'People in Basra lived through hell during the Anglo-American occupation, suffering from lawlessness and economic disruption. Now they face the ravages of the climate emergency.'
Poet Robert Frost asked if the world would end by fire or ice. It turns out that it is both, the fire of global heating and the melting of Earth’s surface ice and resultant biblical floods. Nowhere is this more clear than in Iraq.
See, there's the irony. Basra is a major oil-producing and exporting region, but the CO2 its product produces is blowing back on the city.unusually salty, which is deadly for the farmers that irrigate from it. The high salt content comes from a weakened flow, so that water is pushing north from the Gulf into the Shatt al-Arab. The weakened flow is caused by many things. The drought has meant less rainwater and less snow melt, in the mountains of eastern Turkey where the Euphrates originates.
The Shatt al-Arab used to provide irrigation for southern Iraq's vast date orchards, something the country was known for. In 1950, when Iraq still had its British-installed king, the country had 33 million date trees.