Chaos ensued in the United Arab Emirates after the country witnessed the heaviest rainfall in 75 years, with some areas recording more than 250 mm of precipitation in fewer than 24 hours, the state’s media office said in a statement Wednesday.
The rainfall, which flooded streets, uprooted palm trees and shattered building facades, has never been seen in the Middle Eastern nation since records began in 1949. In the popular tourist destination Dubai, flights were canceled, traffic came to a halt and schools closed.
One-hundred millimeters (nearly 4 inches) of rain fell over the course of just 12 hours on Tuesday, according to weather observations at the airport – around what Dubai usually records in an entire year, according to United Nations data.
The rain fell so heavily and so quickly that some motorists were forced to abandon their vehicles as the floodwater rose and roads turned into rivers.
If you were otherwise dirt poor and you had the opportunity to become rich beyond your dreams selling something that to you is essentially free you wouldn’t do it?
It’s really easy to be moral from your armchair at home.
I’m not saying that makes it OK, but it’s a real moral dilemma and we live in the real world. The UAE not selling oil wouldn’t lower the demand for it, they’d still have been flooded, just with no oil money to help fix anything afterwards.
If they didn’t sell oil, there wouldn’t be a giant, pseudo-city in the desert. Those people would probably build elsewhere, if at all.
Exactly my point.
Well if climate change keeps up, it sounds like they’ll be a pseudo-city on the rain forest instead.
Agreed. I dislike these countries because of who they are, not how they got rich.
Not like there is unsavoury alliances ad tendencies associated with this story. It is not just them making money.
What makes you think the Sheikhs were dirt poor before the British started pumping oil?
I’m obviously talking about the wealth of the whole country, not just it’s richest citizens.
In 2009, the UAEs GDP was 85% based on oil, it doesn’t take a triple digit IQ to do the maths here.
Dubai’s poverty rate is 20% and a notable fraction of the population (1.5%) is slaves from central/south Asia who got their passports taken away from them, and median salary is USD$4300 (a single person’s monthly expenses are estimated to average USD$1000 excluding rent). I can’t call them a wealthy country when their citizens are far from it.
20% of the UK live in poverty.
11% of US citizens live in poverty
You can call them not rich if you want but that doesn’t change the facts that they’d be so much poorer without oil money
You’re being disingenuous. People aren’t talking about the poor living in a slum in Tel Aviv when they talk about how Israel needs to pay for its crimes.
Absolutely pointless reply.
You’re suggesting that my happy that the UAE is getting some karma for helping destroy the planet is somehow ignoring the fact that there were a lot of poor people that have better lives now because the UAE has been helping destroy the planet.
I’m pointing out that I’m not talking about the poor people.
It’s literally only the poor people that will suffer. Do you think any of the oil billionaires in the UAE are going to be finding it hard to sleep tonight?
I’m sure people made the same argument during the bombings of Berlin in the 1940s. The elite were safe in their bunkers or in the countryside.