Kuwait, among world's hottest places, lags on climate action

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

JAHRA, Kuwait (AP) — It was so hot in Kuwait last summer that birds dropped dead from the sky.

Sea horses boiled to death in the bay. Dead clams coated the rocks, their shells popped open like they’d been steamed.

-snip-

By the end of the century, scientists say being outside in Kuwait City could be life-threatening — not only to birds. A recent study also linked 67% of heat-related deaths in the capital to climate change.

And yet, Kuwait remains among the world’s top oil producers and exporters, and per capita is a significant polluter. Mired in political paralysis, it stayed silent as the region’s petrostates joined a chorus of nations setting goals to eliminate emissions at home — though not curb oil exports — ahead of last fall’s U.N. climate summit in Glasgow.

https://apnews.com/article/climate-science-business-environment-europe-ff45e6b98e6af459b21d47a6df403475

[4Q2u2]

1. 2008

I was there and it was over 100 at 4:30 in the morning before the sun came up.
Headed out to the desert for rifle quals and it was around 120 at 0900.
The two weeks I was there every day was blistering hot. Sure it has not gotten better with time.

[progree]

2. One of the World's Wealthiest Oil Exporters Is Becoming Unlivable, Bloomberg, 1/16/22

Some may not be particularly sympathetic to Kuwait, but of course this is not just about Kuwait, but rather the vast desert Middle East and North Africa ... and beyond

https://www.news24.com/fin24/economy/south-africa/scorched-earth-one-of-the-worlds-wealthiest-oil-exporters-becoming-unlivable-20220118

Global warming is smashing temperature records all over the world, but Kuwait — one of the hottest countries on the planet — is fast becoming unlivable. In 2016, thermometers hit 54C, the highest reading on Earth in the last 76 years. Last year, for the first time, they breached 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit) in June, weeks ahead of usual peak weather. Parts of Kuwait could get as much as 4.5C hotter from 2071 to 2100 compared with the historical average, according to the Environment Public Authority, making large areas of the country uninhabitable.

For wildlife, it almost is. Dead birds appear on rooftops in the brutal summer months, unable to find shade or water. Vets are inundated with stray cats, brought in by people who’ve found them near death from heat exhaustion and dehydration. Even wild foxes are abandoning a desert that no longer blooms after the rains for what small patches of green remain in the city, where they’re treated as pests.

... Born in 1959, he remembers growing up when homes rarely had air conditioners, yet felt cool and shaded, even in the hottest months. As a child, he played outside through months of cooler weather and slept on the roof in the summers; it’s too hot for that now. Children spend most of the year indoors to protect them from either burning sun or hazardous pollution, something that’s contributed to deficiencies in vitamin D — which humans generate when exposed to the sun — and respiratory ailments.