There have been some days in the last year or so that I wish Jerry Falwell could have lived to see this extraordinary year. Not only would he have seen his worse nightmare come true, a black person actually making it into the finals for President; he would have also seen one of his repeated statements proven to be demonstrably false, the line where he said over and over that the "polar ice caps aren't melting." Yesterday came word of one of the nightmare scenarios coming true a full thirty years ahead of schedule: the North Pole may very well be ice free sometime this summer for the first time since Eve handed Adam the apple.
Imagine the broken hearts of children when they think of Santa, his unpaid and indentured servants and the nine reindeer seeing their workshop sink.
Seriously, the huge implications for mean sea level in the next few years should be dawning on us; and that alone should convince us that we can't live the way we have anymore. I'm certainly not suggesting going back to caveman days, but two centuries of taking without giving back was bound to have a price eventually. There is a direct link between less ice in polar regions and the much more violent weather we've experienced the last few years. When Larsen B collapsed in 2002, an ice sheet the size of Rhode Island disappeared -- a sheet 220 metres thick. The ice at the North Pole which should be tens of metres thick is paper thin this year which has led to the startling prediction by scientists.
Remember, Katrina created a million refugees in a developed country. Consider the security implications from that that are still being felt nearly three years later; now think about ships sailing across the top of the world unimpeded and with no country able to assert sovereignty. Who needs a Northwest Passsage if the North Pole has no ice?
The developed world needs to make sustainable development the law; and should insist developing countries do the same as a condition of freer access to our markets. The Earth is our shared inheritance and it's time we stopped treating it like a miden.
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1 comment:
Seriously, the huge implications for mean sea level in the next few years should be dawning on us; and that alone should convince us that we can't live the way we have anymore.
I HATE to nitpick as I agree with everything else you said, but the melting ice cap on water won't change sea level at all, because the ice has already displaced it's mass. Think of a the water level in a glass of water as the ice melts. It stays the same. I'd be more worried about ice on land melting.
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