Climate Change is putting women in Africa and Asia at increased risk of becoming victims of domestic violence, an article in the left-wing Washington Post claimed.
In a piece published Tuesday titled “Climate Change Puts More Women at Risk for Domestic Violence,” authors Geoffrey Ondieki, Disha Shetty, and Aie Balagtas See cited catastrophic weather events occurring in Kenya, India, and the Philippines, which they say are linked to climate change, and attempted to connect them to a rise in domestic violence incidents against women in those countries.
To back their claims, the authors used U.N. reports and academics, including Terry McGovern, head of the Population and Family Health Department at Columbia University, who told the Post that the evidence of a link between the two is “overwhelming.”
“Heat waves, floods, climate-induced disasters increase sexual harassment, mental and physical abuse, femicide, reduce economic and educational opportunity and increase the risk of trafficking due to forced migration,” McGovern claimed.
However, McGovern admitted the data “remains limited on some fronts.”
The authors further conceded that “academics, activists and humanitarian workers” say more research is needed to study the links between catastrophic weather and domestic violence.
“Unlike the hard science of climate change, they said, the complex drivers of violence cannot easily be captured in numbers,” the authors wrote.
They also used personal stories of women fleeing abusive situations, such as that of Pilot Lenaigwanai, who escaped her abusive husband in northern Kenya as the severe drought in that region raged.
Although the abuse against Lenaigwanai increased after the family’s 68 cattle died, she told the Post her husband was abusing her before the drought intensified.
The article received criticism after the Post shared it on Twitter.
“Where @TheOnion at? Is this some hidden camera mess?” said one Twitter user.
“This is not a serious news organizations,” another user replied.
“That is a unfollow for me. What kind of article is this,” said another user.
The Post is not the first left-wing outlet to publish an eco-related piece that received online backlash this week, as Breitbart News has documented.
On Sunday, a New York Times piece called for mating with short people, describing them as “inherent conservationists,” further saying they would save the planet from eco-catastrophe.
Also on Sunday, CBS’s 60 Minutes aired a segment with prophet of doom Paul Ehrlich, who infamously wrote the 1968 book The Population Bomb, which contained a wildly wrong prediction that billions would die due to mass starvation in the 1970s. During his appearance on the show, Ehrlich made similar doomsday predictions that the earth would not be able to sustain itself, leading to extinction.
You can follow Ethan Letkeman on Twitter at @EthanLetkeman.