The tiny Pacific nation of Kiribati is laying the ground work to find refugee placement for its 91 thousand citizens who fear that the country is destined to disappear as the oceans keep rising.
The President of Kiribati, Anote Tong, is asking Australia and New Zealand to open their immigration polices to the Kiribati people who may become the world’s first Climate Change refugees.
Kiribati is a collection of 32 atolls and one island, barely 2 meters above sea level, which straddles the equator between Hawaii and Australia. The country covers an ocean area the size of the continental United States.
President Tong is making a plea for world nations to immediately address the problems associated with Global Warming even though for Kiribati it is already to little, to late.
Tong met with leading climate scientists from the Australia National University to discuss not how, but when, Kiribati might disappear.
Tong also met with Australia’s Climate Change Minister Penny Wong, who said before their meeting, “Unless we act now, climate change will be catastrophic for Australia, Kiribati and the world.”
The Australian Minister said that climate change would bring higher seas and more extreme weather without urgent and coordinated world action.
In 1943 Kiribati was the site one the fiercest battles in the history of the United States Marines Corp fought at the former capital of Betio, which has now disappeared to ocean waters.
Kiribati includes Christmas Island and was a testing area for U.S. and British nuclear and hydrogen bomb experiments and detonations during the late 1960s.
In 1999 Kiribati was the location many people visited to greet the first second, of the first day, of this new century. Kiribati is the closest of any nation to the international date line.
Today Kiribati is largely dependent on the fishing industy to generate it’s (US)71 million dollar economy.
“(Climate change) will put the whole global economy at risk, with shortages of basic necessities like food, water, shelter and energy causing global conflict,” said Climate Change Minister Wong.
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All too often we hear about the potential impact of rising sea levels, as if it might become a problem at some point in the future. Kiribati is but one example that it is already a problem and one that will only worsen.
Along the same lines, Johann Hari has a first-hand account in the Independent, about the impact of rising sea levels in Bangladesh.
Is this not part of Earth’s continuing evolution and change? There is no doubt that man’s activities have had an impact on global warming, the question is, can we adapt?
I’m that policital grandstanding will get in the way of taking action and making the right choices.
The election result in Australia over the weekend could be seen as a victory for short-termism and a loss for our future.
We can’t afford to let short term pain in petrol prices take our eye off the ball. Given the opportunity, politicians will encourage us to do this for short term political gain, and we’ll all be worse off for it.
It’s time to cut through the spin.