Global Warming: From Reports To Reality

22 February 2007 - 12:00pm

Rising sea levels are a reality in a country that contributes only a fraction of the world's greenhouse gases.

"Warmer weather and rising oceans are sending seawater surging up Bangladesh's rivers in greater volume and frequency, experts say, overflowing and seeping into the soil and water supply of thousands of people...

Bangladesh, a densely crowded and painfully poor nation, contributes only a minuscule amount to the greenhouse gases slowly smothering the planet. But a combination of geography and demography puts it among the countries experts predict will be hit hardest as Earth heats up."

"A quarter of the country would be submerged. Dhaka, now in the center of the nation, would sit within 60 miles of the coast, where boats would float above the underwater remnants of countless town squares, markets, houses and schools. As many as 30 million people would become refugees in their own land, many of them subsistence farmers with nothing left to subsist on.

"For years, the government either denied or downplayed the danger posed by global warming. Bangladesh is hardly unique in that regard; many accuse the U.S. of doing the same."

Source: The Los Angeles Times, February 21, 2007
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This is in fact the kind of self-sufficient, self-sustaining 'village' community that Mahatma Gandhi -- the Father of the Nation -- dreamt of and wrote about in his books on India’s path to development.