SA faces climate nightmare

Sapporo - Climate change could cut SA's maize crop by 20% within 15 to 20 years as the west of the country dries out while the east is afflicted with increasingly severe storms, its environment minister said on Sunday.

"For a developing country that's major, and major bad news," Marthinus van Schalkwyk told reporters after arriving in northern Japan, where the Group of Eight rich nations' leaders are gathering for a summit this week.

"For us it's not something far in the future, it's already happening."

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NVDL: One of the reasons we are in such deep trouble is that it takes quite a long time for people to reach consensus that something is wrong (on oil, climate change, crime etc). In SA this is especially a chronic problem. Once we've realised something is wrong, it takes a helluva long time to reach consensus on what to do about it. And once we reach that point, it takes a helluva long time to implement a meaningful response. All of which conspire to make us sitting ducks. I have to say, I believe we deserve to suffer for such collective stupidity,and where it isn't stupidity it is almost certainly laziness, including intellectual laziness.