Global warming to cause increase in the killing of witches?
Here’s a forecast for a particularly bizarre consequence of climate change: more executions of witches.
As we pump out greenhouse gases, most of the discussion focuses on direct consequences like rising seas or aggravated hurricanes. But the indirect social and political impact in poor countries may be even more far-reaching, including upheavals and civil wars - and even more witches hacked to death with machetes.
In rural Tanzania, murders of elderly women accused of witchcraft are a very common form of homicide. And when Tanzania suffers unusual rainfall - either drought or flooding - witch-killings double, according to research by Edward Miguel, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley.
(via Lupa).
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April 15th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
Dammit! Don’t they know that killing witches releases carbon?
April 15th, 2008 at 5:34 pm
we need send them fliers , talk to raelians , tell it’s important , they give us money for print and expedition. in fliers we’ll prove that witch can save earth from warming , dance for rain too.
some hari rebel witches they got there. hot.
April 15th, 2008 at 8:00 pm
Iben Browning wrote about the connection between sunspots and violence in the late 1980s.