Blaming global warming instead of asking awkward questions about governance in Africa is no substitute for the United Nations doing the right thing, argues Rob Crilly
The rains have been kind to the Kenyan capital Nairobi this year. The neat lawns of its suburbs are a luxurious green and the jacaranda trees are heavy with leaves as they prepare to burst into purple blossom in a month or so.
But you don't have to travel far before the jacarandas give way to thorntrees and the rich red soil of the highland capital turns to dust.
Last year a catastrophic drought swept through northern Kenya and the rest of the Horn of Africa, putting 15 million lives at risk. Yet another season of failed rains pushed the nomadic camel and cattle herders to the brink of existence. Emaciated cattle, goat and camel corpses were left stinking in the heat of the African sun.
Then just as it seemed things could not get any worse, it rained. Not the usual rains that turn the dust back to soil, but the sort of Biblical rains that become floods before the parched land has a chance to absorb the moisture. The drought victims had to swim for their lives. Theirs is a world where climate change is not a forecast or a theory, it is already a reality.
This weekend hundreds of musicians will take the stage on seven continents to demand action against global warming.
The Live Earth concerts will combine music from Madonna, The Red Hot Chili Peppers and The Police with a consciousness- raising drive - the latest sign that climate change is the big issue of 2007.
It has already dominated the G8 summit and stars are queuing up to be associated with the cause, in part thanks to Al Gore's tireless campaigning. Now it seems that everyone is getting in on the act - with questionable results.
Last month the United Nations pinned Sudan's bitter conflict in Darfur on environmental damage and man-made global warming.
Ban Ki-Moon, UN secretary general, wrote an editorial in the Washington Post blaming dwindling water and pastureland for increased tensions between Arab and non-Arab tribes.
"Amid the diverse social and political causes, the Darfur conflict began as an ecological crisis, arising at least in part from climate change," he wrote.
His words were backed by a report from the United Nations Environment Programme, warning that more climate-based conflicts could follow.
Never mind that Khartoum has gone out of its way to isolate the farming tribes of Darfur and never mind that it supplied its Arab Janjaweed allies with trunks of cash and AK-47s.
It seems the problem is that we are driving too many big cars and taking too many Ryanair flights. The people of Darfur are the unwitting victims of an almost unstoppable global force. How convenient for the UN. The problem is not so much that it has been incapable of reining in the criminal excesses of the Khartoum government or of building an international consensus for action.
The same thing is happening with food security. Last week officials from the UN unveiled a road map which they hoped would head off hunger in the Horn and provide emergency food relief to some 20 million people.
Kjell Magne Bondevik, the UN's special humanitarian envoy to the Horn of Africa, concluded by pointing out that the developed world should foot the bill. It is our wasteful lifestyles that are pumping greenhouse gases into the environment and so it should be our governments that pay for the consequences.
Very neat. There is no need to raise awkward questions about corruption in the Kenyan government, nor the use of food as a political weapon by Ethiopia's dubious regime.
It conveniently overlooks the fact that last year Kenya needed help feeding 3.5 million people, while its government predicted a maize surplus of 62,500 metric tonnes.
This is not to say that climate change is a myth, but in the rush to blame global warming, it is too easy to overlook the systematic failures that keep millions of Africans trapped in poverty, on the brink of survival.
It reinforces the idea of helpless African victims buffeted by global forces, when many of the solutions lie with scientists, economists, politicians and business leaders from the continent.
The pastoralists of the Kenyan north suffered because they had no schools, roads or political clout - not just because the rains failed. The same goes for the marginalised people of Darfur.
So while the world's musicians do their bit for the environment on Saturday, it is worth remembering that Al Gore's isn't the only inconvenient truth.