Bangladesh, in grave danger from rising waters
Bring up global warming and my mind turns to Bangladesh. What other nation finds so many people, so poor, so under the thumb of a money-grubbing elite, and so damnably close to the rising ocean?
A recent re-assessment of the 2007 IPCC report on sea level rise, published last January in Nature Climate Change (preview only, full article behind pay wall), and reported on here by John Platt of Mother Nature Network, tells us that by 2100, melting Antarctic and Greenland glacial ice sheets could cause a sea level rise
"between 11.4 and 33 inches (there was only a 5 percent chance of reaching this [33-inch] level, according to the experts' data). If rising temperatures also cause ocean waters to expand, the total sea rise could be more than three feet."
Of course there are diarists far more authoritative than I on climate change and the issues behind it, like the excellent
FishOutofWater. Then there's Lefty Coaster's compelling (and recommended) diary
W CO2 @ 400 PPM "It is increasingly likely that hundreds of millions of people will be displaced.."
It's that issue of displacement and its geopolitical implications that concerns me here. What could sea level- and climate-driven mass migration from Bangladesh mean geopolitically? What are some implications for the US with its persistent entanglement in Islamic nations?
As the sea level rises, millions of desperately poor people in Bangladesh will be forced to flee the rising waters or die. A one meter increase in sea level would flood 15 million people out of their homes; this is apart from disruptions to a delicate system of food production and distribution, public health, and the effects of atmospheric and oceanic warming on the intensity of the tropical cyclones that frequently plague Bangladesh. In a profoundly poor country, the cold statistic of how many people will be flooded out of their homes is only part of the picture.
The big picture is one of mass disease and hunger under a weak government in an unstable nation of 160 million people squeezed into an area about the size of Iowa--before losing ground to the sea.
Where do these people go? Sick, poor, homeless...where can they go? Short of a gargantuan international project to build dykes, or a vast scheme to resettle Bangladeshis outside the region, there are few choices.
Bangladesh: mountains to the east, India to the north and west, the rising Bay of Bengal to the South
They'll never make it across the mountains to Burma, and it's fair to say the people of neighboring Assam and West Bengal in India are already crowded and not interested in being more crowded, apart from any sectarian differences; Assam and West Bengal are majority Hindu.
What does the Indian government do with millions, maybe tens of millions, of dirt-poor Muslim refugees on its doorstep? Given the economic state of India and the powerful influence of Hindu nationalism on Indian society, it's not hard to imagine a hardened border, especially if Hindu nationalists hold the legislative majority. Nor is it hard to imagine rising tension between nearly 180 million Indian Muslims (a rapidly increasing population) and a Hindu majority, and an increasing threat from Muslim militants based in Pakistan acting partly in sympathy with the people of Bangladesh.
An overall look at the region would probably show:
*The US still vying with Russia for influence in the keystone nations of Central Asia, the bridge between Iran, Russia, China, India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.
*The mineral mother lode of Afghanistan still unstable and "ruled" by a corrupt elite selling its mineral wealth to the highest bidder, most likely a still-involved United States.
*Pakistan as poor and unstable as ever, its poverty and instability breeding extremists while Russia and the US worry about its nuclear weapons and the transfer of technology to terrorist organisations; and embroiled in increasingly dangerous disputes with India over cross border violence and the state of Bangladeshi refugees.
*India increasingly in the hands of Hindu nationalists as tensions on borders both east and west grow dangerous, increasingly divided against itself as the large Muslim minority presses for aid to Bangladeshi refugees, and under increasing pressure from an already hot, dry climate becoming hotter and ever less reliable, reducing food security and fomenting social unrest apart from sectarian issues. Military intervention in Bangladesh, even occupation, is hardly out of the question, and there is precedent. For its own strategic reasons, India assisted Bangladesh, then East Pakistan, gain independence from West Pakistan in 1971; in December of that year, the Indian army overran East Pakistan/Bangladesh as part of the larger Indo-Pakistani war.
*Bangladesh shrinking, flooded, sick, hungry, desperate, massed ever closer to the Indian border, and unable to keep a stable, remotely competent government as elites flee to the Gulf States or the West.
Where would the United States stand in this scenario? With the US inevitably still interfering in Central Asia to secure mineral resources and "fight terror", I believe it will stand with the threatened Indian government and regional dictatorships who do the business of the US government, particularly in our efforts to "fight terror" while (just coincidentally) securing access to minerals for us and denying access to geopolitical competitors.
The desperate acts of poor Bangladeshi Muslims running for their lives will breed what will be called terrorism and their struggle will be conflated with terrorism. Their cause, understandably, will be taken up by fellow Muslims in India and around the world, who will angrily refuse to watch their sisters and brothers abandoned to drown. Their anger will be conflated with terrorism. In the Muslim world, the disaster in Bangladesh will be blamed, largely accurately, on the West.
The United States, our government further down the road to complete consolidation of corporate power, will intervene militarily in the region to whatever degree necessary to assure the corporate elite that its revenue stream will remain intact.
We may well be embroiled in corporate-driven foreign wars against Muslims and Muslim countries 100 years from now, a state of affairs cemented by the human and geopolitical effects of global warming.
This is what climate change really means. This is part of the disaster, one I think likely to take far more lives than the direct effects of climate change.
Consider the following factors:
*Corporate political and economic control increasing without limits
*The insatiable world hunger for minerals
*Trillions of dollars in minerals, including massive deposits of uranium, ready for the taking in Afghanistan alone
*The proximity of China in competition for those minerals
*Destabilization of oil-rich Arab and Iranian regimes threatening global oil markets
*Our elite's never-ending appetite for war profits
*Our elite's easy and highly successful use of war to silence "unpatriotic" dissent
*The eagerness of the US public to fear and loathe Islam.
I confess I am purely an amateur when it comes to such geopolitical projections as these, but the trends, and the political and economic logic behind them, look very clear. The Logic of Empire never ceases its evil turning. Nation states behave as nation states always do; and elites seek always to consolidate their wealth and power.
What are the keys to stopping this disaster, not just the changing climate, but the human disaster we are now making inevitable with our cancerous demand for commodities and our corporate-driven war machine? I don't know, except to say that we must fight corporate influence on our politics now, fearlessly recognizing that fight is far bigger than which of two parties to cheer for, knowing the fate of hundreds of millions of people is in our hands.
I welcome your insights.
Mon May 13, 2013 at 7:06 AM PT: Many thanks for your kind recommendations. One note: a few readers have interpreted my analysis as referring to the present day. Actually, this diary projects events driven by sea level rises through the coming decades using the present day as a take-off point.
Again, thanks to all.