- NO More Deaths Due to Bullies!
- The climate anxiety aspect is less well known, though we are more aware of the biological horrors that can be unleashed as warming intensifies,
- http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2011/08/biological-nightmares-of-climate-change.html
In the case of Taenia solium, or the tapeworm, before the worms become adults they spend time as larvae in large cysts, which may find their way into the brain (see image) and cause a condition known as neurocysticercosis. Lowball estimates suggest 5 million cases of epilepsy arising from this condition, worldwide. The numbers are increasing as the worm -cyst invasion of the human body is increasing. (See the excellent monograph, Parasite Rex). Most of the cases, understandably, are in the less developed world, but that is changing as hotter temperatures become the norm in the developed nations.
— from Foreign Policy In Focus
Bangladesh was still reeling from political turmoil, which felled Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government on August 5, when a flood disaster struck out of the blue, upending the lives of six million Bangladeshis. Half a million people were left to their own devices, beyond the reach of first responders. Worst of all, two million children were exposed to the aftermath of flooding. Dhaka had not seen a deluge like this in the past three decades. Yet the country is no stranger to disasters. Just in May this year, it was battered by Storm Remal, devastating millions. In 2023, it was Cyclone Mocha that visited its wrath on two neighboring states: Bangladesh and Myanmar.
The speed and severity of flash floods is equally quick to inflame geopolitical tensions, as Dhaka accused neighboring India aggravating the situation by opening the floodgates of a dam in a neighboring state. India denied the charge and blamed erratic monsoons for swelling the transboundary Gomati River that overflowed its banks. Bangladesh and India share 54 transboundary rivers, including the Ganges and Yamuna. As an upstream country, India is viewed with suspicion by downstream Bangladesh. All downstream nations suspect their upstream neighbors in the event of such calamities. For its part, India blames upstream China for major diversions on transboundary rivers. Similar accusations are heard among 11 riparian nations on the Nile. All this shows how climate change shapes geopolitics.
The most pressing environmental crisis of these times, our heating of the Earth through carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas pollution, is closely connected to our excessive energy consumption. And with many of the ways we use that energy, we’re also producing another less widely discussed pollutant: industrial noise. Like greenhouse-gas pollution, noise pollution is degrading our world—and it’s not just affecting our bodily and mental health but also the health of ecosystems on which we depend utterly.
Noise pollution, a longstanding menace, is often ignored. It has, however, been making headlines in recent years, thanks to the booming development of massive, boxy, windowless buildings filled with computer servers that process data and handle internet traffic. Those servers generate extreme amounts of heat, the removal of which requires powerful water-chilling equipment. That includes arrays of large fans that, in turn, generate a thunderous wall of noise. Such installations, known by the innocuous term “data centers,” are making growing numbers of people miserable.
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