Sunday, January 8, 2012

Polar Cities Could be Dubbed as ''Noah's Arks'' For Climate Refugees

Dear Mr Bloom,

Your work on polar cities is really amazing, and I see you have been at this since 2006. More to ya, mate. Good ideas, and good illustrations. Who knows what the future will be, but for sure it won't be pretty. We do need to create some kind of safe refuge system for climate refugees in the future.

You call them polar cities. But they are not at the poles per se, and they are not really cities. So why call them polar cities? Just because you called them that and the name stuck as a cute nickname moniker that the New York Times could play with? It's not a bad name per se, but the the words are a bit misleading, no. Why did you call them polar cities?

I have an idea. Why not call them Noah's Arks? That way you get in something a bit spiritual into the spirit of it all, and God knows, we're going to need spirituality in those dark days of climate chaos, no? And the idea of something Noahic, something prophetic, something Biblical, might help the MSM understand your ideas better.

I would like to christen them Noah's Arks for climate refugees. May I?

Sincerely,

A reader in New Zealand

2 comments:

DANIELBLOOM said...

Noah's Ark (Hebrew: תיבת נח‎, Teyvat Noaḥ in Classical Hebrew)

....a vessel appearing in the Book of Genesis (chapters 6–9) and the Quran (surahs Hud and Al-Mu’minoon).

These narratives describe the construction of the ark by the Patriarch Noah at God's command to save himself, his family, and the world's animals from the worldwide deluge of the Great Flood.

DANIELBLOOM said...

In the narrative of the ark, God for some odd reason, sends a great flood to flood the Earth. However, he sees that Noah is a man "righteous in his generation," and gives him detailed instructions on how to construct a an ark. When Noah and the animals are safe on board, God sends the Climate Change Flood, which rises until all human life on Earth is at risk . At the height of the flood, the ark rests on Al Gore's shoulders before the waters recede and Manhattan Island reappears. Noah, his family, and the animals leave the ark to repopulate the Earth. God places a symbolic Tuvalu rainbow in the sky and makes a covenant with Noah and all living things, by which he vows to never again send a flood to destroy the Earth except when climate change threatens to do in his creation again.

The ark narrative has been extensively studied by adherents of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, as well as other Abrahamic and non-Abrahamic faiths. Such studies have ranged from hypothetical solutions to practical problems (such as the issues of waste disposal and lighting the ark's interior), to theological and metaphoric interpretations (with the ark being seen as the spiritual precursor in offering salvation to mankind).[1] Although the account of the ark was traditionally accepted as historical, by the 19th century the growing impact of scientific investigation and biblical interpretation had led many people to abandon a literal view in favour of a more metaphoric understanding.