Never Ending Floods in Southeast Asia
More floods, floods, floods in Southeast Asia, particularly India and Bangladesh. And it looks like it may get even worse. Why does this happen so often? The media keep harping on things like Global Warming, and bad planning.
That's sort of on the right track, but it's still missing the target. Crudely put, the reason why we constantly see people dying in floods in Southeast Asia is simply because there are too many people there and too few trees!
Another BBC article mostly comments about flood management and infrastructure, but gives a brief glimpse at the real problem:
Population density adds to the problem.
Because of the competition for land, more people now live in areas prone to flooding.
Hand in hand with overpopulation, let's also consider the effects of the massive amount of deforestation in India and Bangladesh:
Shrinking forest cover lessens the landscape's capacity to intercept, retain and transport precipitation. Instead of trapping precipitation, which then percolates to groundwater systems, deforested areas become sources of surface water runoff, which moves much faster than subsurface flows. That quicker transport of surface water can translate into flash flooding and more localized floods than would occur with the forest cover.
Of course, the nations in the region are now asking for more international aid. Can we please now manage this aid more responsibly? Otherwise, you simply help people rebuild in the same places as before, have more children, cut down more trees, and get flooded out even worse during another monsoon season in the near future. When will the cycle end?
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4 comments:
Yeah, but it's OK for you to have kids, they're white.
Run out of Mexicans to run down, have we?
Ever thought that every single one of us on this planet has the right to have children?
You included?
I don't believe that every person has some inherent right to as many children as they want. But even if you think they do, what about the children's rights? Don't they also have a right not to grow up in overpopulated squalor?
In any case, whether you feel I'm immoral or racist, or whatever, the fact remains that if Southeast Asian countries continue to ignore the problem, their population will continue to grow, their rain forest will continue to shrink (India's is only 1/3rd of its original size, Bangladesh's is completely gone) and every year monsoons will bring worse floods and mudslides. That is the reality - discussion of various rights here is largely academic at this point.
I would argue that it is the over-consumptive habits of North American and Europeans and their children which is the greatest threat to the rainforest and to the environment in general. We consume far more per person.
Don't forget that North America was once as pristine and untouched as the Amazon was, only it was ruined first.
if we would stop building the majority of our buildings with wood and consider new materials, designs, and security systems other than just walls there would be a far faster reversal or slow down of deforestation than with attempting to stop people from having babies.
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