Maldives looking for a new home — just in case…
Today what caught my eye was an article about the Maldives. It seems they can see the writing on the wall, so to speak, and are going to be saving a percentage of the islands’ tourist income towards buying themselves a new homeland.
The problem is global warming. You see most of the islands are only 1.5 meters (a little less than 5 ft) above sea level. So even a small rise in sea surface levels will have a big impact on these people. It’s a small group of islands and they can’t do anything about global climate change. It’s being caused by the major industrialized nations treating the earth as an infinite resource. What they can do is not wait to the last minute to do something for themselves. They don’t want to be refugees living on the kindness of others when the rising sea takes their homes. So, they, unlike many others, are planing ahead for the future.
This brings up the problem that no one is really talking about: the relocation of many people when the seas rise. A rise in sea level is not just vertical, it is also horizontal. A small rise in the sea level coupled with a storm surge can do much more damage to area that ordinarily wouldn’t be touched by a storm.
Where we live we’re 200 feet above sea level. We’re also quite a ways inland, but we’re not too far from several rivers. If the sea was to rise about 3 feet vertically, we’d probably find ourselves on an island because of the dips and rises in the land about us. Right now all dry but rising sea levels mean rising river levels and that spill over is going to fill the low lying areas creating new topography for many areas near the ocean or on rivers connected to the ocean.
Not as much of a problem as just a few inches will cause for the people of the Maldives but what will the nations of the earth do for the people who can no longer live in their homes because it’s now underwater or under it most of the time. Here in the US, we haven’t done very well helping people out from the hurricanes that struck New Orleans and parts of Texas. People are still recovering. What if they couldn’t ever go back home? What would have happened then?
Contingency plans may be in the works in many government departments, but I tend to doubt that they are — at least not any plans that have a close relationship to reality either before, during, or after a disaster. I think we’ve seen that clearly just watching the news after natural disasters strike.
We need to plan and to think about what global warming means in the short and long term. Things are going to change and we need to adapt and accept that change is going to happen — how can we make it less stressful and more positive for all — even those facing a rising sea?