The Effects of Sea Level Rise Caused by Climate Change

That Sinking Feeling

Climate change. Global warming. We’ve heard these terms thrown around so often in the media that they’ve almost lost all meaning. We’ve heard academics throw predictions of polar ice caps melting and nations disappearing into the ocean, much to the denial and distaste of the sceptics. But, really, we haven’t been affected so far. And by scientific predictions, any changes to the earth will be well into the distant future. So why should we worry? Why should we care?

Far out in the Pacific Ocean, halfway between Australia and Hawaii, lies a broken necklace of islands called Kiribati. Made up of 32 atolls interspersed over 3.5 million square kilometres, Kiribati snakes over the equator and nudges the International Date Line at its eastern-most point.

Kiribati is only 900 meters across at its widest point but over 100,000 people inhabit it, and that number is rapidly increasing each year. The nation’s capital, Tarawa, now has a higher population density than Tokyo.

Oh yeah, and did I mention that Kiribati will most likely cease to exist by the time the century is up?

Kiribati is only 2 metres above sea level at its highest point, making it one of the world’s most vulnerable nations to the effects of sea level rise caused by climate change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change made a prediction in 2007 that global sea-rise would be as much as 0.8 metres by the end of the century. Other scientific studies suggest that the increase will be as much as 1.9 metres. A 2012 study discovered that the ocean is absorbing heat 15 times faster than it has at any point during the past 10,000 years. Just another metre would make living on Kiribati virtually impossible.

Now, the end of the century seems an awful long way...

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...he court also cautioned that if Mr Teitioa’s argument was accepted there or in any other jurisdictions, “at a stroke, millions of people who are facing medium-term economic deprivation, or the immediate consequences of natural disasters or warfare would be entitled to protection under the Refugee Convention”.

In a world focussed on fixing short-term problems, global warming is not a trendy subject. However, like it or not, it is an issue affecting not only the 100,000 people of Kiribati, but thousands of inhabitants of other small Pacific nations and millions of people worldwide.

If it’s too late to for the big countries to do something about the pollution they’ve created, generating these dramatic changes in climate, then the least we can do is help out the tiny island nations that barely contribute to it at all and will eventually lose everything because of it.