Quora Answer: What is Something That Would Cause Terror in the World Right Now?

The following is my answer to a Quora question: “What is something that would cause terror in the world right now?”

If people are smart enough, climate change should be enough.  I feel people have not truly understood the consequences on them, politically, economically and survival wise.  Many coastal cities will become uninhabitable due to rising tides.  Rising tides will not only cause flooding, but it will also contaminate the water table, leading to a shortage of potable water.  This will affect our consumption, industry and even how we clean things.

Changing weather patterns will adversely affect food supply.  There will be a rise in the price of staples, and people will suffer shortages.  There will be increased desertification in the interior of continents, leading to migrations of animals as well as people.  More than a billion people displaced will strain the resources of even the wealthiest nations.  This displacement will accelerate the causes of conflict over resources, water and arable land.

Climate change will also affect the salinity of the water, change the currents, which will affect weather all over the world, which will cause droughts in some places, and devastating floods in others.  When the ice melts, it increases the amount of water in the atmosphere, which means increased precipitation.  Heavier rainstorms and snowstorms mean more flash floods, avalanches and landslides.  We are not looking at the extinction of the human race, but we will see increased death and suffering, particularly among more vulnerable nations.  A greater loss for us will be the effects on biodiversity.