Greenpeace Report on Sea Level Change Puts Mumbai Under Water
Source: http://www.socialcause.org/getarticlefromdb.php?id=1770
MUMBAI, INDIA, April 11, 2008: The Gateway of India will be wiped off the Mumbai skyline. Bhelpuri at Chowpatty will become the stuff of grandmother’s tales. No flights will take off from Chhatrapati Shivaji airport. No couple will canoodle at the Marine Drive promenade and even heirs to the bungalow of Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan will not be able to resist being evicted from their home. Ninety-two years from now, all these landmarks of Mumbai will be underwater. That’s the apocalypse scenario drawn up in a report titled “Climate Migrants in South Asia: Estimates and Solutions” (download the PDF here) that has been commissioned by Greenpeace, a non-government organization.
Prepared by climate expert and professor from the humanities department of IIT Chennai, Sudhir Chella Rajan, the report says that a potential increase in temperatures by 4 to 5 degrees due to greenhouse emissions at the current rate would mean a corresponding rise in sea levels of up to five meters by 2100.
HPI recommends reading this alarming report. It points out that the inundation of coastal areas will cause large scale migration to inner cities, such as Hyderabad, Bangalore and Delhi. Seventy-five million Bangladeshi would be displaced, with the prospect of many of them migrating to India. According to the report, the sea level change will increase slowly until about 2050, then rapidly. It points out also that there can be sudden changes, for example parts of the Antartic ice sheet melt.
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