20 million people in Pakistan are destitute, desperate, homeless and without any means of supporting themselves due to the recent and ongoing flooding of the Indus River. These people, if they survive, will be absolutely dependent on handouts for food, clean water, clothing and shelter for the foreseeable future. It's deja vu all over again. First the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004, then the earthquake in Haiti and now this. The frequency of natural disasters is increasing. They are happening all over the earth from the flooding in China to the forest fires in Russia. What's happening?
Flooding is directly attributable to global warming whereas earthquakes are not. However, the results have been the same in Haiti and Pakistan: large numbers of basically poor people, urbanized in the case of Haiti and rural subsistence farmers in the case of Pakistan have been devastated and turned into basket cases dependent on the charity of those more fortunate. However, after the huge response to the Haiti debacle, compassion fatigue has set in in the case of Pakistan.
Two out of three of these disasters were triggered by earthquakes which, so far as we know, have nothing to do with global warming. But flooding definitely does. The earth's warming atmosphere absorbs more water which causes not mere rain storms but deluges. Flash flooding as well as prolonged downpours are becoming more common. This is probably the most common form of havoc that global warming will continue to wreak. And we can expect this situation to become even more dire since most of the world's population lives close to a river. Civilization developed this way because human beings are dependent on a source of water for their crops and for drinking, cooking and bathing.
In addition to flooding, global warming also produces warmer atmospheric temperatures which, when combined with higher wind velocities, dry out forests making them more susceptible to fire. So we can expect more forest fires as time goes on. Warmer ocean temperatures produce more powerful hurricanes and weather becomes more violent in general producing more and more powerful tornadoes. All these kinds of weather and climate related activities with the exception of earthquakes are related to global warming. And the amount of carbon in the atmosphere which causes global warming continues to increase. As of July 2010 it was 390 parts per million and increasing, well above the value of 350 parts per million thought safe by scientists.
This was reported 21 August 2010 by Voice of America:
More than 127,000 people have been evacuated in northeastern China following severe flooding that has already claimed at least 1,400 lives this month.
China's official Xinhua news agency reported Sunday that in Dandong city alone, located on the rain-swollen Yalu River which separates China from North Korea, more than 94,000 residents were evacuated amid widespread power and communications failures. At least 5,100 residents have been evacuated from affected areas in North Korea.
Downpours since Thursday have led to flash floods that swept away homes about 100 kilometers northeast of Dandong, killing four people. Weather forecasters warn up to 25 centimeters more rain could hit the area in the next 24 hours.
Flood-related incidents in China this year have claimed nearly 4,000 lives - victims who are either confirmed dead or have disappeared in the torrents. Chinese emergency officials say the casualty toll from massive mudslides earlier this month in Zhouqu County in northwest China's Gansu Province stands at 1,434 dead, with 331 people still missing.
When combined with overpopulation, massive disasters produced by global warming affecting very poor or subsistence level people will take their eventual toll on the earth's demographics. Either large numbers of people will just die or migrate or be bailed out by more affluent people with a consequent drain on their resources. As it is, even without any recurrent natural disasters, a billion of the world's people don't have access to clean drinking water and even more are without adeqate sanitation. Furthermore, those that do have access to clean water sometimes have to travel miles to get it.
Nearly 2 billion people live in water-stressed areas of the world and 3 billion have no running water within a kilometre of their homes. Every eight seconds a child dies of a waterborne disease, in every case preventable if their parents had money to pay for water. And it is getting worse as the world runs out of clean water. A new World Bank reports says that by 2030, global demand for water will exceed supply by more than 40%, a shocking prediction that foretells of terrible suffering.
Flooding only decreases the availability of clean drinking water. It is water that is lost to humanity's use as it ends up uncontrolled in the oceans.
According to the US Geological Survey, floods were the number-one natural disaster in the United States in terms of the number of lives lost and property damage in the 20th century. On June 12, 2010, dozens of Americans were killed after a flash flood occurred at an Arkansas campsite. On August 18, 2010 flash floods deluged Tennessee. On August 9, 2010 heavy rains brought flash floods to Iowa leaving thousands without power.
Natural disasters occurring in developed countries don't cause the destitution of millions of people because there are resources available in surrounding areas. However, the disaster caused by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans is still being recovered from. Destruction of infrastructure and the devastation of private property though brings disaster to those affected. In more vulnerable parts of the world, however, natural disasters can cause mass devastation and cause mass migration to urban areas because of the loss of subsistence farming. This increases the population density of urban slums.
In Planet of Slums, Mike Davis recounts the possible horrors produced by the increasing urbanizatrion of former subsistance farmers as they move into big city slums. And he doen't even take into account that natural disasters will be a contributing factor. In Haiti, after the market was flooded with US rice, Haitian farmers wre no longer able to make a living and became part of Port au Prince's urban slum population. Bill Clinton has subsequently apologized for policies of his administration which produced this debacle. This compounded the disaster produced by the earthquake.
So what's the denouement? There will be increasing natural disasters produced by global warming. They will cause massive human crises when they occur in poor or developing countries. Mass migrations from rural to urban areas will only increase the slum populations of the world as there will not be enough jobs created to support formerly subsistance farmers. Natural disasters will cause more widespread havoc in both human terms and property damage than terrorists could ever cause, but the increasing dislocation of people will add fuel to the fire of terrorism. Instead of spending massive amounts of money on the military-industrial complex and militarism, those amounts will be required in order to recover from natural disasters. Mother Earth will take her revenge and command those resources. Maybe the lesson will be made clear: we're all in this together at least when it comes to planet wide natural disasters.
