Temperatures in the Andes Mountains have gotten colder and the indigenous peoples have been struggling to survive.
This year the neighbouring district of Puno saw a severe spike in child mortality as the winter brought months of high winds and relentless ice storms. Government figures record that more than 300 children died in Puno in May last year from the cold; NGOs say that the figure was probably much higher.
The Guardian explained in January how cold is caused by heat.
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.
Tropical Bolivia was hit by extreme cold more recently.
With high Andean peaks and a humid tropical forest, Bolivia is a country of ecological extremes. But the unusually low winter temperatures experienced by the country’s tropical region in July and August hit freshwater species hard, killing an estimated 6 million fish and thousands of alligators, turtles and river dolphins.
Scientists who have visited the affected rivers say the event is the biggest ecological disaster Bolivia has known. They are now scrambling to coordinate research into how it happened, and how quickly the ecosystem may recover.
People in South America can only hope that all the promises being made of “global warming” finally come true.
In completely unrelated news, Lenin used to call western reporters “useful idiots“
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