Silent Genocide from Carbon Footprint
Stark images of Iowa flood from news media are shocking. A house being swept away in Wisconsin by gushing water was terrifying. Rivers have risen to heights never reached before in precise swiftness, destroying life and livelihoods of so many ordinary folks of world of reality. In West Bengal, Orissa, Assam and neighboring area flood has caused dozens of deaths, bridge collapse and other calamities. Scientists have predicted all of these "happenings". "Perry Beeman is an award-winning investigative reporter for The Des Moines Register, and former president of the Society of Environmental Journalists. From his flood-wracked city of Des Moines, he told me: "Not even a few weeks before this all happened, we were in the middle of doing a climate change series that's going to run over the year. We had two-page graphic talking about the different things that would happen (in Iowa as a result of climate change) and pointing out ... that you would expect more torrential rains. What has happened here is consistent with many scientists' view of what global warming will mean in the Midwest."
Salt inundation and rising sea water along with increasing heat in the Bay of Bengal have started to claim more and more lands in Bangladesh. As if the ocean is in rage. Devastating cyclones like Sidr are becoming more frequent. A climatologist in Dhaka says, "The sea surface temperatures in the Bay of Bengal have been rising steadily for the past 40 years – and so, exactly as you would expect, the intensity of cyclones has risen too. They're up by 39 per cent on average."
Johann Hari's article in The Independent is frightening. An entire nation, Bangladesh, would be under the rising sea within this century. Hundreds of millions of people will either be drowned, swept away, or will be victimized beyond anguish, scattered around the world as hapless refugees. This all will happen due to our world's increasing carbon footprint, in which, Bangladesh's contribution is mere 0.3 percent of the world's contribution, but absolute devastation would claim 100 percent of this cyclone and flood ravaged nation through global warming and its apparent irreversible consequences.
A Bangladeshi scientist surmises this stranger than fiction scenario in succinct words Johann Hari's article: "This is the ground zero of global warming." He listed the effects. The seas are rising, so land is being claimed from the outside. (The largest island in the country, Bhola, has lost half its land in the past decade.) The rivers are super-charged, becoming wider and wider, so land is being claimed from within. (Erosion is up by 40 per cent). Cyclones are becoming more intense and more violent (2007 was the worst year on record for intense hurricanes here). And salt water is rendering the land barren. (The rate of saline inundation has trebled in the past 20 years.) "There is no question," Dr Rahman said, "that this is being caused primarily by human action. This is way outside natural variation. If you really want people in the West to understand the effect they are having here, it's simple. From now on, we need to have a system where for every 10,000 tons of carbon you emit, you have to take a Bangladeshi family to live with you. It is your responsibility." In the past, he has called it "climatic genocide".
Is there any remedy available? Perhaps. Is there still time to stop this progression of silent genocide arising from carbon footprint?
Ralph Nader may have the answer. He said, "We've got to have a national mission of converting our economy, and the example for the world is solar energy, 4 billion years of supply. It is environmentally benign, decentralized, makes us energy independent and replaces the ExxonMobil/Peabody Coal/uranium complex. That is why we have got to go for economic, political, health and safety reasons."
Salt inundation and rising sea water along with increasing heat in the Bay of Bengal have started to claim more and more lands in Bangladesh. As if the ocean is in rage. Devastating cyclones like Sidr are becoming more frequent. A climatologist in Dhaka says, "The sea surface temperatures in the Bay of Bengal have been rising steadily for the past 40 years – and so, exactly as you would expect, the intensity of cyclones has risen too. They're up by 39 per cent on average."
Johann Hari's article in The Independent is frightening. An entire nation, Bangladesh, would be under the rising sea within this century. Hundreds of millions of people will either be drowned, swept away, or will be victimized beyond anguish, scattered around the world as hapless refugees. This all will happen due to our world's increasing carbon footprint, in which, Bangladesh's contribution is mere 0.3 percent of the world's contribution, but absolute devastation would claim 100 percent of this cyclone and flood ravaged nation through global warming and its apparent irreversible consequences.
A Bangladeshi scientist surmises this stranger than fiction scenario in succinct words Johann Hari's article: "This is the ground zero of global warming." He listed the effects. The seas are rising, so land is being claimed from the outside. (The largest island in the country, Bhola, has lost half its land in the past decade.) The rivers are super-charged, becoming wider and wider, so land is being claimed from within. (Erosion is up by 40 per cent). Cyclones are becoming more intense and more violent (2007 was the worst year on record for intense hurricanes here). And salt water is rendering the land barren. (The rate of saline inundation has trebled in the past 20 years.) "There is no question," Dr Rahman said, "that this is being caused primarily by human action. This is way outside natural variation. If you really want people in the West to understand the effect they are having here, it's simple. From now on, we need to have a system where for every 10,000 tons of carbon you emit, you have to take a Bangladeshi family to live with you. It is your responsibility." In the past, he has called it "climatic genocide".
Is there any remedy available? Perhaps. Is there still time to stop this progression of silent genocide arising from carbon footprint?
Ralph Nader may have the answer. He said, "We've got to have a national mission of converting our economy, and the example for the world is solar energy, 4 billion years of supply. It is environmentally benign, decentralized, makes us energy independent and replaces the ExxonMobil/Peabody Coal/uranium complex. That is why we have got to go for economic, political, health and safety reasons."
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