Zepp
Master of Arts
- Joined
- Jan 16, 2003
- Messages
- 1,561
- Reaction score
- 22
In case you had any doubts, yes, the title of this thread is meant sarcasticly.
Tiny Tuvalu Fears Future Is Beneath the Pacific
Fri Jan 14, 2:08 PM ET Science - Reuters
By C. Bryson Hull
PORT LOUIS (Reuters) - The islands in Tuvalu where Enele Sopoaga visited his aunts as a boy are gone, swallowed by the rising seas surrounding the Pacific archipelago.
The taro roots his family have eaten for generations grow less robustly each year due to increased salt water, and drinking water that used to be as fresh as new rain has become brackish, he said.
"These are the indications to show us something is happening, something terrible," Sopoaga, Tuvalu's ambassador to the United Nations (news - web sites), told Reuters on Friday.
Standing no more than 12 feet above sea level, many believe Tuvalu would be among the first island nations in the world to disappear as sea levels rise.
Since the 1980s, the nation of 11,000 has advocated stronger measures to cut greenhouse gases. Sopoaga spent most of the week advocating just that at a U.N. conference in Mauritius on small island problems.
Islands worry that rising seas, which a U.N. panel of 2,000 scientists has linked to global warming caused by burning fossil fuels, could submerge them. A minority of scientists dispute the findings as based on erroneous climate models.
The islands have traditionally been at odds with industrial nations, who bristle at any suggestion their emissions are to blame.
Delegates at the conference said the strategy produced at the meeting of island leaders and senior diplomats, including U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan (news - web sites), gave little to islands beyond recognizing their position that climate change is happening now.
Doubters, Sopoaga said, should visit Tuvalu.
"My memory is going as a little boy to visit my aunts on this beautiful island, with three houses and kitchens. Twenty-five people lived there," he said. "Now of course those houses have all gone. It's just sand."
Other small islands in the lagoon of his home island, Nukufetau, are beneath the waves or have been reduced to uninhabitable patches of sand, devoid of vegetation.
There is great confusion among Tuvalans about the future of the islands, and whether they should move away, he said. And other countries cannot see why that may be their only option.
"People say 'why don't you move your people inland?' There is no inland. It's all coastal," he said.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm...=4&u=/nm/20050114/sc_nm/environment_tuvalu_dc
To me, the last part sounds sadly reminiscient of the attitude the U.S. government took towards Native Americans in the 19th century. How does it sound to you?
Tiny Tuvalu Fears Future Is Beneath the Pacific
Fri Jan 14, 2:08 PM ET Science - Reuters
By C. Bryson Hull
PORT LOUIS (Reuters) - The islands in Tuvalu where Enele Sopoaga visited his aunts as a boy are gone, swallowed by the rising seas surrounding the Pacific archipelago.
The taro roots his family have eaten for generations grow less robustly each year due to increased salt water, and drinking water that used to be as fresh as new rain has become brackish, he said.
"These are the indications to show us something is happening, something terrible," Sopoaga, Tuvalu's ambassador to the United Nations (news - web sites), told Reuters on Friday.
Standing no more than 12 feet above sea level, many believe Tuvalu would be among the first island nations in the world to disappear as sea levels rise.
Since the 1980s, the nation of 11,000 has advocated stronger measures to cut greenhouse gases. Sopoaga spent most of the week advocating just that at a U.N. conference in Mauritius on small island problems.
Islands worry that rising seas, which a U.N. panel of 2,000 scientists has linked to global warming caused by burning fossil fuels, could submerge them. A minority of scientists dispute the findings as based on erroneous climate models.
The islands have traditionally been at odds with industrial nations, who bristle at any suggestion their emissions are to blame.
Delegates at the conference said the strategy produced at the meeting of island leaders and senior diplomats, including U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan (news - web sites), gave little to islands beyond recognizing their position that climate change is happening now.
Doubters, Sopoaga said, should visit Tuvalu.
"My memory is going as a little boy to visit my aunts on this beautiful island, with three houses and kitchens. Twenty-five people lived there," he said. "Now of course those houses have all gone. It's just sand."
Other small islands in the lagoon of his home island, Nukufetau, are beneath the waves or have been reduced to uninhabitable patches of sand, devoid of vegetation.
There is great confusion among Tuvalans about the future of the islands, and whether they should move away, he said. And other countries cannot see why that may be their only option.
"People say 'why don't you move your people inland?' There is no inland. It's all coastal," he said.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm...=4&u=/nm/20050114/sc_nm/environment_tuvalu_dc
To me, the last part sounds sadly reminiscient of the attitude the U.S. government took towards Native Americans in the 19th century. How does it sound to you?
