPEC’s number 4 oil-exporter. Home to the world’s third-largest sovereign wealth fund and just over 4.5 million people, it’s not a lack of resources that stands in the way of cutting greenhouse gases and adapting to a warmer planet, but rather political inaction.

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Read more: https://news.yahoo.com/one-world-wealthiest-oil-exporters-071522947.html

[Bayard]

1. And in the end,

The wealthy will relocate, and leave the commoners to fry.

[GPV]

3. Yep

[cilla4progress]

2. Canary

in the coal mine. Literally.

Bracing for next summer where I live in inland PNW / Washington state. We were at 110 plus for a week here last summer.

[progree]

4. Born in 1959, he remembers growing up when homes rarely had air conditioners, yet felt cool ...

.. Born in 1959, he remembers growing up when homes rarely had air conditioners, yet felt cool and shaded, even in the hottest months. As a child, he played outside through months of cooler weather and slept on the roof in the summers; it’s too hot for that now. Children spend most of the year indoors to protect them from either burning sun or hazardous pollution, something that’s contributed to deficiencies in vitamin D — which humans generate when exposed to the sun — and respiratory ailments.

Imagine suffering from vitamin D deficiencies in Kuwait of all places.