Letter from the Editor: Summer 2008

A Storm Warning from Bangladesh

As I write this, Burma (renamed Myanmar by its ruling military junta) is struggling to recover from Cyclone Nargis, which has killed at least 100,000 people and turned a million more into desperate refugees. Inconceivable numbers.

Right next door to Burma is Bangladesh, the subject of our gripping cover story by articles editor George Black. The rising temperatures in the Indian Ocean that spawned Cyclone Nargis also pose a constant menace to Bangladesh. In 1991 a cyclone claimed 138,000 lives; last November another ferocious storm, Cyclone Sidr, killed 4,000 -- a num­ber that would have been much higher had Bangladesh not developed relatively effective early-warning systems. During a two-week visit, Black was able to take in firsthand the trail of Sidr's destructive force: blown-down palm trees, the wrecks of fishing boats, the frightened accounts of survivors.

Black decided to travel to Bangladesh because more than any other country, it lies in the crosshairs of global warming's gathering storm, which is the title we gave to his story. Most of the Bangladeshi population of 150 million live only a few feet above sea level -- and that sea is rising. As the storms intensify and the tides from the Bay of Bengal gradually inundate the land on which villagers and farmers eke out a living (annual per capita income is $520), perhaps as many as nine million of them will be permanently displaced from their homes. And that's the most conservative estimate; some say the number could reach 25 million. They will become environmental refugees -- a new beleaguered, bur­geoning class of world citizen -- and they will form their own tidal wave, surging into already overburdened landscapes, into impossibly crowded urban slums, and into neighboring countries. (To keep out migrants, India is right now constructing a 2,500-mile fence to seal its border with Bangladesh.) And by the way, 90 percent of these refugees will be impoverished Muslims. Bangladeshis have long practiced a religion of tolerance and moderation, but the more radical strains of Islam are steadily expanding their influence as millions of people find their lives growing more precarious -- and begin to question who is responsible for climate change and sea-level rise in the first place.

To be blunt, Black's account offers little reason for optimism (although it is so gorgeously written, you are effortlessly transported on his 500-mile journey through the vast Ganges Delta, down the Passur River at dawn, and into the Sundarbans forest, where huge man-eating tigers roam). The scale of the catastrophes that loom is simply too immense to grasp fully. Yet Black doesn't leave us staring pas­sively at the apocalypse, but sketches out instead some of the steps we need to start taking as a global community. That means seeing far beyond our usual horizons of perception and comprehension and preparing for the coming storms, even as we continue to tirelessly address their root cause, which has risen up like some ancient, angry, thousand-armed deity: global warming.

Douglas S. Barasch