Friday, August 03, 2007

19 million South Asian climate refugees -- THIS YEAR


The AP describes the impact of this year's freakishly heavy South Asian monsoon:
At least 186 people have been killed and 19 million driven from their homes as heavy monsoon rains triggered floods, destroyed crops and submerged roads across a wide swath of northern India and Bangladesh.
William Gibson famously observed in 1999 that, "The future is already here. It's just not very evenly distributed." Most people have taken that statement to be an optimistic reference to the diffusion of high technology. But the same insight applies in a negative way to the arrival of climate change impacts.

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