TimesofIndia had an article today on a research result revealed by climate expert and professor from the humanities department of IIT Chennai, Sudhir Chella Rajan. Here’s an excerpt.
The Gateway of India will be wiped off the Mumbai skyline. Bhelpuri at Chowpatty will become the stuff of grandmother’s tales.
No flights will take off from Chhatrapati Shivaji airport. No couple will canoodle at the Marine Drive promenade and even heirs to the bungalow of Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan will not be able to resist being evicted from their home.Ninety-two years from now, all these landmarks of Mumbai will be underwater. That’s the apocalypse scenario drawn up in a report titled ‘Climate Migrants in South Asia: Estimates and Solutions’ that has been commissioned by Greenpeace, a non-government organization.
The current climate change trends have been predicted to raise the average global temperature by 4 to 5 degrees centigrade and this will in turn cause the sea level to increase by 4 to 5 metres in the coming 90 years. The worst hit areas will be the coastal areas and cities which have concrete jungles built only at a mere height of a few metres above sea level. Mumbai is not the only place which will be a victim of this climate change, but it will include other major cities in India like Kolkata and Chennai. The resultant will be a ‘climate migration’ which will render millions homeless and billions of Rupees of property lost. Other global cities will also face the danger of getting submerged. These include London, Tokyo and New York among others.
Considering all these hazards and environmental issues surrounding the major cities of the world, how far do you think will the real-estate boom in these cities remain? Moreover, is the common man aware of these hazards, specially in a country like India where corporates and industries are busy churning money at the cost of the environment, and the common man is busy traveling from one train station to another. The time to wake up has long gone. It is now time to undo the harm.
