During the static trench fighting of World War I, soldiers spent weeks, sometimes months, locked in their positions and exposed to the rain and cold of the Central European climate. This context led humanity to discover a new disease: trench foot. It was an extremely painful red swelling that, if left untreated, usually required amputation. This is a lesson learned from war, also in Vietnam or Ukraine: you can’t live with wet feet.
Successive reports from the IPCC, the international panel on climate change, show that sea levels have been rising at a rate of 3 to 3.5 millimeters per year in recent decades due to the thermal expansion of the ocean and the melting of glaciers and polar ice. Projections for the next century depend on how glaciers and polar ice respond to greenhouse gas emissions. If emissions remain high, sea levels could rise by 0.6 to 1.1 meters by 2100, but if emissions were significantly reduced, this increase could be between 0.3 and 0.6 meters. Between one and two feet high – if we are Anglo-Saxons – wow.
