The climate change disaster that is the Marshall Islands

Tidal flooding in the Marshall Islands this week – the third time this year for the capital of Majuro atoll – rated a brief mention on the overseas services of Australia’s ABC but was ignored by local mainstream media. Small natural disasters just aren’t newsworthy even if they do provide evidence of the damage being caused by rising sea levels.
The Marshall Islands Foreign Minister, Phillip Muller, pointed to the damage global warming is doing to his collection of Pacific Islands when he warned his country will be ‘wiped off the map’ unless global efforts to cut greenhouse gases accelerate.
This is the most serious king tide we have seen in the Marshall Islands for some 30 years, and the third flooding of Majuro atoll, our capital, in the last year alone.
2014-03-08_kingtides
(Click on map to enlarge)
There is no question that these events are increasing in their seriousness and regularity, consistent with the clear scientific information that sea levels are rising faster in the Central-West Pacific than nearly anywhere else in the world…
While we are doing what we can, even the most conservative estimates of sea-level rise, including from the latest US National Climate Assessment, suggest that RMI will literally be wiped off the map some time before the end of the century, given the appalling lack of effort by big emitters to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions…
While king tides are not new to the Marshall Islands, their frequency and ferocity are clearly intensifying.  For those of us in the Pacific, silly discussions about scientific truth are futile.
We know what we see with our own eyes, and our tide gauges prove that the oceans are rising.  We know there is only one explanation for this unprecedented phenomenon:  climate change has arrived.
2014-03-08_swamp

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is Scott Morrison getting ahead of Malcolm Turnbull in the GST debate?

Image
Michelle Grattan , University of Canberra Scott Morrison has become a true believer in the cause of raising the GST, determined to drive a major switch in the tax mix. The big question is whether Malcolm Turnbull will end up in the same place as his treasurer. Turnbull is keeping his options open. “Changes to the GST are certainly part of the tax debate and certainly being actively considered by the government,” he said on Friday. If Turnbull agrees with Morrison, all will be well and good between them. On the other hand if Turnbull eventually opts for caution and doesn’t walk down the GST road, or in the shorter term feels Morrison is getting ahead of the game, that would be awkward for the gung-ho minister, who would the need to manage his retreat. Morrison wants a high profile and he seeks the limelight. But that carries risks. There is always that salutary tale from Labor days. Paul Keating was passionate about introducing a broad-based consumption tax. Bob Hawke let
Read more

Grattan on Friday: Now Malcolm Turnbull is the sniper at the window

Image
Michelle Grattan , University of Canberra There’s a nice story about Arthur Fadden - the Country Party leader who became PM in the 1941 hung parliament amid conservative leadership turmoil - deciding not to move into the Lodge after a colleague told him he’d “scarcely have enough time to wear a track from the backdoor to the shithouse before you’ll be out”. The warning was prophetic: Fadden was dispatched in little over a month, replaced in a House of Representatives vote by Labor’s John Curtin. Scott Morrison, ensconced in Kirribilli, has already had a longer spell than Fadden, and his government appears safe in parliament, despite losing its majority. Regardless of these differences, Morrison’s likely trajectory seems as clear as that of “Artie” all those years ago. The widespread feeling that the Morrison government is doomed will only be reinforced by this week’s outbreak of hostilities between the former and current prime ministers. At one level, it’s hard to believe we’r
Read more

Remembering that Labor only lost last time because of Bill Shorten

A quote for the day from The Australian  ' Former Queensland Liberal Party vice-president and online pollster Graham Young, who runs Brisbane-based conservative think tank the Australian Institute for Progress, says Morrison was always going to struggle to be returned, nixing any suggestion the government had a lock on the election when it was riding higher in Newspoll. “ The only reason they won last time was that Bill Shorten was overconfident, unpopular and they got over the line in a few seats in Queensland,” Young says. “Anyone who thinks it’s a lay-down misere because Albanese is hopeless or whatever is not thinking clearly.”'
Read more