Climate Change May Drown Cities

Is this photo familiar? Yes, you got it right! It is a scene from the movie, A Day After Tomorrow - a horrifying version of the world drowning because of sudden climate change.

This movie made me realized how valuable the environment is and how we should focus our attention in downsizing the effect of greenhouse gasses. Erratic thunderstorms and rising of sea levels are some of the signs that there is indeed a shift in our temperature and it's not good. More obviously, it is not good when it comes to cities that are near the ocean or are residing near the sea.

According to a recent study, half of Asia will suffer if a rise in sea level happens. This will force third world countries to evacuate their sea-residing cities and move it somewhere high which in return will cause another problem of overpopulating these areas.

The people of Dhaka, main city of Bangladesh, are now aggressively using CNG (Compressed Natural Gas) in their vehicles in order to battle global warming. This alternative is producing less greenhouse emissions and way more environmentally cleaner than petrol. Dhaka is one of the 3,000 cities identified by UN Habitat's State of the World Cities 2008/2009 as cities that are faced with the possibility of sea-level rise and induced-flooding. A very alarming situation since what the photo above is showing is most probably will happen in the near future if we do not act today.

Now looking at the demographics of these cities, Asia will cater 50% of the cities facing this "possibility" while 27% comprises Latin America and the Caribbean, 15% in Africa, 2/3 in Europe and 1/5 of all cities in North America are in the low elevation coastal zone.

Just think, if ever this world faces the tragedy depicted in "The day after tomorrow" - no policy or legislation will ever save us then... Only Action can spare us from this and only Action can minimize the effect of global warming... So ACT now! Stop Global Warming!