Thursday, December 28th, 2006, 2:00 pm
Time to Rethink ‘Waste Culture’ Amid Global Warming?
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Never underestimate the forces of nature, geology, and climate. Picture from the BBC (2004).
HE article “Disappearing world: Global warming claims tropical island” caught my eye during Christmas (or “holiday period”, if you prefer). As a reminder, there are/were serious floods that cost lives over Christmas—a trend that seems repeatable, especially around Christmas time. This year was no exception. But what happens when a once-vibrant island becomes an underwater site for diver historians? What will the impact of refuge be? Can man battle climate? Does the world intend to take action at all? Or, as my father would say, is it just “busy making money”?
Rising seas, caused by global warming, have for the first time washed an inhabited island off the face of the Earth. The obliteration of Lohachara island, in India’s part of the Sundarbans where the Ganges and the Brahmaputra rivers empty into the Bay of Bengal, marks the moment when one of the most apocalyptic predictions of environmentalists and climate scientists has started coming true.
