Blog Action Day – Changes that change

The climate changes don’t come alone, by the way they insist to always have company. To help to deal with many changes derived from climate changes, a small list follows:

Good maners: “If you can’t talk about roads or weather, then don’t open your mouth.” That is a recommendation of a mother to her daughter in a novel by Jane Austen (English novelist, 1775-1817). That was a golden rule to live together in society, in England, in order to avoid polemic or personal uncomfortable subjects. Those rules aren’t anymore in fashion, currently would be impossible to use the weather as a theme for light conversations during the traditional five o’clock tea. By the way, roads even less…

Jokes: do you remember that old joke that is about to ask to a distracted interlocutor if the polar bear feeds on penguins? As the person reviews the knowledge on the bear’s food chain, we remind that the polar bear lives in the North Pole, as penguins populate the South Pole. In times of climate change, however, even the old jokes must be treated with caution. I don’t know if we’ll reach the extreme to have bears meeting penguins around, but this bear has been leading unusual meetings – even dates – with other species. Hybrid cubs of polar bears and grey bears, species that don’t usually met, are already wandering around.

Maldives Islands, located on the Indian Ocean, takes the risk to disappear with the increase on the level of oceans caused by the global warming

Tourism: destinations never thought before for family vacation, as the Arctic, will become commonplace. In the other hand, ski stations will need to find other objective for its facilities. Other class that can become a great attraction is the adventure submarine tourism. That is about the visitation of disappeared countries, diving for the most boldness, and with submarines, for the most rich.

Geography: we don’t have only to forget what we knew one day, but we also have to review our ideas about maps, continents, seas and the very geography itself. That is, by the melting of the ice caps due to the climate changes, countries and cities will vanish from the map and inaccessible places will become destinations for vacations. But, everything in a dynamic constant, that is, what you see on the map today, could not be there tomorrow, not only because the increase on the level of the seas, but also because of tsunamis, hurricanes and other extreme climate events.

Refugees: even today, the disasters are the great factor of migration and movement of populations, the increase of frequency and intensity of these events, derived from climate changes, unavoidably intensify such processes. The amount of people involved in movements and migrations caused by climate changes are estimated to leap from the 50 million in 2010 to around of 700 million in 2050. Furthermore, the increase on the level of the seas directly threatens the existence of 40 countries at least, as, for example, Tuvalu and Maldives, small island countries that will develop a new situation: refugees literally with no country.

The climate changes can extremely change the Planet biodiversity and animals such as the polar bear can become legends

Monsters from the past: the role performed by the dinosaurs and mammoths in our lives will be fulfilled, in the future, by animals that exist today. By the current climate changes, the great problem is that, in most of cases, there’s no place for animal populations to move and, in certain cases, this scenario is escalated by the fact that there isn’t in the population enough diversity to develop individuals resistant to the new environmental conditions. Probable result: extinction. So, the most probable isn’t that penguins and polar bears to meet in some place on the planet, but is that both become only legends of a world with biodiversity…

Legendary views: some of us that had the privilege to see views as the caps with actual ice, the great glaciers, small island countries, and marvelous cities by the cost live will be live witnesses that these views had existed in fact and that aren’t another resource from Photoshop…

Starving and poverty: that won’t change, only increase. Besides the refugees, already mentioned, many agriculture systems can collapse and part of the small resources that most of the human population have today to buy their daily food will have to be spent in other necessities, as shelter, health and even water.

Flying saucer: before a symbol of science fiction, can become the only chance to escape from a planet hostile to human life…

Nurit Bensusan is writer, blogger and biologist. Her great occupation is to think without rails