Sinking of the US east coast would a ect states in Mexico
After various media outlets in the United States showed their concern about the increase in levels on the east coast of that country, which would cause severe damage to both the economy, the environment and the migration of millions of people experts on the subject in Mexico assured that this situation does not only correspond to the American Union, and showed their concern because some cities in states such as Veracruz, Tabasco or Yucatán could suffer enormous consequences.
“There are several factors that must be taken into account for this type of situation, which are very serious, but are also a product of deforestation, pollution, climate change. climate and situations that have to do with the geology of certain territories,” said Luciano Quadri Barba, consultant in the Environment, Climate Change.matic and Sustainable Development.
“All cases of climate change Yoco They have two ways of approaching it: mitigation and adaptation. The Drst is chen carbon dioxide emissions decrease due to renewable energy technology, electric cars, etc. And the second is for things that you can no longer change or that will be very di cult to transform,” indicates the graduate from the Universidad Iberoamericana and who has studies in climate change at the Theodore Heuss University, in Gummersbach, Germany.
“What is happening in the world is that hopen various human displacements due to other factors. The Drst will be inthe coastal area is due to the rise in sea level and the fact that it has ‘eaten’ a good part of the coastal areas, but not only in the US, but also in Europe and others in Asia, as well as Mexico. And displacements due to climate change. The change that most affects Mexico is the lack of rain and now we see it, even in Mexico City, where there are serious problems with Dlling the Cutzamala system.”
According to studies published by el New York Times, global average sea level has risen about 3.3 millimeters a year since the early 1990s, according to NASA satellite readings. “And the pace is accelerating,” said Kenneth Miller, a professor of earth and planetary sciences at Rutgers University. Subsidence in various cities on the East Coast of the United States makes the threat of sea level rise worse in some places than others.
“Clear. Naturally, this happens due to simple geology. The more the level of a city decreases, the level of the territories increases elsewhere. What is happening today is that these phenomena such as ‘balance of the earth’ cannot occur at the same time due to the great speed at which we are extracting water from the subsoil,” said Quadri.
For his part, Víctor Ramírez Cabrera, analyst and consultant for the Drm P21energia and former spokesperson for the Mexico Climate and Energy platform, assures that the problem is not only the growth of settlements and the rise in levels, but also the pollution that this would cause in the water tables of the world.
“People believe that sea level rise only makes you go backwards and that’s it, no. The problem is the contamination of the fresh aquifers that allow the settlement of cities, for example in Florida. The city of Miami would have serious problems if the water level reached its freshwater reserves and the worst thing is that this could happen in the next 10 years, according to studies in the US,” he assured.
Experts agree that some regions of Mexico may also be affected, both in the Gulf and in the Pacidc Ocean.
“Of course Mexico has to do something about this situation, the southern coast of Tamaulipas and the north of the state of Veracruz would be affected because they are very low-lying parts of the territory, as well as the Yucatan peninsula, but, on the other hand, the area of the Nayarit Riviera would also suffer consequences from this situation,” shares Ramírez Cabrera.
The solutions
Although complicated, there are still solutions that can be put in place to prevent land subsidence and rising sea levels from being a danger to coastal communities.
According to data from the same medium, more than 70 percent of US citizens live in cities located at sea level, which intensides the problem.
“The Drst option would be to change the adaptation policies. It seems to me that the most important is that there are biological corridors of aquifer recharge in metropolitan areas, which are very well forested and with su cient urban trees,” says Quadri Barba.