The Catastrophic Impact of Rising Oceans on the Pacific Islands Essay

The Catastrophic Impact of Rising Oceans on the Pacific Islands All over the world indigenous communities are faced with an array of new problems, though the public continues to gain insight into the lives of these people they continue to be marginalized in the global arena as well. The Pacific Islands are an entity far removed from the minds of most westerners. The primary focus of any political discourse within the United States places most emphasis on Australia and New Zealand ignoring the smaller less politically salient states. However, it is these smaller islands that will bare the brunt of one huge problem in the future, global warming. For the purpose of this paper I will ignore the polemics of global warming and not hypothesize whether or not it actually has any permanent adverse effects on the ecosystems of the world or whether or not it is cyclical. Instead, I will focus on the evidence already documented within the Pacific Island states, evidence which lends strong support to the notion that the earth is getting warmer and the oceans are rising. For the people of the lowland Pacific Islands it doesn’t matter if the current warming is a temporary trend that will reverse itself in a few centuries, they will have to deal with it on a much more short-term basis. The ocean has already begun to change and for the people of the Pacific Islands that is a major concern, it could be catastrophic if left unattended. The prospect of rising waters in the oceans has a transcendent effect on the Pacific Islands. Not only will the oceans rise and the seas become more torrent, their very cultures could be uprooted and their modes of existence forever changed. Recently a new study conducted by the National Oceanographic Data C... ...rliest Washington cherry blossom peak...Almost no one disputes the fact that a substantial rise in sea level would be a bad thing, inundating first a number of oceanic nations such as the Marshall Islands and Vanuatu in the Pacific, and the moving on to eat up places like Manhattan and the world’s other great coastal cities...The plight of Washington’s cherry blossoms pale by comparison. The National Park Service is making no promises, but barring a catastrophic petal-scattering storm, it appears there will be enough blossoms around on April 9th to avoid total embarrassment at this years parade. Bibliography: Smith, Donald National Geographic News@nattionalgeographic.com Pacific Islands Report GPI Atlantic www.gpiatlantic.org Vanishing Islands www.ourplanet.com Warming Hits Hard in Pacific www.ABCNEWS.com Environmental News Network www.ENN.com