When it comes to weather, chaos is the new normal. This is especially rough when your nation sits
barely above sea level.
And you thought getting nuked by dozens of bombs was bad?
How would you like to have both a drought and flooding at the same time, and then add 6-8 foot storm surges that rock your coast line and flood your airport? Of course this is all happening under the specter of having to abandon your nation within the coming decades if projections are accurate. Not good.
Marshall Islands Minister-in-Assistance to the President, Tony de Brum, who is responsible for climate change issues, called for a new surge of political commitment and international leadership to stave off further climate disasters from battering his country, and other vulnerable countries like it.
“From drought to deluge, my people are suffering an escalating climate crisis. Thousands of my people in the north are thirsty and hungry, thousands of us here in the south are now renched in seawater. As I said to the US emergency team this morning, “Welcome to Climate Change”.
And it is not just a slow-motion trainwreck we are watching here; it is more like a
roller coaster as it descends from its highest point. And we have yet to construct the track at the bottom of that descent.
...the reason behind increasingly severe storms, rising sea level, flooding and droughts here is clear: climate change is picking up speed.
...
Erosion has accelerated along the shoreline, and salt water has seeped into wells and agricultural land, rendering it useless.
Water has to be shipped in, and even then people are getting only 1 liter per day. Disease such as diarrhea and flu encroaches when an area suffers from such severe water shortages. FEMA can only do so much to help. Planes could not even land due to the airport's flooded runway.
This story should make clear that climate change is not some far off event that we will someday experience.
It is happening NOW.
People are suffering as a result NOW.
It is a commonly held belief that we still have plenty of time to begin to really start addressing climate change and its impacts. Lots of people even here at Daily Kos seem to want to focus on any number of other causes first. And they even go so far as to thread jack in attempts to derail discussion in climate diaries.
The fact that even those of us on the left have not come together in the face of this ever-growing emergency shows that we may be poised on the precipice of a great fall.
It would not be the first time a culture has seem its doom as a result of a changing climate.
History Repeats?
Those of you who have read Jared Diamond's Collapse may know his analogy of the fall of the people of Easter Island. But it is not an isolated incident.
Recent evidence suggests drought caused the collapse of the ancient Khmer Empire. And not just drought for that matter, but what we have come to call climate chaos.
Suggested causes for the fall of the Khmer Empire in the late 14th to early 15th centuries have included war and land overexploitation. However, recent evidence suggests that prolonged droughts might have been linked to the decline of Angkor — for instance, tree rings from Vietnam suggest the region experienced long spans of drought interspersed with unusually heavy rainfall.
That last part always gets me.
Imagine wandering the desert for days without a drink and then when water appears, the only option you have is to drink from a fire hose on full blast.
"Angkor can be an example of how technology isn't always sufficient to prevent major collapse during times of severe instability," Day told LiveScience. "Angkor had a highly sophisticated water management infrastructure, but this technologic advantage was not enough to prevent its collapse in the face of extreme environmental conditions."
Without serious action to mitigate the advent to the most severe impacts of climate change, we are faced with an increasingly insurmountable obstacle. No amount of infrastructure enhancement can hold back the tides of Mother Nature when she unleashes her most unruly fury.
Action is needed today if we are to help prevent the evacuation of the Marshall Islands soon.
Without action, the signs are ominous for the rest of us soon after that.
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"Green Diary Rescue" is Back!
After a hiatus of over 1 1/2 years, Meteor Blades has revived his excellent series. As MB explained, this weekly diary is a "round-up with excerpts and links... of the hard work so many Kossacks put into bringing matters of environmental concern to the community... I'll be starting out with some commentary of my own on an issue related to the environment, a word I take in its broadest meaning."
"Green Diary Rescue" will be posted every Saturday at 1:00 pm Pacific Time on the Daily Kos front page. Be sure to recommend and comment in the diary.
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