An anonymous reader quotes a report from Scientific American: Amid a deepening ecological crisis and acute water shortage, Tehran can no longer remain the capital of Iran, the country's president has said. The situation in Tehran is the result of "a perfect storm of climate change and corruption," says Michael Rubin, a political analyst at the American Enterprise Institute. "We no longer have a choice," said Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian during a speech on Thursday. Instead Iranian officials are considering moving the capital to the country's southern coast. But experts say the proposal does not change the reality for the nearly 10 million people who live in Tehran and are now suffering the consequences of a decades-long decline in water supply. Iran's capital has moved many times over the centuries, notes the report. "But this marks the first time the Iranian government has moved the capital because of an ecological catastrophe." Yet, Rubin says, "it would be a mistake to look at this only through the lens of climate change" and not factor in the water, land, and wastewater mismanagement and corruption that have made the crisis worse.
Linda Shi, a social scientist and urban planner at Cornell University, says: "Climate change is not the thing that is causing it, but it is a convenient factor to blame in order to avoid taking responsibility" for poor political decisions.
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