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Rising Sea Levels

Climate scientists repeatedly warn that global warming is causing sea levels to rise around the globe, and that they could climb as much as 10 feet higher over the next 50 years if nothing is done to reverse the trend.

The dire predictions worry researchers and people living in low-lying coastal areas. But for the 2,600 people who inhabit the South Pacific’s remote Cartaret Islands, the time for warnings is long gone. Rising sea levels have poisoned their drinking wells, washed away their fields and left them with nothing but fish and coconuts to eat.

Every few months, high tides sweep away homes and send them fleeing for higher ground, their children and most valued possessions tucked under their arms. When the seas recede, they face beaches of washed-ashore rubbish and bouts of malaria and diarrhea. Researchers say that by next year, these islands will be the world’s first to be swallowed by global warming. No international agreements to reduce greenhouse gas emissions can save them now.

As the inhabitants of these islands await safe passage to the nearest province of Bouganville – an area destabilized in the past few decades by civil war – those concerned about the consequences of global warming point to their plight as a harbinger of things to come. Low-lying coastal communities around the globe could go the way of the remote Cartarets if substantial and immediate steps are not taken to reverse global warming.

A recent United Nations report warned of consequences much closer to home. Southern Florida could well find itself under water if sea levels rose the maximum predicted 10 feet. Researchers say that would put the Everglades completely under water. For a state with most of its population living along the coast, such a rise in sea levels would prove disastrous.

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For information on what you can do to help slow global warming, please visit www.fightglobalwarming.com.

To read more about this and other environmental health issues, go to: www.environmentalhealthnews.org, www.ourstolenfuture.org, or www.healthandenvironment.org