Global warming can be difficult to properly visualise. If you’re not directly threatened by rising sea levels, suffering water shortages or ravaged by wildfires, how do you know it’s really happening?
That’s why projects like Climate Central are essential. This website creates maps that show which parts of the world could find themselves underwater due to rising sea levels as early as 2030
There are plenty of variables at play. We could build flood defences, adapt our cities and take dramatic action to halt global warming.
But if none of that happens, here are the potential consequences 👇
📍Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Amsterdam, Rotterdam and the Hague sit low, flat and close to the North Sea. The Dutch are famed for their flood defences, and it seems the country’s dikes, dams, barriers, levees and floodgates will become even more essential in the years to come
📍Basra, Iraq
Due to its network of canals and streams, as well as neighbouring marshland, Basra is vulnerable to a rise in sea levels. It also already suffers significantly from waterborne diseases – so increased flooding carries even more of a threat
📍New Orleans, USA
Without the city’s system of levees, New Orleans would be severely threatened by rising sea levels. Even with them, the damage looks catastrophic. The Biloxi and Jean Lafitte wildlife preserves look particularly vulnerable to being totally submerged
📍Venice, Italy
Venice faces a twin threat: sea levels are rising and the city itself is sinking – by two millimetres every year. Like New Orleans, it has flood-defence systems in place, but as the crisis worsens, these will be more difficult (and expensive) to maintain
📍Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
The areas most at risk are its eastern districts – particularly the flat, heavily built-up marshland of Thủ Thiêm. While the centre is unlikely to be underwater by 2030, it will almost certainly be more vulnerable to flooding and tropical storms
📍Kolkata, India
Much of west Bengal has thrived for centuries because of its fertile landscape, but that has become a cause for concern in Kolkata. Like Ho Chi Minh City, it could struggle during monsoon season as rainwater has less land to run off into
📍Bangkok, Thailand
Bangkok could be the city worst hit by global warming in the short term. It sits just 1.5 metres above sea level. It's also built on clay soil, which makes it more prone to flooding. By 2030, its main airport, Suvarnabhumi International, could be underwater
📍Georgetown, Guyana
For centuries, Guyana has relied on sea walls – or, more accurately, one 280-mile long sea wall – for protection from storms. Some 90% of Guyana’s population lives on the coast, so it will need to substantially bolster its sea wall to avoid massive damage
📍Savannah, USA
Savannah sits in a hurricane hotspot. The Savannah River in the north and Ogeechee River in the south could spill out into the nearby marshland. By 2050, the city is predicted to experience once-per-century historical flood levels every year
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♻️It could come as a surprise that the UK’s first carbon-neutral community was built way back in 2002. And it’s in Sutton.
BedZED was created by @Bioregional, a charity that works to develop more environmentally friendly ways of living
🏡Co-founders @SueRiddlestone and Pooran Desai were looking for a place to build a sustainable office, but when Sutton Council put up a plot of land for sale, it was so large they thought, 'why not build homes too?'
At the end of The Sopranos, most viewers wanted to know what happened to Tony after the screen went black, not what happened when he was a boy.
But while this prequel is inessential and a bit of an expansive footnote, it doesn't harm the legacy of one of TV’s greatest shows
Taking place in 1960s and ’70s Newark, it centres on Dickie Moltisanti, father of The Sopranos’s Christopher. Dickie is part of a growing crime family, headed by his dad, the charismatic monster Aldo ‘Hollywood Dick’
No, it’s not a mirage in the desert haze. Nor is it Elon Musk’s latest plan to colonise Mars 🚀
These are the designs for the city of Telosa, the latest project from billionaire investor Marc Lore and celebrated architect Bjarke Ingels’s firm BIG 🌆
Lore and Ingels’s ambitious plan would see an entire city built from scratch in the desert of the western USA 🤠
Within 40 years, the duo intend to establish a fully-contained city, which will be extended over 150,000 acres and have a population of five million 📈
It’s been nearly 20 years since we last entered The Matrix. This winter, fans will be jacked right back into the post-apocalyptic world of kung-fu revolutionaries raging against the machines in The Matrix: Resurrections 💊🐇
In early September, the original site for the film came back online for a bit of viral marketing, giving a minute-by-minute countdown to the launch of the trailer, peppered with glimpses of footage and prompting users to either click a red or a blue pill
Now, after a two-day wait, the trailer has finally dropped. Scored to Jefferson Airplane's psychedelic ‘White Rabbit,’ it is loaded with gravity-defying parkour sequences, motorcycle chases, martial arts mayhem and an unexpected dose of humour
Spent the last year avoiding the news by escaping into novel after novel? If you’re not quite ready to let go of your literary lockdown, you should consider basing your next day out around the life of a famous author.
Here are our picks of the best holidays for every reader 👇
📍Agatha Christie’s Devon
The Queen of Mystery’s holiday home was no basic Airbnb. She described Greenway as ‘the loveliest place in the world.' It's now a National Trust property filled with trinkets from the writer’s life. Peep at her grand piano or browse the many bookshelves