Word: coastal
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...getting harder to enjoy the show. The rains dramatically illustrate how vulnerable Asia's densely populated coastal cities are to climate change. Breakneck growth and dilapidated infrastructure have already made flooding a fact of life in many cities. Now urban Asia must brace for sea-level rises, tidal surges, extreme weather and other climatic horrors. From ports in China and India to delta populations in Vietnam and Burma, this fast-developing region has most of our planet's urban dwellers - and its most vulnerable cities. Asia is not alone, however. From Mombasa to Miami, climate change imperils 3,351 cities...
...Canals can mitigate seasonal floods, but beyond mass relocation, nothing will proof coastal cities against rising oceans. Even a slight rise in sea level will engulf large parts of Dhaka, warns UN-HABITAT, while Bangkok and Jakarta are both so vulnerable that it is "beyond the current capacity" of residents to adapt, warns Herminia Francisco, who co-authored the EEPSEA report. This helps explains why, as I write this, the streets in my neighborhood are filling up with water. When the rain stops, one or two residents will shuffle through dirty, ankle-deep water to light incense at the local...
...p.p.m. and rising.) That, scientists believe, should be enough to keep global temperatures from rising more than 2°C above pre-industrial levels, which should be safely below a climatic tipping point that could lead to the wide-scale melting of polar ice sheets, swamping coastal cities. "Transgressing these boundaries will increase the risk of irreversible climate change," writes Rockstrom...
...China, though, Coke has remained focused on sales volume, selling soda in small bottles for as little as 15¢. It just introduced a 355-ml bottle--a little more than half the size of its more traditional plastic bottle--for 35¢ in places like the southern coastal provinces, which have been hard hit by the slowdown in exports. Coke's China president, Doug Jackson, says he'll take what he can get in a tough economy. "If you have a little less kuai in your pocket," he says, using the colloquial word for Chinese currency, "folks look for where...
...real arena for future confrontation, say most Indian strategists, lies not in standoffs on remote, rugged peaks but in the waters all around the Indian subcontinent. The Indian Ocean is the thoroughfare for nearly half of all global seaborne trade, and the coastal states are home to over 60% of the world's oil and a third of its gas reserves. Traditionally, India has imagined the ocean as part of its backyard without investing serious resources in its navy - much more goes to an army and air force that are perched by the land boundaries with the old enemy...