Paradise lost in the South Sea

Anote Tong, the president of the island nation of Kiribati is asking for some help against the effects of global warming. Tong isn't asking for financial aid or technical assistance, rather he is asking the world to find a new home for Kiribati's 92,000 residents since Tong feels that the islands may very likely be doomed.

With an average height of just six feet above sea level Kiribati dramatically feels the effect of rising ocean levels due to global warming. Even the modest rise in sea levels so far has caused widespread erosion on the islands, failure of some croplands and has forced some seaside villages to be relocated to what high ground exists on the islands. Still, Tong thinks it may just be postponing the inevitable.

"We may be beyond redemption, we may be at the point of no return where the emissions in the atmosphere will carry on to contribute to climate change to produce a sea-level change that in time our small low-lying islands will be submerged," he said at a UN-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change held at Wellington, New Zealand. But the word from the panel was that decisive action by the world's governments to limit greenhouse gas emissions looked unlikely this year, meaning the situation will get worse before any action is taken to make it better.

Its kind of hard to imagine an entire country needing to be moved, but that certainly seemed to be the likely future for Kiribati.