Losing Bangladesh, by Degrees

Two degrees temperature rise may not be much for many affluent parts of our world, but for Bangladesh, it can bring disaster, even its existence may get threatened in an unimaginable scale. A Bangladeshi writer, Tahmima Anam, writes in her eloquent and heart-felt prose in The New York Times article, a few excerpts are given below:

For whatever else it strains to hold, it is the crush of humanity that makes Bangladesh what it is: a calamitous country, a country so full of people that every slight shift in circumstance has dire consequences. The weather does not have to be extreme. It has only to be intemperate, and the country does the rest.

According to the United Nations, the temperatures this winter in some parts of Bangladesh were the coldest in 38 years. The last time it was this cold, Bangladesh was called East Pakistan. Looked at another way, however, the mean temperature was only two degrees below the average for January.

Yet in a country so precariously balanced, two degrees meant the difference between life and death. In the districts of Rajshahi, Nilphamari, Srimangal and Gaibandha, people died of the cold because they had no protection against the weather, no walls between them and the elements — not a long sleeve or a sock. Only two degrees, but instead of enjoying their jilapis and weddings and cauliflower, 134 people died. A mere two-degree rise in the global climate will cause large tracts of the delta to disappear, and two degrees after that, the rivers will be wider than the plains, and two degrees after that, the water will have swallowed Bangladesh.

Two degrees either way for this country is not two degrees: it is catastrophe itself, borne on the waves of our warming world.

Read this article in its full from the following link:
Losing Bangladesh, by Degrees - New York Times

Regards,
Sohel