![On the back of a Dragonfly [B&W]](http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6194/6128449851_14ec409b56_s.jpg "On the back of a Dragonfly [B&W]")
A mere few centuries after they founded Nieuw Amsterdam , (a distant settlement that came to be known as New York City); the worlds leading experts in sea-level adaptations may see their former colony drowned. But could Dutch dykes ever save its Nieuw Amsterdam?
Beginning with just over three feet of sea level rise, the impact on the US would be calamitous, having the potential to destabilize many highly populated areas of this country, according to a Coastal Impact Study published at Architecture 2030.
The study challenges the notion that has been advanced by the media that only poor nations far from us will be impacted by climate change, which has lead to complacency about the need to confront global warming.
But even three feet of sea level rise - which is on the low side of most IPPC reports - will displace not just those other far away foreigners, but that will affect most of our own coastal residents.
As illustrated in these interactive maps of the effects on our own coasts:
"Starting in East Boston and moving down along the East Coast, around Florida and over to the Gulf of Mexico, then up along the West Coast and ending with the city of Honolulu, Hawaii, a picture of inundation, population displacement and catastrophic property loss develops.
With a business-as-usual approach, where fossil-fuel consumption and GHG emissions continue to increase, we will likely see a warming of 2 °C to 3 °C this century with a planetary energy imbalance sufficient to melt enough ice to raise sea level by several meters.
Once the process of ice sheet disintegration begins, the impact on the US is unremitting, and at each additional increment, additional cities and towns will be adversely affected."If you think that bailing out Wall Street is expensive, you can imagine what its going to cost us to really bail out Wall Street.
Maybe we should just give Nieuw Amsterdam back?
From Architecture 2030
Art by Peter Kleiner
First posted at Red,Green And Blue
Are we suffering from amnesia about the value of the Earth and its environs? Have we been mesmerized by a Tower of Babel?
Perhaps we are forever forgetting about the environment because too many people, especially the economic powerbrokers, their bought-and-paid-for politicians and their minions in the mainstream media, are worshipping a "totem". At least to me, there appear to be many too many people for whom the economy, in and of itself, is the primary object of their idolatry. This behavior is observable, obvious and flagrant. In many instances, these worshippers make what they evidently believe are rational arguments that suggest manmade financial and economic systems are somehow essential to, and an integral part of, God's Creation; that indicate the growth of the global economy will occur from now on, even after the Creation is ravaged and its frangible climate destabilized by unbridled overproduction, unchecked overconsumption and unregulated overpopulation activities of the human species. Aside from the "Economic Colossus" nothing matters to them.
Today, it appears that the financial system of the economic powerbrokers is collapsing like a "house of cards" and the real economy of the family of humanity is threatened. Experts in political economy are saying internally inconsistent and contradictory things. Communications about financials and the economy are generally confused and in disarray. Confidence and trust in the operating systems of finance and the global economy have been undermined by the invention of dodgy financial instruments and unsustainable business models as well as by the promulgation of con games and Ponzi schemes. Transparency, accountability and honesty in business activities have been largely vanquished. A great economic system is being undone by con artists, gamblers and cheats. In such circumstances, does the manmade colossus we call the global political economy remind you in some ways of a modern Tower of Babel?
Sincerely,
Steve
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population,
established 2001
http://sustainabilityscience.org/content.html?contentid=1176
What a thoughtfull comment...yes, it does make me think of Babel. It's a great analogy.
I work for a renewable energy start-up in Northern California and write freelance for HomeDesignFind and Greenoptions sites Gas 2.0 and Cleantechnica