With climate change, Tuvalu is the tip of the iceberg

Apart from never reading newspapers, President Bush doesn't even seem to be watching TV. ".tv" actually. The ".tv" suffix is an international internet domain ending (like the United Kingdom's ".uk") assigned to the nine small islands that comprise the state of Tuvalu, a country that is going to become uninhabitable within this century due to effects from global warming. Being too poor to afford membership in the United Nations, the Tuvaluan government leased out management of its coveted famous two-letter suffix in 2000 to the .tv Corporation International (now owned by VeriSign) for the handsome sum of $50 million (its domain deal is now the country's biggest "export"). Revenues were used for an U.N. application, and Tuvalu promptly entered the organization in an effort to gain more leverage in its battle for survival and/or compensation. Indeed, the great drama of Tuvalu is that, as Andrew Simms from the Guardian pointed out, "just as Tuvalu has traded in its virtual domain, it is about to lose its real one."

The surrounding ocean, a constant companion to all island peoples, is much more threatening to Tuvalu nowadays than it used to be. That is because it is rising, a fact that rightfully worries Sau-fatu Sopoanga, Tuvalu's Prime Minister (as well as Minister for Foreign Affairs, Immigration, and Labor . . . hey, it's a small place). The most commonly cited estimate is that by 2100, the ocean will likely have risen about one meter. It may not sound like much, but for Tuvalu where the highest point is some 4.5 meters (~15 ft.) elevation, a one-meter rise entails an existential crisis. Not only will huge tracts of land be completely submerged, but already scarce arable soil and drinking water will be further compromised. Tuvalu's 11,000 people will have no high ground upon which to seek refuge during storms. As Sebastian the Disney crab might put it, "end century, tuvalu be, under the sea." Realizing their predicament, Tuvaluans have negotiated a last resort resettlement option with New Zealand.

So why is this happening? Here is the basic gist. As humans burn fossil fuels to power their cities, fuel their industrial revolutions, and drive their kiddies to and from soccer practice in unnecessarily large cars, this increases atmospheric concentration of so-called "greenhouse gases." The larger presence of these gases allows for the greater retention of sun energy in surface air thus raising global atmospheric temperatures in a way that melts glaciers and heats the ocean. The extra fluid from the glacier and the expansion of the ocean from the heat increase leads to sea level rise.

Dealing with global climate change ultimately must entail some lowering of greenhouse gas emissions, a process which the Kyoto Protocol is intended to start. Both the U.S. and Australia, two developed heavy polluters, have rebuffed the Kyoto treaty, however. Painted into a corner, with little to lose, and looking to go down fighting if it has to go at all, Tuvalu is preparing to sue the U.S. and Australia at the International Court of Justice while trying to rally other island nations and countries heavily endangered by global warming to the cause.

One of the scientists consulted by Tuvalu's lawyers is Princeton Professor Michael Oppenheimer, who is the Albert G. Milbank Professor of Geosciences and International Affairs in the Woodrow Wilson School and the Department of Geosci-ences. Professor Oppenheimer was the lead author of the 2001 Third Assessment Report of the intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the authoritative international scientific body in the field. "It is so sad to see these small island nations try to band together at these international climate conferences to exert some influence on the big boys," Professor Oppenheimer told me. "It's like they're standing in front of a steamroller, real David and Goliath stuff. Sometimes they win some victories because they do have the moral high ground, but on the whole it's really tough going."

On Sept. 30, 2003, just one day before Tuvalu celebrated its 25th jubilee anniversary of independence from British colonization, the Bush administration released its "Climate Change Fact Sheet," which notably does not even mention Kyoto. The message sent to Tuvaluans was clear: carpe centuria and stop whining. But there will be more such complainers from all over the world as time goes by. Americans even. Very serious detrimental effects will be felt in this country, especially along the coastally developed and storm-vulnerable eastern seaboard. Though activists often use Tuvalu as the baby-seal-getting-clubbed-by-the-bully example, Tuvalu itself stresses that climate change is everyone's concern. Prime Minister Sopoanga staunchly supported the War on Terror in his speech to the U.N., but warned against the self-defeating War on Planet also seemingly being waged by the Bush administration. While the U.S. is clubbing Tuvalu with one arm, it is obliviously clubbing itself with the other.

Fernando Delgado is a Wilson School major from Brasilia, Brazil.