Culture
The Immediate Climate Threat Isn't Rising Sea Levels, It's Water Scarcity
A billion people could lose easy access to water by the end of the century, triggering mass migrations, food shortages, and wars.
When it comes to explaining how climate change will harm future civilization, many media outlets (including this one) tend to focus on hurricanes or rising sea levels. These are natural topics to generate interest in the heating Earth – the mental image of a city overrun with briny water, like New Orleans after Katrina, is charged with worry and doom.
But what the media should be focusing on is not the ocean but the land, specifically how dried out vast regions are becoming and the major effects it's having on societies. Intense droughts influenced by climate change are happening now, devastating farmers, causing mass migrations, and perhaps even contributing to the recent uprisings in the Middle East.