This island community in the Pacific is slowly being swept away by rising seas, and once the true cause is determined (still being argued if its manmade or natural cycles) perhaps we can begin to resolve it, and hopefully in time for Kiribati.
An excerpt.
Rising sea levels imperil island home
Micronesian educator to speak on curbing greenhouse gas emissions
By Douglas Fischer, STAFF WRITER
Article Last Updated:10/12/2006 07:48:46 AM PDT
For Ben Namakin, global warming isnt some abstract threat his kids might someday face.
It has already started tearing his country apart.
Namakin, 26, was born and raised in Kiribati, an island nation in the midst of the Pacific where high tide crests no more than a dozen feet from the islands highest point.
Or did. That distance has shrunk as oceans warm and expand and polar ice melts. Sea walls are crumbling. Freshwater lagoons are dying as salt water intrudes. One of his favorite islands — small, beautiful Deketik — is now two islands, with the ocean where sand once was.
We have nowhere to go, said Namakin, an environmental educator for the Conservation Society of Pohnpei, capital of the Federated States of Micronesia.
The irony, to Namakin, is that his country contributes less than a percent of the globes manmade greenhouse gas emissions. Yet it will be the first to disappear.
So Namakin has taken his message to the U.S., where nearly a quarter of the worlds greenhouse gases are emitted, chiefly from power plants and automobiles.
He has spent four weeks touring the country, talking on college campuses, waking people to the notion that their lifestyle and energy use causes ripples far, far away — 5,355 miles, to be exact.
