A Liquefying World
Sun Dec 24, 2006 at 11:41:22 AM PDT
Growing up, whenever we studied India in geography class -- and the Sunderban Delta in particular – my young, malleable mind wandered, the mere mention of the Asian country evoking iconic images of fierce Bengal tigers stalking unwitting prey through thick, course swamp grass -- the fading, amber glow of an Indian sun ceding to the nighttime in the background. Unfortunately, those stirring images may not be filling the creative minds of generations to come in the same way.
Lohachara Island is gone... forever; recently inundated by the rising tides of global warming. It’s not the only one soon to be underwater either. By the year 2020, scientists say twelve more islands in the Sunderban Delta – home to 70,000 indigenous peoples -- will experience the same watery fate. That’s thirteen-years, folks; little more than a decade before lands habitable for thousands of years disappear, never to sustain terrestrial life again. Can the fate of the majestic Bengal tiger be any less harsh? Currently, there are an estimated 4,000 tigers in the region threatened by the rising tides.
More below:
This from Sunday’s Independent Online Edition:
"For the first time, an inhabited island has disappeared beneath rising seas," Environment Editor Geoffrey Lean reports.
Rising tides 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 Sunderbans, the delta 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.
Keep in mind, from the Maldives to the Marshall Islands, the fate of whole island nations will soon mirror that of the Sunderban Delta, including large swaths of land from Bangladesh to Egypt, and many coastal cities in between.
More from the article:
Eight years ago, as exclusively reported in The Independent on Sunday, the first uninhabited islands - in the Pacific atoll nation of Kiribati - vanished beneath the waves. The people of low-lying islands in Vanuatu, also in the Pacific, have been evacuated as a precaution, but the land still juts above the sea. The disappearance of Lohachara, once home to 10,000 people, is unprecedented.
It has been officially recorded in a six-year study of the Sunderbans by researchers at Calcutta's Jadavpur University. So remote is the island that the researchers first learned of its submergence, and that of an uninhabited neighbouring island, Suparibhanga, when they saw they had vanished from satellite pictures.
As a homeowner in southwest Florida, I shudder every time I read the grim forecasts of global warming. I think it’s safe to say, my home could literally be underwater in my lifetime. That’s not a pleasant thought, as I’m sure it’s not for millions of other people living in coastal areas. A beachcomber’s future will not be a kind one.
Back to the article:
Until now the Carteret Islands off Papua New Guinea were expected to be the first populated ones to disappear, in about eight years' time, but Lohachara has beaten them to the dubious distinction.
You know, I really wanted to leave politics out of this diary. Although it has huge ramifications on the very future of human civilization, I think politics both diminishes and diverts attention away from what truly is a burgeoning worldwide catastrophe. I’ll simply leave it like this; we don’t have the leadership in this country capable of handling this apocalyptic scenario. The acknowledgment of global warming must be a litmus test in ’08, and in every election after that. It’s as simple as that.
For more about the Sunderban Delta and its imminent disaster in the making:
Indianjungles.com:
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