13/10/2005 - Tapachula, Chiapas, Mexico — Our office in Mexico has shut down operations to assist in the humanitarian efforts for victims of Hurricane Stan.
The storm brought five days of destruction upon Mexico, Guatamala, and El Salvador, affecting millions of people. As Alejandro Cavillo, Executive Director of our Mexican office notes, there are communities in the mountains and along the coast that are still cut off from access or even communications, and the death toll is certain to rise.

The Mexican president, Vicente Fox, has vowed to channel ballooning profits from Mexico's oil exports to relief work. Given that oil use is one of the chief contributors to global warming and with it an increase in the incidence and severity of extreme weather events, the irony of this should be lost on nobody.

It would be funny, if it weren't tragic. While no single weather event can be blamed on climate change, the overall trend is toward more weather-related destruction as the Earth warms. And as with so many natural and unnatural disasters, it's the poor who suffer first and most from global warming.

Campesinos who rely on natural weather cycles and have no irrigation suffer the impacts of drought and seasonal shifts more than industrial farmers. Communities in the Amazon which rely on shallow rivers for food and medical supplies face mortal perils when those rivers disappear. Poor people living in low-lying areas are hit harder by flooding than the wealthy who have the means to flee, and places to go.

As hundreds of thousands of people in Central America dig their way out of mud slides and struggle with medical and emergency infrastructures that are inadequate, the oil industry rakes in massive profits, the energy consumption in the United States and Europe continues to skyrocket, and the rich keep getting richer while the poor lose their homes, lives, and livelihoods to the increasing storms, floods, and droughts of a world which keeps getting warmer.

Unless we dedicate long term relief aid to our world's climate, the deadly spiral will only worsen. As we rebuild towns and cities, we should truly rebuild in a way that eases our planet's carbon burden. We should ensure renewable energy replaces fossil fuel and nuclear power plants. We should build energy-efficient housing. We should invest in public transportation. We should ensure that wetlands and forests and other natural buffers against destruction are in place.

The only upside to total destruction is that it provides the opportunity for a new start. The energy revolution that the world really needs ought to begin in those places that have seen the first glimpses of the greater destruction which will come of our world's oil addiction, unless we act now.

To the victims of Hurricane Stan, our heartfelt sympathies for all your losses. And to the oil industry and those who continue to poison our planet while turning a blind eye to global warming and its effects, our promise: a day of reckoning is coming.