Sigourney Weaver: Global Warming is Sexist – Improving Women’s Lives Will Solve The Problem
If you're like me, you've been waiting for feminist claims that global warming is harder on women and therefore should be a greater concern to the public. Actress Sigourney Weaver of “Alien” fame did just that Thursday with an astonishingly ludicrous article published at the Huffington Post – a website rife with astonishingly ludicrous articles: You might think that a force as sweeping as global warming would be an equal opportunity threat: that it would endanger men and women alike. But the fact is climate change exacts a heavier toll on women. Yep. She wrote that. It's so absurd it's worth repeating: “climate change exacts a heavier toll on women.” How you might ask? Women produce up to 80 percent of the food in the developing world. Drought and unpredictable rains brought on by climate change will make this work far more precarious. Women will have to labor harder and longer to ensure their families have food, fuel, and water. Our role as caretakers puts us at even greater risk in times of extreme weather. Studies have found that women are 14 times more likely to die as a result of storms and other extreme weather than men. Fourteen times! Why? Because women often look after the children, the elderly, and the sick, and that means we have less mobility in a flood or wildfire. Shh. Wait. It gets better: If you ask people the tools we need to stop climate change, most talk about wind and solar energy, fuel efficient cars, and biofuels. But there is another solution that is not so widely known: empowering women. Yep. We can solve rising temperatures by – wait for it! – empowering women: Two groundbreaking studies, one from the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research and one from the Futures Group , found that simply by meeting women's existing needs for voluntary family planning, we could reduce carbon emissions by between 8 and 15 percent. That is the equivalent of stopping all deforestation today…Improving women's lives while curbing emissions offers another arrow in our quiver. Yep. Improving women's lives will lower temperatures on the planet. I wonder if Tipper Gore agrees with this premise?
Read the original post:
Sigourney Weaver: Global Warming is Sexist – Improving Women’s Lives Will Solve The Problem
Posted by
on June 2, 2011. Filed under