getting coal.out of ground capitalism ii game

I bring up this image of dirt-poor people in a dirt-poor country to provide a clear context for the New York Times report of the latest lethal IPCC recommendation, which they describe as follows: There are no great herds of cattle, so they can’t burn dung.Īnd as a result, Maseru mornings have that curious acrid smell that only comes from coal, and the haze that comes from coal burnt in leaky stoves and open three-stone fires.

There are no forests, so they can’t burn wood. They burn coal because it’s what they have. By and large, these fires are warming poor women’s shacks and shanties, and cooking what passes for their kids’ breakfasts. Of a wintry morning in Maseru, the capital, there’s a haze across the city from the thousands and thousands of coal fires. So the men are all at work in South Africa, and the country runs on the money that the miners send home. These days, curiously, most of the time the country is populated by old folks, and women and kids-the only real employment for hundreds of miles around are the mines of South Africa … including the coal mines. So their King cut a deal with the British Queen Victoria for the country to be a British Protectorate … very clever, one of the few parts of Africa that was never conquered and was never a colony of anybody. The Boers then drove them off of the fertile lowlands and into the arid mountains.

The Basotho are fiercely independent.īack in the early days, they fought off the Boers who tried to take their land. It’s high desert country, cold in the winter, not much water. The people there, the Basotho (pronounced “Bah – soo – too), are tough as nails, and you’d have to be. Lesotho (pronounced “Leh – soo – too”), is a mountain fortress of a country, totally surrounded by South Africa.

Getting coal.out of ground capitalism ii game