Will Tuvalu Disappear Beneath the Sea?
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Global warming threatens to swamp a small island nation.
thin white smile curves across the blank face of the South Pacific Ocean, more than a mile below. Alittle lower, the whiteness resolves into an arc of breakers, and the tiny turboprop heads straight for them. Only at the last moment does a filament of land seem to emerge from the ocean. We touch down at Funafuti International Airport, Tuvalu’s only functioning airstrip, interrupting a soccer match on the runway.
The islands of Tuvalu, scattered over 500,000 square miles of equatorial ocean midway between Hawaii and Australia, … dire pronouncements that Tuvalu’s leaders have been making for more than a decade. The planet’s fourth-smallest nation, they say, faces extinction because of climate change.
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