clipped from: www.alternet.org   

Up in Smoke: The African Apocalypse

The continent burning into a desert Nowhere is the effect of global warming more dangerous than in Somalia, where the worst drought in 40 years is affecting the lives of 1.8 million people.

"I am 70 years old now, and the temperatures are getting hotter and hotter as the years go by," says Habiba Hassan, standing in a field of ruined crops near her village of Beniday in Somalia.

The winters where she lives, 200 miles northwest of Mogadishu, used to be "very hot during the day and cold at night", she adds. But now "we have to sleep outside at night, it is so hot."

Somalia's harvest, brought in last month, is almost 30 per cent lower than normal, the result of the worst drought in at least 40 years. The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation says that the situation is "alarming," with a "severe food crisis," affecting 1.8 million people, persisting throughout the country for at least the rest of the year.