The Submerging World

"Recent polling indicated that the single most salient issue for American voters in this year's election is not Iraq, not the deficit, but the price of gas. Too high, the price of gas. Faced with the high price of gas, why worry that Tuvalu has a culture that may date back four thousand years? Why worry that as we raise the temperature of the oceans we not only make them larger but we also -- inexorably -- kill off the coral reefs that surround these islands? Marine scientists have warned that this most benign and teeming of all ecosystems may not make it to mid-century. Already, widespread bleaching from higher temperatures has sterilized many reefs. Oh, and when the reefs die off and disintegrate, islands like Tuvalu's, with nothing to break the surf, are opened to increased wave action, which merely compounds the problem of rising seas. Why worry that mosquitoes carrying dengue fever are already spreading into places that have never known mosquitoes before -- parts of Bangladesh, for one -- bringing sudden hemorrhagic death?"