A week ago, the National Geographic (Nat Geo) website ran an alarming report about a record plague of locusts descending on East Africa, threatening the food supply of tens of millions.
It said climate change may be to blame since human activity has caused a key ocean circulation pattern, the Indian Ocean Dipole to misbehave, with rising sea surface temperatures triggering exceptional wet weather, including rare cyclones in parts of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, and extreme drought and destructive bushfires in Australia.
“East Africa is in the midst of a crisis that sounds like something out of the Book of Exodus” Nat Geo stressed, explaining that “City-sized swarms of the dreaded pests are wreaking havoc as they descend on crops and pasturelands, devouring everything in a matter of hours. The scale of the locust outbreak, which now affects seven East African countries, is like nothing in recent memory.”
