Word: floods
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...Three Asian capitals - Bangkok, Jakarta and Dhaka - are currently fighting what feels like a rearguard action to keep the water at bay. Their efforts will be watched in other cities waking up to a climate nightmare after years of unplanned growth. The threat of sea-level rise and flooding makes Bangkok a "climate hazard hotspot," says a May report by the Economy and Environment Program for Southeast Asia (EEPSEA) in Singapore. I prefer an older description: "the Venice of the East." Most early Bangkok residents moved by boat between floating houses; it was not until 1863 that the city...
...keep cell phones charged and gas tanks at least three-quarters full, and exercise caution when driving through "small rivers." It's the sort of travel advisory you'd expect for negotiating an untamed wilderness, not a city of more than 12 million souls. Damage from a deadly 2007 flood cost Jakarta half a billion dollars - ironically, roughly the same cost as an unfinished project designed to prevent it. Nearly 15 miles (24 km) long, the East Flood Canal will one day drain the overflow from Jakarta's rivers into the sea. But when? The project was initiated...
...people of Dhaka, where another big flood-control project is planned. UN-HABITAT calls the Bangladeshi capital "the world's fastest-growing megacity." Located at the heart of one of the world's largest river systems, it is also one of the most flood-prone. One solution is the Dhaka Integrated Flood Control Embankment. Its two main aims are laudable: protect eastern Dhaka from the overflowing Balu river and, with a road running along its top, ease the city's mind-bending traffic jams. But the $350 million project is so ill-conceived it will actually worsen flooding, claims landscape...
Alternative futures call for alternative language. “1984” had Newspeak, “A Clockwork Orange” had Nadsat—each distorted, disorienting vocabulary a warning of possible ills. In “The Year of the Flood,” her most recent novel and the second in a series of three, Margaret Atwood similarly invents a dictionary for her post-apocalyptic world. But her words are amusing than ominous—the lexicon for a dystopian vision at once entertaining and insubstantial. Atwood’s way with words should come...
...Detroit had been savaged by a hurricane and submerged by a ravenous flood, we'd know a lot more about it. If drought and carelessness had spread brush fires across the city, we'd see it on the evening news every night. Earthquake, tornadoes, you name it - if natural disaster had devastated the city that was once the living proof of American prosperity, the rest of the country might take notice. (See pictures of the remains of Detroit...