Stemming the rising tide

In other Australian states loss of coastal infrastructure including road and rail would be so extensive as to make it impossible to build effective protection. In the north-west, flooding around Dampier, Port Headland, Learmonth, and the Gascoyne would occur. Property losses would be high, port facilities could become inoperable and mineral exports might be limited or cease due to flooding of the rail easement.

Such losses shrivel to insignificance when compared with the effects of a 2m rise in sea level on China and South-East Asia. Shanghai and its hinterland, with a population of more than 20 million would be totally and permanently flooded. Its businesses, thriving commerce and most of its assets would be lost and its people disbursed, if they survived.

Similar losses would occur in Guangzhou (Canton) and Hong Kong affecting 10 million people. Eighty per cent of the worlds’ largest cities are located on or near the coast. All would sustain damage from a 1m rise in sea level.

The delta regions of many of the worlds’ great rivers are fertile, intensely cultivated areas producing high yields of staple crops, such as rice, on which wider populations depend. The Mekong, Irrawaddy, Ganges, even the Nile, are all such areas. They would be completely drowned by salt water, destroying their capacity to produce food and displacing the often dense populations living there.

In Europe, the great trading ports of Amsterdam and Rotterdam would be flooded, as would half of the Netherlands and large swathes of coastal Belgium and Germany. All of the north German ports would be flooded. Millions would lose property, their jobs and national economies would crumble. The fenlands separating East Anglia from the rest of England would be flooded from the Wash southwards towards Cambridge. Low lying lands of the Thames, Mersey and other estuaries would be drowned by the sea.

The southern coastline of the USA from Florida to Texas would be devastated by flooding, much of it permanent. Cities such as New Orleans and possibly Miami would be severely damaged or lost, their people dispersed, their economies destroyed. Major cities such as New York and Los Angeles would also sustain damage to infrastructure including port facilities.

Coastal destruction of this kind will occur world-wide. It will occur over decades but become increasingly evident and damaging year by year. An exacerbating problem is that rising sea levels will occur at the same time as water shortages induced by the loss of glaciers and river flows. The net effect will be an inability to produce food or provide water needed to sustain dense populations.

Increasingly severe damage caused by these events will make it impossible to relocate or re-house displaced people. In more densely populated countries such as China, Bangladesh and India, massive loss of life seems likely to occur. Some countries will be drowned out of existence. Others will cease to exist as nation states.

At worst, millions or even billions of people will die, vast areas of the most productive agricultural land will be submerged and essential infrastructure will be damaged or lost. They will die from starvation, diseases or drowning. Entire countries and their economies could collapse; some will struggle to maintain subsistence living conditions, yet others will adopt hostile protectionist alliances. The global economy as we know it today may well cease to exist.

These outcomes are avoidable but only if nations, particularly the worst emitters of greenhouse gasses, reform their practices so as to effectively reduce global emissions by 30-40 per cent of 2000 levels by 2020. There is little indication of moves to make this happen on a voluntary basis.

This adds to the need for the UN sponsored 2009 Copenhagen Conference to exert pressure on all major emitters. Those countries which decline to take effective verifiable action to reduce their emissions should be compelled to do so and they can be.

The best way of achieving this is to penalise non-complying countries by applying import tariffs equivalent to CO2 emissions caused by production of their exports. If the United States, the European Union and low emitters enforced such action, others would reduce their emissions or loose their export markets with the same desirable reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.