Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
crisis than a solution. That geoengineering
has progressed from an obscure topic into
one which is receiving increased research
funding and attention in the press should
scare all of us. And that climate change is
so dire a challenge as to propel some in
the scientific community to seriously con-
sider geoengineering should scare us all the
more. The anthropogenic climate change
crisis that we face requires a political rather
than a geoengineering solution.
gees, such as Pacific Islanders who have
fled their flooded homelands, or residents
of New Orleans permanently displaced
by Katrina's floodwaters. But in the near
future much larger numbers of environ-
mental refugees from atolls, deltas, and
coastal cities will be added to the list of the
displaced. Included in this group will be
those who have run out of water or other
resources and who also will be seeking re-
lief by moving. The fourteen million peo-
ple living at elevations below three feet in
Bangladesh will be forced to move and find
sustenance and shelter in a country that
is already one of the world's most densely
populated. Right next door is Myanmar,
a less densely populated country with po-
tential space for Bangladeshi refugees, but
the intervening national boundary may be
impermeable.
The potential for conflict is real, and the
likelihood is strong that local and regional
wars will break out. American and nato
military planners are already contemplat-
ing responses to the global warming wars,
but one would hope that diplomatic efforts
could ward off the conflicts.
The problems can only worsen as global
change advances on many fronts, simulta-
neously with the advancing global popula-
tion. Of course as long as governments of
the world pay only lip service to the prob-
lem, we will move no closer to a solution.
The carbon industry continues to confound
the public with disinformation, delaying the
difficult decisions that must be made to
A Final Word
Today 6.7 billion people populate our tiny
planet, and the number inches toward
an expected 10 billion by 2050. There are
1,000 people per square kilometer (2,590
per square mile) in Bangladesh, 500 (1,295)
in South Korea, 377 (976) in Japan, 360 (932)
in India, and 330 (855) in Vietnam. The den-
sity of populations places us on a collision
course with climate change. Quite simply,
we are in the way. We are in the way of
storms, sea level rise, shoreline erosion, for-
est fires, desertification, crop failures, loss
of glacial melt water for drinking and agri-
culture, and all the other expected impacts
of global change. And because so many of
us require fossil fuels for our chosen mode
of existence, we send ever-larger volumes
of CO
2
and methane into the atmosphere.
Today there are many economic and po-
litical refugees around the world, as well as
a smaller number of environmental refu-
