One result of having a truly global campaign is that we know people everywhere around the planet–so reading the news each day leaves us wondering how friends are faring with the rapidly worsening weather. Will has already written below about the heat in India, which is blamed for several hundred deaths. In the last few days there have also been:
# All time heat records in Pakistan and Burma, with the mercury nearing 54 degrees (nearly 130 Fahrenheit)
# The heaviest rains ever recorded across parts of Guatemala, which have left nearly 200 people dead there and in El Salvador and Honduras (some of our friends in Guatemala are pictured to the left).
# the second strongest storm ever recorded in the Persian Gulf, now bearing down on Oman. I was there last summer to organize for the Global Day of Action, and people were still talking about the first big cyclone the country had ever experienced a few years before.
We wish we had some way to protect our friends in all these places, and we'll be in touch with all of them to make sure they're okay. The most important thing we can really do, though, is Get to Work trying to slow the flow of carbon into the atmosphere. Otherwise these stories will just multiply forever.