(Insights into the World on December 3, 2001- The Daily Yomiuri )
It is said that September 11, 2001 was the day that changed America.
But international opinion has changed as
well as America since this day.
Before terror, not only America that declared
to drop the Kyoto Protocol on March 28, 2001
but also irresolute Japan had been criticized.
America has indicated some countries as rogue nations, but low-lying island
countries have seen America as the same.
We suppose that industrial countries are
likely to be indicated as rogue nations in
the near future by them.
Finally, let's introduce a proverb, "Their own knavery will pay them
home at length."
The leaders of Tuvalu - a tiny island country in the western Pacific
Ocean midway between Hawaii and Australia
- have conceded defeat in their battle with
the rising sea, announcing that they will
abandon their homeland.
After being rebuffed by Australia, the Tuvaluans
asked New Zealand to accept its 11,000 citizens.
 The Pacific nation of Tuvalu has secured New Zealand's agreement to accept
an annual quota of its citizens as refugees. (by BBC NEWS)"New Zealand responded positively in
the true Pacific way of helping one's neighbors,
Australia on the other hand has slammed the
door in our face," said Paani Laupepa,
Tuvalu official.
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During the twentieth century, the sea level rose by 20 to 30 centimeters.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projects that it will rise by up to a meter
this century.
The seas are rising because of the melting
of glaciers and the thermal expansion of
the ocean as a result of climate change.
This in turn is due to rising atmospheric
levels of carbon dioxide, largely from burning
fossil fuels.
As sea level has risen, Tuvalu has experienced lowland flooding.
Salt-water intrusion is adversely affecting
its drinking water and food production.
Coastal erosion is eating away at the nine
islands that make up the country.
The higher temperatures that are raising the level of the seas also lead
to more destructive storms.
Higher surface water temperatures in the
tropics and subtropics mean more energy radiating
into the atmosphere to drive storm systems.
Paani Laupepa, a Tuvaluan government official,
reported an unusually high level of tropical
cyclones during the past decade. (Tropical
cyclones are called hurricanes in the Atlantic
Ocean.)
Laupepa is bitterly critical of the United States for abandoning the Kyoto Protocol, the international
agreement to reduce carbon emissions. (see also the Christian Science Monitor)
He told a BBC reporter that "by refusing
to ratify the protocol, the United States
has effectively denied future generations
of Tuvaluans their fundamental freedom to
live where our ancestors have lived for thousands
of years."
For the leaders of island countries, this is not a new issue.
In October 1987, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, president
of the Maldives, noted in an impassioned address to the
U.N.
General Assembly that his country was threatened
by the rising sea level.
In his words, his country of 311,000 people
was "an endangered nation."
With most of its 1,196 tiny islands barely
two meters above sea level, the Maldives'
survival would be in jeopardy with even a
one-meter rise in sea level in the event
of a storm surge.
Tuvalu is the first country where people are being forced to evacuate because
of rising seas, but it almost certainly will not be the last.
It is seeking a home for 11,000 people (above annotation), but what about the 311,000 who may be forced to leave the Maldives?
Who will accept them?
Or the millions of others living in low-lying
countries who may soon join the flow of climate
refugees?
Will the United Nations be forced to develop
a climatic-immigrant quota system, allocating
the refugees among countries according to
the size of their population?
Or will the allocation be according to the
contribution of individual countries to the
climate change that caused the displacement?
Feeling threatened by the climate change over which they have little control, the island countries have organized into an Alliance of Small Island States, a group formed in 1990 specifically to lobby on behalf of these countries vulnerable to climate change.
In addition to island nations, low-lying coastal countries are also threatened
by the rising sea level.
In 2000 the World Bank published a map showing
that a one-meter rise in sea level would
inundate half of Bangladesh's rice-growing land.
With a rise in sea level of up to one meter
forecast for this century, Bangladeshis would
be forced to migrate not by the thousands
but by the millions.
In a country with 134 million people - already
one of the most densely populated on Earth
- this would be a traumatic experience.
Where will these climatic refugees go?
Rice-growing river floodplains in other Asian countries would also be affected, including China,
India, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam.
With a one-meter rise in sea level, more
than a third of Shanghai would be under water.
For China as a whole, 70 million people would
be vulnerable to a 100-year storm surge.
The most easily measured effect of rising sea level is the inundation of
coastal areas.
Donald Boesch, with the University of Maryland Center for Environmental
Science, estimates that for each millimeter rise
in sea level, the shoreline retreats an average
of 1.5 meters.
Thus if sea level rises by one meter, coastlines
will retreat by 1,500 meters.
With such a rise, the United States would lose 36,000 square kilometers of land - with the middle Atlantic and Mississippi Gulf states losing the most. Large portions of Lower Manhattan and the Capitol Mall in Washington would be flooded with seawater during a 50-year storm surge.
A team at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution has calculated Massachusetts's loss of land
to the rising sea as warming progresses.
Using the rather modest U.S. Environmental Protection Agency projections of sea level rise by 2025, they
calculated that Massachusetts would lose
from 3,035 to 4,047 hectares of land.
Based on just the lower estimate and a nominal
land value of $1 million per 0.4 hectare
for ocean-front property, this would amount
to a loss of at least $7.5 billion of particularly
expensive property by then.
Some of the 72 coastal communities included
in the study would lose far more land than
others.
Nantucket could lose over 2.4 hectares and
Falmouth 1.5 hectares a year.
Coastal real estate prices are likely to be one of the first economic indicators
to reflect the rise in sea level.
Those with heavy investments in beachfront
properties will suffer most.
A half -meter rise in. sea level in the United
States could bring losses ranging from $20
billion to $150 billion.
Beachfront properties, much like nuclear
power plants, are becoming uninsurable -
as many homeowners in Florida have discovered.
Many developing countries already coping with population growth and intense
competition for living space and cropland now face the prospect of rising
sea level and substantial land losses.
Some of those most directly affected have
contributed the least to the buildup in atmospheric
carbon dioxide that is causing this problem.
While Americans are facing loss of valuable beachfront properties, low-lying
island peoples are facing something far more serious: the loss of their
nationhood.
They feel terrorized by U.S. energy policy,
viewing the United States as a rogue nation,
indifferent to their plight and unwilling
to cooperate with the international community
to implement the Kyoto Protocol.
For the first time since civilization began, the sea level has begun to
rise at a measurable rate.
It has become an indicator to watch, a trend
that could force a human migration of almost
unimaginable dimensions.
It also raises questions about responsibility
to other nations and to future generations
that humanity has never before faced.
[Go to the page of "Convenience stores as hotbeds of global warming"]