HomeArticlesRio+20, Sea-Level Rise, Fear, and Taxes

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Rio+20, Sea-Level Rise, Fear, and Taxes — 2 Comments

  1. The rise in sea level graphics highlighted in this article draws attention to the issue of global warming. With the melting of the glacier ice pack sea levels have risen sharply in recent years. The rise in sea levels does not bode well for island countries as well as countries with large populations living on low lying seashores. Islands will disappear and fertile deltas will be flooded with dire consequences, the loss of livelihood, and the forced migration of peoples. Furthermore there seems to be only a fragile consensus on how to deal with increasing global temperatures, green house gas emissions and rising sea levels. Taxes on carbon emissions has been proposed. However, there is a lack of consensus on how to remedy complex environmental issues. It comes down to economics, politics and the conflict of interests by vested parties. That’s a brief summary of the ideas. It has taken over a century to arrive at this juncture. In a practical sense it may very well take another century or several decades to reverse this fearful view of the future. The challenge to social and scientific leaders is where to start; where do we begin to address the critical issue of climate change. Included in this analysis will be the crisis of conscience or the problem of conflicts of interest.
    In an amoral Darwinian sense, nature will take its course, the weak will suffer and the strong will survive. It is like living in the shadow of an active volcano or living in a city settled on a geological fault line. Intelligent humans may take the scientific information into account and move to safer locations while the masses are somewhat resigned to their inherited situation and stay where they are. Market ( capitalist ) planning takes a very short term derivative view and rushes to maximize profits before the eruption, earthquake or market crash. Humans with a higher order of thinking would find this resignation to fate, unconscionable. It would take an extraordinary insight into human nature that might initiate a fundamental change in social, political and economic thinking. This new kind of thought would necessarily have to bridge science, modern psychology, new cultural thought ( 4PF ), and with a healthy mixture of fear, and an urgent willingness to work together.

  2. Very interesting article

    Hello and thank you for this article. So-called environmentally induced migration is multi-level problem. According to Essam El-Hinnawi definition form 1985 environmental refugees as those people who have been forced to leave their traditional habitat, temporarily or permanently, because of a marked environmental disruption (natural or triggered by people) that jeopardised their existence and/or seriously affected the quality of their life. The fundamental distinction between `environmental migrants` and `environmental refugees` is a standpoint of contemporsry studies in EDPs.

    According to Bogumil Terminski it seems reasonable to distinguish the general category of environmental migrants from the more specific (subordinate to it) category of environmental refugees.

    Environmental migrants, therefore, are persons making a short-lived, cyclical, or longerterm change of residence, of a voluntary or forced character, due to specific environmental factors. Environmental refugees form a specific type of environmental migrant.

    Environmental refugees, therefore, are persons compelled to spontaneous, short-lived, cyclical, or longer-term changes of residence due to sudden or gradually worsening changes in environmental factors important to their living, which may be of either a short-term or an irreversible character.

    According to Norman Myers environmental refugees are “people who can no longer gain a secure livelihood in their homelands because of drought, soil erosion, desertification, deforestation and other environmental problems, together with associated problems of population pressures and profound poverty”.

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