Haiti – A Premonition of What is to Come

The earthquake in Haiti reminds us that, although we are very sophisticated and intelligent and have marvelous machines, we are essentially powerless in regard to geological events of that magnitude. All we can do is to build better buildings and wait for the movements of the plates.
        The catastrophe in Haiti is terrible but is, I believe, merely a premonition of what is to come with the climatic changes we have wrought. It is clear by now that countries today do not have the political will or foresight to accomplish the lowering of greenhouse gases required to ameliorate the coming disasters before the point of no return is reached. The consequences are horrific. Flooding of the major Eastern river deltas from the inevitable rise in ocean level will displace, if not outright kill, millions of people in the poorest countries in the world, resulting in vast migrations of refugees and putting tremendous pressure on neighboring countries if not causing open warfare. At the same time, the melting of glaciers in the Himalayas will lead to major decreases in the Indus River in Pakistan, the Brahmaputra in Bangladesh, the Mekong in Southeast Asia, the Irrawaddy in Myanmar and the Yellow and Yangtze rivers of China, all of which supply water for billions of people. In the United States, severe droughts in the Southwest will result in the drying of the Colorado River and the loss of this key water supply for the major cities of Arizona and Southern California. The drought in the California Central Valley, which has already begun, will essentially cause all agriculture in that breadbasket of the country to come to a halt. People will begin to migrate away from Los Angeles, Phoenix and Las Vegas into the Northwest and Midwest. But cities in the Midwest will have their own problems and soon will begin to limit immigration. The corn and wheat fields will dry up, forcing farming to move north where there is still enough water. Inevitably Canada will also be blocking immigration from the United States leading to inevitable conflict between the United States and its northern neighbor. Major coastal cities throughout the world will be flooded by the increase in ocean levels and no system of dikes will realistically be economically or physically able to prevent this. The loss of New York will be a major blow to the entire economic system of the United States from which it will never recover. The flooding of Washington will force a migration of the American government to higher ground, and inevitably lead to increasing chaos with the result being martial law. Florida will essentially cease to exist as a functioning state. The European countries will begin to limit immigration of the refugees from the east, initially by laws and then by force. Piece by piece, what we know as civilization will begin to break down. Trains will stop running, highways and bridges will not be repaired and the entire system of supply begin to fail.
          Sadly, we will look back on the Haitian disaster with horror and sadness as the beginning of the end.