Outbreaks of locusts have been occurring for thousands of years. There are many passages in the bible that refer to the scourge of swarming locusts. Only now has it become the result of climate change.
It's the worst locust outbreak to hit Kenya in 70 years.
Hundreds of millions of the small bugs are swarming in from neighboring Somalia and Ethiopia with unprecedented size and destructive potential, according to the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization.
The Desert Locust, the most devastating of all locust species, is eating up crops in areas already susceptible to food and water shortages.
"This has become a situation of international dimensions that threatens the food security of the entire subregion," FAO Director-General QU Dongyu said in a press release.
Some scientists say climate change is at fault: Heavy rainfall in locust breeding areas has allowed breeding conditions to remain favourable, FAO said. East Africa had one of its wettest years on record last year, thanks to warming waters in the Indian Ocean, Nairobi-based climate scientist Abubakr Salih Babiker told the Associated Press.
(And if it didn’t rain when crops died causing a widespread famine they would have blamed it on what?)
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