Deadly Flooding Ravages DRC Captial
At least 135 are dead in the Congolese capital of Kinshasa after heavy rains set off flooding and landslides. The official death toll is likely to rise, with many buried by landslides that wiped away entire homes. "There was no way of getting inside my house. I was only able to rescue one child," Kenga Mwamba told BBC News Swahili. "I saw my wife's body floating in the house. I saw my other three kids under the rubble, they were already dead. Neighbours came to help remove the bodies after the rain stopped." Climate change, mainly caused by the extraction and combustion of fossil fuels, makes extreme precipitation events more frequent and severe. The Democratic Republic of Congo is responsible for a negligible amount of climate pollution. A report from Earth InSight, released Monday at the UN biodiversity summit, found an area of undisturbed tropical forest larger than the state of Texas in the Congo Basin (and an area almost as large in the Amazon Basin) is slated for oil and gas extraction.
(New York Times $, BBC, Reuters, Al Jazeera, AP, Washington Post $, Deutsche Welle; Drilling threats to forests: Axios, OneEarth)
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