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Say what you will about the looming catastrophe
facing the world as the pace of global heating and polar melting
accelerates. There is a silver lining.
Look at a map of the United States. The area that will be completely inundated by the
rising ocean is the American Southeast, including the most populated parts
of Texas, almost all of Florida, most of Louisiana, and half of Alabama and
Mississippi, as well as goodly portions of eastern Georgia, South Carolina,
and North Carolina. Although the nation’s Northeast will also see
some coastal flooding, its geography is such that aside from a few
projecting sandbars like Long Island and Cape Cod the land rises fairly
quickly to well above sea level. Sure, Boston, New York City, and
Philadelphia will be threatened, but these are geographically confined
areas that could lend themselves to protection by Dutch-style dikes. The
West Coast, too, tends to rise rapidly to well above sea level in most
places. Only down in Southern California, toward the San Diego area, is the
ground closer to sea level. So what we see is that huge swaths of conservative
America are set to face a biblical deluge in a few more presidential
cycles. Then there’s the matter of the Midwest, which,
climate experts say, is likely to face a permanent condition of
unprecedented drought, making the place largely unlivable and certainly
unfarmable. The agribusinesses and conservative farmers who have been
growing corn and wheat may be able to stretch out this doomsday scenario by
drilling deep wells, but west of the Mississippi the vast Ogallala Aquifer
that has allowed for such irrigation is already being tapped out. It will
not be replaced. So again, we will see the decline and depopulation of the
nation’s vast midsection — noted for its consistent
conservatism. Only in the northernmost area, around the Great Lakes (which
will be not so great anymore) and along the Canadian border, will there
still be enough rain for farming and continued large population
concentrations, but those regions, such as Minnesota, Wisconsin, and
Illinois, are also more liberal in their politics. Finally, in the Southwest, already parched and
stiflingly hot, the increase in energy costs and the soaring temperatures
will put an end to right-wing retirement communities like Phoenix, Tucson,
and Palm Springs. Already the Salton Sea is fading away and putting Palm
Springs on notice that the good times are coming to an end. Another
right-wing haven soon to be gone.
So the future political map of America is likely to
look as different as the much shrunken geographical map, with much of the
so-called red-state region either gone or depopulated. There is a poetic justice to this, of course. It is
conservatives who are giving us the candidates who steadfastly refuse to
have the nation take steps that could slow the pace of climate change, so
it is appropriate that they should bear the brunt of its impact. The important thing is that we, on the higher ground
both actually and figuratively, need to remember that, when they begin
their historic migration from their doomed regions, we not give them the
keys to the city. They certainly should be offered assistance in their time
of need, but we need to keep a firm grip on our political systems, making
sure that these guilty throngs who allowed the world to go to hell are
gerrymandered into political impotence in their new homes.
There will be much work to be done to help the earth
and its residents — human and nonhuman — survive this manmade
catastrophe, and we can’t have these future refugee troglodytes,
should their personal disasters still fail to make them recognize reality,
mucking things up again. It should be considered acceptable, in this stifling
new world, to say, “Shut up. We told you this would happen.”
Dave Lindorff is the
author of This Can’t Be Happening:
Resisting the Disintegration of American Democracy.
This article appears in Feb 7-13, 2008.
