sensiblestupidity asked: Just wanted to let you know I'm writing a paper on Tuvalu and climate change for one of my classes this semester, and I too want to punch climate change in the face

Hey sensiblestupidity!

Thanks for your note. Yeah, I’m familiar with Tuvalu, a tiny nation in the Pacific just east of Australia and close-by to Fiji. In fact, I was serendipitously in the middle of a Tuvaluan flash-protest at the COP15 in Copenhagen back in 2009. In double-fact, here’s a picture I took of that protest.

Tuvalu is a small island nation that is eroding away by sea-level rise. So, they eventually have to evacuate their homes and land, but the problem is they don’t have anywhere to go. They’d have to emigrate to another country.

Abandoning a nation is a very strange thing if you think about it. Which country should take the people in? Should they be treated as refugees? Who is responsible and, if there is a responsible party, who will enforce penalties? Will they lose their citizenship by default, since their nation has disappeared under the ocean??

What’s most interesting to me (and should blow your mind) is who will clean up their trash and infrastructure before they evacuate? Their trash and sewers, like the secret of the Maldives, are an environmental disaster in waiting.

Cheers!

Michael