As IF Times

link Peru’s mountain people face fight for survival in a bitter winter | World news | The Observer

This is one of those articles that illustrates the propaganda that the left leaning media spins so well. This particular paper is notorious for their slant on today’s events. Unless you view these pieces with some healthy skepticism, you are subtly coerced to believe that it is industrialization that’s at the root of the problems facing these unfortunate people.

Full credit is given for the ambitious article since a number of evils are roped in to blame for the suffering of these rustic mountain people. This passage:

“…In a world growing ever hotter, Huancavelica is an anomaly. These communities, living at the edge of what is possible, face extinction because of increasingly cold conditions in their own microclimate, which may have been altered by the rapid melting of the glaciers…”

doesn’t even make any sense. The accepted strategy of the weather chicken littles is to assign every incidence of abnormal weather to anthropocentric warming…even if it’s extreme cooling. Again, we hear Orwell guffawing from his musty grave. Rational people will be exhausted at attempting to argue the logic of these people. In a different time, when one was accused of being a witch, they were either burned or thrown in the lake. If they survived, they were a witch, if not, then society was rid of a scourge. You would think we’ve moved a bit past that, but ample evidence shows otherwise. In any event, that was only the side point.

Another gem:

“…Climate change campaigners and development NGOs say that the failure of Copenhagen has signed the death warrant for hundreds of thousands of the world’s poorest and that a quarter of a million children will die before world leaders meet again to try to thrash out another deal at the United Nations next climate change conference in Mexico in December. Among them may be these children of the high mountains…”

Heck, a quarter of a million children will die anyway because of falling out of trees, falling over cliffs, eating bad shrimp, skateboarding without helmets, but more likely because of corrupt and inept governments and their ill conceived policies. The weather as a cause of minor mortality is probably down the list somewhere at 47.

Of course the real culprit are industrialists,

“… Last July, dozens of indigenous protesters were killed and scores injured when riots broke out in Bagua Grande in the Amazonas region over claims that the government was giving away land to oil and gas drilling…”

While I can’t comment on the veracity of this, I do know from a parallel life that if an economic resource can be developed in a lesser developed country, all manner of concessions and considerations are given to the local government as compensation for any displacement. In many cases, large infrastructure projects are created such as power or water supplies as well as transportation routes. It is in the best interests of the developer to have everyone happy. It is then up to the government to best decide how and where to use these resources. As we know, in many nations, even ours, some people are more equal than others so the distribution of resources is never fair.

What perplexes me about this piece is why these people are still living in this harsh, hostile area. The article states that winters are longer, disease is rife and conditions have worsened over the years to the risk of losing this population. Why doesn’t the local government use resources to move these people, create alternate means of making a living etc etc? Are they not allowing people to move from the mountains to more hospitable parts of Peru? Apparently the people here are ‘hardened to poverty’. Why should that be? If you lived in New Orleans and the water rose again, would you become hardened to the mud?

You can bet humans are at the root cause of this grief, but not via the weather.