Africa deserves it's own film... and help. A lot of help.

Opposition is essential. You can't have a debate with out it. The Great Global Warming Swindle serves a purpose, beyond presenting Britain's historic relationship with CO2, it also acts as a catalyst creating dialogues about how the environment is studied, modeled, and prioritized. People draw conclusions from film but a good film does not dictate truth so the bottom line is usually... well... it's complicated. Thank god there is a Facebook status for that one. Everyone knows what's happening between the Earth and us? Yeah, it's complicated.

This usually kills the conversation or romantic interest. But things with The Great Global Warming Swindle are different. Questions are posed, answers are posed, all and all it's pretty ambivalent... until the second half of the film. Somehow a film about the 'faux-climate change' becomes about... the world vs. Africa? Climate change may still be debatable but Sub-Saharan Africa has undeniable problems, big problems. Worse still, monies earmarked for it's problems have constantly been misspent. Along with the neglect there are decades long abuses reaching far back before zealous environmental initiatives. From the progressive environmentally conscious resource development (mentioned in the film) to critical life saving drugs, the people of Africa don't always get what they need. In 2004 $14.5 million of a $80 million USAID budget was spent on malaria drugs. The rest on salaries. The unnecessary inefficient solar panels that the film dwells on are the tip of the iceberg (don't worry this one doesn't appear to be melting).

The film glaringly omits that malaria is such a danger in Sub-Saharan Africa not because of it's tropical location (or even because of the continuous distribution of the ineffective chloroquine) but because 22 million people have HIV/AIDS and are vulnerable to parasitic diseases that flourish is the tropics . Furthermore, according to the U.S. National Debate Topic 2007-2008 Heath Care in Sub-Saharan Africa, because there is a stigma in the developed world, Africans (especially men) are reluctant to find out if they have HIV/AIDS but regardless many suspect they do and so they take doses of their spouses ARV drugs, making the drugs less effective and thus requiring a greater expense to develop new drugs. Like many things on earth, attitudes as well as diseases are interrelated like this recent cholera outbreak in Zimbabwe illustrates. Sure Africa could join the big leagues, burn some coal and spray some DDT, but if you learn anything from the global climate change debate let it be that things are interrelated and very complicated.