On A More Positive Note, Climate Change Could Mean The 99 Percent Have A Better View Of The Seashore

A Brief Comment by Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper

The New York Times posted a story this October 28^th that could be both good news and bad news for the most moneyed one per cent in Canada and the U.S. who say climate change is a joke.

These maps show the extent of the ice sheet (in white) on Greenland melting back over the last few decades

According to the story, the ice sheet covering Greenland now continues to melt at a rapid rate, adding weight to one of the long-time predictions of many scientists around the world that is this – as we continue to use the earth’s atmosphere as a garbage dump for emissions from the burning of oil and other carbon fuels, average temperatures around the world continue to climb causing, among many other things, ice caps to melt and sea levels to rise.

This should obviously be a matter of concern to (if not trigger some alarm in) all of us. But if you are anything like me and want to try searching through the darkest of news for a silver lining, here are a at least a couple of benefits that may come from all of those shrinking caps of ice.

First – and this is one that would not only further warm the planet, but the pocketbooks of the members of the one per cent who profit from mining and drilling for gas and oil – getting rid of all that ice cover, not only in Greenland and other regionsof the Arctic and Ant-Arctic would sure would make it easier to mine and drill for any goodies that are there.

This is a portion of a map of eastern regions of Canada and the United States, featured in National Geographic with a 2013 article titled ‘Rising Seas’, showing shore areas that will disappear if all the earth’s ice caps completely melt away. Click on image to enlarge.

Just think, this could turn out to be another gold rush for those at the top who want to stay there doing the same old same old.

The second outcome from all that melting ice could be a disaster for those one percenters who own seashore properties, and there are certainly a lot of them gated away in estates along the shores, but could add up to a bit of fun and poetic justice for the rest of us.

The good news here is that if the scientists are right and the ice melt causes the earth’s oceans to continue to rise, one percenters who’ve been lobbying to do nothing about climate change could see their shoreline estate, like the fabled city of Atlantis, drowned forever in water.

And imagine this. If the water washes far enough inland, some of us may find our homes sitting along the shoreline, with a nice ocean view!

This estate, on the Island of Nantucket off Cape Cod, Massachusetts, has been a home to one of the Koch brothers, who have made a fortune in the oil industry and have been lobbying for the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline from Alberta’s tar sands to refineres near the U.S. Gulf coast, could one day disappear under the sea..

Of course, if the one percenters remain successful in buying off enough politicians to torpedo any action on climate change and every last sheet of ice on the planet melts, there are forecasts from exerts that place some of us like will also disappear like all of Cape Cod (one of my favourite places, whole cities like Montreal, Vancouver, Halifax, New Orleans, New York City and Boston, and (say goodbye to that winter haven for Canada’s snowbirds) the entire State of Florida.

Well, Ce La Vie. Like a lot of things in life, you sometimes  have to take the bad with the good, right?

Read the New York Times story by clicking on –

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/27/world/greenland-is-melting-away.html?emc=edit_th_20151028&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=58968427&_r=0 .

For more information on climate change and the impact it is already having on sea levels, read ‘Rising Seas’, a cover story from the September 2013 edition of National Geographic magazine by clicking on – http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2013/09/rising-seas/folger-text .

Visit Niagara At Large at www.niagaraatlarge.com for more news and commentary for and from the greater bi-national Niagara region.

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