Global Warming!

My heart bleeds for the Pacific. Global warming, and island after island is going under. Already, the Tokulaus have gone and more island groups are on the verge.

Have you seen this? The latest? The Carteret Islands off the coast of Bouganville:



The important thing to learn from that short is that the rising seas mean a commensurate rising salt table in the soil, so your food crops all die long before your island actually goes under.

And then there's Pohnpei in Micronesia:




So far we've only been hearing about the Islands in the Polynesia, but the Carterets are in Melanesia and Pohnpei in Micronesia, so it's a pan-Pacific thing.

New Zealand is taking in the Polynesian Global Warming Refugees, and the capital Auckland is already full of these sad lost souls, all rugged up under layers of wool and still shivering from the cold, even in summer, chronically depressed and comfort eating, growing daily more immense, as they mourn their lost lands.

It's so wrong. In fact, all this is the wrongest wrong I can think of: these are innocent people who know nothing about the rest of the world, who live apart from the rest of the world, and here we are, so casually and carelessly destroying their worlds. I cannot get over our consummate ARROGANCE!

Let me tell you something Graham once told me: When he was teaching in the highlands of Papua New Guinea, back in the early 80s, a group of traveling warriors arrived in the village, wanting to talk. Turned out they were from a coastal village many hundreds of miles away, and their village had sent out groups of warriors to travel far and wide to find someone who could explain to them why the sea levels were rising and what they could do to protect their village. Very "Gods Must Be Crazy", huh? Graham, simply a Australian schoolteacher, then became the person they took back to the village to become their Mr Fix-it Guy. He felt really bad about it because there wasn't much he could do, beyond telling them about Global Warning, then a new concept to us all, and then, later, passing the news on to The Red Cross.

And that was nearly 30 years ago and things have simply got worse and worse since. Guess those Papuan Questing Warriors were misplaced in their hopes of finding themselves a Mr Fix-It Guy someplace who would put things to right.

It HAS to stop, folks! We of the Pacific do not deserve this! Let's all be that Mr Fix-It Guy and get behind whatever anti-climate change measures come our way. Sign up! Complain! Do your bit! Make this issue as big as you can! Pacific Islanders are good, good people who have never done anything to hurt the world, so why are we hurting them this way?

Let's get this FIXED!