While Australia burns and its prime minister jets to Hawaii for vacation and holds up a lump of coal in Parliament, Jakarta, the capitol of Indonesia is sinking. The World Bank, and it should know, says Jakarta will be 16 feet underwater in just five years! Jakarta is a city of 9.6 million inhabitants. Subsidence coupled with the facts of rising sea level and thirteen rivers passing through the metropolis are causing the crisis. Last August the government took the frightening step of announcing the move of the nation's capitol to Borneo, a large, mountainous island in the archipelago. While government bureaucrats may have breathed a sigh of relief, Jakata's teeming poor do not have the luxury of simply moving away. The wealth gap in Indonesia is severe; this photo on Twitter says it all: the resort hotel on the left is elevated by several feet, the poor neighborhood on the right is inundated. So the next time you pay attention to the idiot in the Very White House telling Greta to 'get a life' remember the picture you saw here. Policy matters. Thursday, January 16, 2020
Jakarta is Sinking
While Australia burns and its prime minister jets to Hawaii for vacation and holds up a lump of coal in Parliament, Jakarta, the capitol of Indonesia is sinking. The World Bank, and it should know, says Jakarta will be 16 feet underwater in just five years! Jakarta is a city of 9.6 million inhabitants. Subsidence coupled with the facts of rising sea level and thirteen rivers passing through the metropolis are causing the crisis. Last August the government took the frightening step of announcing the move of the nation's capitol to Borneo, a large, mountainous island in the archipelago. While government bureaucrats may have breathed a sigh of relief, Jakata's teeming poor do not have the luxury of simply moving away. The wealth gap in Indonesia is severe; this photo on Twitter says it all: the resort hotel on the left is elevated by several feet, the poor neighborhood on the right is inundated. So the next time you pay attention to the idiot in the Very White House telling Greta to 'get a life' remember the picture you saw here. Policy matters.