Brian Eller, I hope your column on global warming was just an extreme right-wing shock article to stir up some commotion (Rush Limbaugh style), because if you actually believe in what you wrote, that’s scary. How selfish can you be to say that global warming is not a problem today?
Now, I’m assuming that for you to make such a bold and ignorant statement, you must not know about the world’s current conditions and the exponential rate at which they have gotten that way, so let me kick some knowledge to you: The Maldives, a nation of 320,000 people that inhabit 1,190 islands in the Indian Ocean, has 80 percent of its land area lying less than 39 inches (around 3 feet) above sea level. If you think this is a problem to confront much further down the road, think again.
Residents of the four lowest-lying islands have already been forced to leave their homes forever, as salt water has contaminated their drinking water supplies and coral reefs important for fishing and tourism, the basis of the Maldives’ economy, have been damaged. Water from melting icecaps is projected to make the sea level rise 20 to 35 more inches by the year 2100, so at our current rate of destroying the world, we know for sure that one nation will be gone by then. Keep in mind that many environmental problems studied in the past grew so quickly that the scientific projections grossly underestimated them and the problems occurred much sooner than they were projected to, i.e. the large amounts of water taken from the Colorado River (to build suburbs of L.A.), which now runs dry before it reaches the Sea of Cortez. The Maldives is just one example of many that indicate how American lifestyles are warming the globe and displacing people as I write this letter.
Nick Burt
City and regional planning sophomore