[MCN] "You say you want a revolution." The Beatles : Climate Change Primed Chile for an Uprising

[Lance Olsen]

Bloomberg BusinessWeek  December 18, 2019

How Climate Change Primed Chileans for an Uprising
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-18/how-climate-change-primed-chileans-for-an-uprising?srnd=businessweek-v2 <https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-18/how-climate-change-primed-chileans-for-an-uprising?srnd=businessweek-v2>

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“The drought left us thirsty for revolution,” read a sign at a demonstration in Santiago in October.
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Opening paragraphs

Scientists and academics from around the world gathered at Chile’s Museum of Fine Arts on the evening of Oct. 18 for the close of a three-day conference on climate change in a nation that’s endured a decade-long drought. Under the glass dome of the elegant Beaux Arts building, Stanford researcher Susanne Moser warned in a keynote speech that policies to cool a burning world must foster community or fail.

Outside, demonstrators chanted, burned barricades, and charged at outnumbered police. It was the beginning of a social explosion that’s rocked the South American nation, one exacerbated by the unprecedented dry spell. “It all seemed pretty theoretical until then—transformation, climate change—and then we went outside, and there it was,” says Moser, an expert on adaptation and resilience. “It was an awakening, from talking about it to being in it—with the tear gas in your eyes.”

The trigger for the demonstrations <https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-24/chilean-protests-stretch-into-seventh-day-with-mines-disrupted> was discontent with inadequate pensions, health care, and education systems. Less attention has been paid to the role an extended drought has played in priming Chileans for action. Worries about access to water have been bubbling to the surface in a nation that’s gone further than almost any other in privatizing an increasingly valuable resource. Under the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, Chile became one of the first countries in the world to cede management of its water utilities to foreign companies.

The country’s free-market consensus has grown brittle over the course of almost three decades since the end of the dictatorship. It finally shattered this year, which happens to have been one of the most arid on record <https://santiagotimes.cl/2019/08/26/chile-declares-agricultural-emergency-as-extreme-drought-hits-santiago-and-outskirts/>. Higher temperatures and record-low river flows forced farmers to abandon crops and leave cattle to die. Taps in dozens of villages ran dry, leaving hundreds of thousands of people dependent on trucked-in water. “The drought left us thirsty for revolution,” read a sign at a demonstration in Santiago in October.

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"Direct effects of climatic warming can be understood through fatal decrements in an organism's performance in growth, 
reproduction, foraging, immune competence, behaviors and competitiveness."

Portner and Farrell. Physiology and Climate Change. Science  October 31 2008

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