From
the Editor: Akhtar
Mahmud Faruqui
September 30, 2005
Katrina, Rita
and the World’s Coastal Cities
“Katrina is a test of
how America should respond to the effects of global
warming. It is a test that we are largely failing.
Environmental scientists and activists have warned
that warming ocean waters will increase the frequency
and intensity of these storms. They have also warned
that the working poor and people of color would
bear the brunt of climate change impacts, at home
and abroad. To address these issues, we need to
begin reducing our reliance on fossil fuels. We
must learn to build cities and towns that are less
environmentally vulnerable and more sustainable.
We need to address the root cause and protect against
the impacts that are already coming…”
So says a Pacific News Service article entitled
“Katrina Reveals Environmental Racism’s
Deadly Force” by Beverly Wright.
Quite a few other reports testify to this disconcerting
trend. Mike Tidwell, author of ‘Bayou Farewell:
The Rich Life and Tragic Death of Louisiana’s
Cajun Coast’, spells out the alarming foreboding:
“… every single coastal city in America
– from New York to Savannah to Los Angeles
– could soon become a New Orleans.”
Tidwell does not sound the alarm bells without pointing
to the root cause of the cataclysmic situation:
“Year after year, we burn massive amounts
of fossil fuels – oil, coal, and natural gas.
The result is that we’ve profoundly warmed
our planet’s atmosphere. This change in climate,
according to the Bush Administration’s own
reports, will in turn lead to 1-3 feet of sea-level
rise worldwide by 2100. Here’s the crux: Whether
the land sinks three feet per century (as in New
Orleans) or the oceans rise three feet per century
(as in the rest of the world), the result is the
same for America’s 150 million coastal residents
and the three billion shoreline inhabitants worldwide:
Record storm surges, inundated infrastructure, massive
human relocation, economic disruption, and untold
suffering and death …”
Environmental degradation is thus taking a speedy
toll. There is a pressing need to take equally speedy
corrective measures to arrest the alarming situation.
How serious, nay, grave is the problem is borne
out by a recapitulation of a review of the global
environmental scene that we have done in these columns
in the past:
The review started with the question: Has man polluted
the moon? Though hardly palatable, the answer is
in the affirmative! In July 1969, Apollo II left
behind on the moon 5,130 pounds of debris. To date,
man has junked more than 37,000 pounds on the moon,
and there is much more to come.
As man strives to exact more and more material gains
at the expense of Nature, the growing specter of
pollution haunts planet Earth. Indeed, man pays
dearly for trifling with the delicate chemical and
climatic balances on which his very survival hinges.
Not surprisingly, in many industrialized countries,
the human frame appears battered with visible scars
of pollution. Says a New York medical examiner,
“On the autopsy table it’s unmistakable.
The man who has spent his life in the mountains
has nice pink lungs. The city dweller’s are
as black as coal.”
Stemming from such alarming observations, the concern
for preserving the environment has been steadily
mounting. As early as the 1970s, environmentalism
reflected the dominant mood in many countries and
generated the momentum of a religious movement.
Environmentalists were heard with keen attention
as they brought home the somber message that the
survival of the human race was at stake on planet
Earth, if not now, a few centuries hence. It was
not a question of ‘if’ but ‘when.’
And this leads one to identify the causes of the
alarming situation.
Life, in the form of bacteria and microorganisms,
evolved on planter Earth about 3.4 billion years
ago. Pollution, which threatens living species today,
is of recent origin. It has its roots in the Industrial
Revolution and is a product of technology.
The outstanding change heralding the advent of the
Industrial Revolution was the innovation in the
use of energy, with steam taking the place of animal,
wind, and hydropower. Fossil fuels - coal, gas,
and oil - which catalyzed the change, polluted the
air and their harmful residues found their way into
rivers and oceans.
As technology proliferated and factories crisscrossed
the landscape, fossil fuel was burned in stupendous
quantities. During the first 83 years of the Industrial
Revolution, the world burned the first 50 billion
metric tons of fossil fuel. It took only 23 years
to burn the next 50, and barely 11 years to burn
the next, which brings us to almost the present
time.
If the current trend is any indication the next
50 billion metric tons will be extracted and consumed
in only 8 years. By the year 2032 AD, such an amount
will be extracted and consumed in one year alone!
The trend is disconcerting and unless a clean substitute
- one which does not pollute the air or water -
appears on the global scene the world will continue
to burn fossil fuel in large quantities to sustain
its industrial march and thus remain precariously
exposed to increasing levels of pollution.
Nuclear power, a clean, nonpolluting form of energy,
raised the hopes of many optimists that the atom
would free man of his unwholesome reliance on fossil
fuel. The promise was stupendous. It still remains
so, despite the setback following the Three Mile
Island and Chernobyl accidents. Nuclear power reactors
have been described, and rightly so, as inexhaustible
sources of energy. Perhaps fissile fuel will succeed
where fossil fuel has failed.
But it was not the burning of fossil fuel at the
advent of the Industrial Revolution that singly
contributed to pollution. Industrialization led
to urbanization and its attendant problems of pollution.
Until 1800 AD, 80-95 percent of the population of
England, where the Industrial Revolution made its
first appearance, had turned urban, and by the 1900,
only 10 percent of the country’s population
was tilling the soil. The remaining was employed
in factories!
The growth of new industrial cities, particularly
in Britain, denoted a major failure of imagination
- a dreary look, lack of playgrounds, little effort
to plan streets according to the sun and wind, poor
public services, polluted air, etc. No wonder, William
Blake called factories ‘black Satanic mills.’
Yet the early industrial cities grew faster than
others. In the United States, cities of over 8,000
inhabitants grew five times faster than the country
as a whole in the 19th century. Big cities in particular
grew at an astounding pace: London reached the one
million mark in 1800, Paris in 1850, Berlin and
Vienna in 1880, and St. Petersburg in 1870.
Today, there are a hundred cities with population
equaling or exceeding the one million mark, a hundred
cities which are the size of Rome at its height,
and many much larger!
The trend continues. Tokyo’s population today
approximates 26 million while Cairo houses 16 million
and Mexico City 31.6 million. It would be safe to
say that the world of the future will be a world
of cities.
The demographic pattern in the last 2000 years also
makes interesting reading. A phenomenal growth in
world population has taken place since man took
to industry. The accelerated growth is in no way
attributable to the advent of technology, but in
the years to come, it may cast its shadow on the
pollution problem.
The world population stood at 250 million in 1 AD,
500 million in 1500 AD, 1,000 million in 1825 AD,
2,000 million in 1925 AD, 4000 million in 1975,
and 6,000 million in the year 2000. Thus the doubling
period has been drastically reduced - from the first
1500 to 325, 100 and 50 years. Global 2000 rightly
predicts that the astronomical demographic explosion
would severely test the carrying capacity of planet
Earth.
It is thus not difficult to envision the future
- an overly populated world and the accompanying
specter of pollution. “Shall we surrender
to our surroundings, or shall we make peace with
Nature and begin to make reparations for the damage
we have done to our air, to our land, and to our
water?” asked Richard Nixon in 1970.
Both the developed and the developing states have
to contemplate the answer to conserve a livable
world. The devastation caused by Katrina and Rita
adds to the urgency of all ongoing and intended
efforts to combat the mounting scourge of pollution.
- afaruqui@pakistanlink.com
