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![\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/fe-logo-13-feb-09-250-px1.jpg?resize=250%2C133&ssl=1\" "\\"Fe\\"")
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But that’s what\u00a0is posed\u00a0in this article from Mother Jones<\/strong><\/a> about a community of inhabitants\u00a0from the islands of Tuvalu, the first of the world’s climate refugees.<\/p>\n
The rising Pacific has brought sea water to within 16 feet of the highest point of the islands — Mt. Howard, so named by Tuvaluans as a rebuke of\u00a0former Australian Prime Minister John Howard<\/strong><\/a> who refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol<\/strong>.<\/a> Twenty-five hundred Tuvaluans\u00a0have relocated to nearby Auckland, New Zealand.\u00a0That’s twenty percent of their population. They will be there\u00a0until\u00a0conditions improve;\u00a0 meaning\u00a0their island shores are reclaimed and become completely\u00a0inhabitable again or, a new country is found to relocate them permanently.<\/p>\n
This migration could have been prevented: this tiny island nation raised the alarm of the rising sea threatening to\u00a0drown them\u00a0in the 1990s<\/strong>, warning that unless something was done to mitigate global warming elevating the local sea level, Tuvalu would be completely under water by 2050. Over a dozen years later, a representative group of Tuvaluans without a country\u00a0have immigrated to\u00a0New Zealand. Given the rise of waters across the planet many more islands and small nations, some with far larger populations, may be expected to migrate to safety in neighboring nations because their own countries\u00a0are under water.<\/p>\n
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There are tensions inherent in receiving new immigrants, even controlled numbers of groups of immigrants, regulated by government visa programs. Those tensions feature\u00a0the worst of our behaviors – isolation, xenophobia, racism — inhospitable environments\u00a0by host countries;\u00a0 and then loss of cultural identity for the new immigrant community,\u00a0including problems related to family structures\u00a0coming unglued\u00a0under economic pressures and\u00a0values of the culture and society of their\u00a0new\u00a0home.<\/p>\n
Now imagine the social and economic\u00a0impact of a massive forced wholesale migration of entire nations, climate refugees needing places to live, food to eat and livelihoods that even wealthy countries such as\u00a0the US\u00a0in this day find hard to provide\u00a0for our own citizens.<\/p>\n
So far the Tuvaluans have had a relatively easy time of it, given they are the world’s first environmental refugees. Their country has enough financial reserves to purchase an island suitable to their needs, though the political wherewhithal to ensure the treaties to purchase and inhabit remains a\u00a0challenge.\u00a0\u00a0They have\u00a0a safety net. There are other countries equally as vulnerable with far greater populations and far\u00a0fewer financial\u00a0resources to mitigate the loss of their homeland.\u00a0 What will happen when their countries drown?<\/p>\n
This is a portent of the march\u00a0for human survival\u00a0in the 21st century, not from wars or economic deprivation, but from nature’s response to our\u00a0poor stewardship of the planet we’re on.\u00a0 I leave you with this excerpt from the Mother Jones article which brings the point home.<\/p>\n
In fact, our understanding of exactly how global warming will affect people\u2014how many lives will be threatened, and what we could do to avert a succession of humanitarian disasters\u2014remains extremely rudimentary. <\/em>As Bill Gates has caustically observed<\/em><\/a>, “It is interesting how often the impact of climate change is illustrated by talking about the problems the polar bears will face rather than the much greater number of poor people who will die unless significant investments are made to help them.”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I hope you read it. Inside cautionary tales like Tuvalu lies our own responsibility and possibly, our destiny.<\/p>\n
Yours and truly,<\/p>\n
Fe Bongolan
\n<\/strong>San Francisco<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dear Friend and Reader: What happens when your country drowns? Such a question we’ve never asked, at least not in my lifetime. But that’s what\u00a0is posed\u00a0in this article from Mother Jones about a community of inhabitants\u00a0from the islands of Tuvalu, the first of the world’s climate refugees. The rising Pacific has brought sea water to … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[29,1788,1617,52,1054,1620],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20152"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20152\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}