We have seen the damage inflicted by torrents of water in the wake of hurricanes, both from above filling rivers as well as through breaking levees. Whether Hurricane Katrina or Irene or Sandy, now Matthew, the surging waters create far more damage than the winds themselves. Hurricanes, however, are isolated incidents, even if there frequency and their intensity seems to be on the rise. What about the day-to-day changes of water levels that we’ll see in the course of climate change?

I recommend a link to a piece about what rising water will do to populations, written in 2014, and long enough that I don’t expect anyone to read it fully. Here ist the upshot: if the predictions about climate change hold (and since 2014 they have been even more dire) 50 million Bangladeshis will have to flee their country by the year 2050. Think of how Europe, for example, has drifted into a xenophobic nationalism with a mere million refugees coming ashore last year.  The psychological fortress that is forming in so many people’s heads might well be constructed in the real world in the form of fortified borders. The Brexit was just the first step into such a direction.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/29/world/asia/facing-rising-seas-bangladesh-confronts-the-consequences-of-climate-change.html

50 million – from just ONE country. I cannot begin to think of all the low lying areas in the world that will be equally drowned, forcing migrations that are larger than anything mankind has seen, even during the worst of wars.

As Paul Krugman wrote in last weeks. NYT:

It’s time to end the blackout on climate change as an issue. It needs to be front and center — and questions must be accompanied by real-time fact-checking, not relegated to the limbo of he-said-she-said, because this is one of the issues where the truth often gets lost in a blizzard of lies.

There is, quite simply, no other issue this important, and letting it slide would be almost criminally irresponsible.
Do we want more headlines like this? https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2016/10/10/thousands-of-people-are-stranded-in-north-carolina-city-as-flood-waters-rise/?wpisrc=nl_rainbow-nonsub&wpmm=1