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Tuvalu looking at legal ways to be a state if it is submerged

reuters.com

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Re: Tuvalu looking at legal ways to be a state if it is submerged

#51

Post by rbanffy »

whymauri wrote: post #40
JackFr wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tuvalu is fewer than 10,500 people living on about 10 square miles of island. Climate change is a real problem for them. But in terms of the cold calculus of global impact, the fate of Tuvalu is relatively minor.

Tuvalu is not the only place impacted by climate change.

No, but the resources spent in saving Tuvalu could be better used in rehoming its people elsewhere. This is a horrible thing to contemplate, of course, but I'm afraid that, lacking the resources to protect themselves, this is what will end up happening.

Re: Tuvalu looking at legal ways to be a state if it is submerged

#52

Post by lazide »

whymauri wrote: post #40
JackFr wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tuvalu is fewer than 10,500 people living on about 10 square miles of island. Climate change is a real problem for them. But in terms of the cold calculus of global impact, the fate of Tuvalu is relatively minor.

Tuvalu is not the only place impacted by climate change.

It’s the only one clearly having to balance books related to it right now in a way that can’t be hand waved or projected away though

Re: Tuvalu looking at legal ways to be a state if it is submerged

#53

Post by beervirus »

rbanffy wrote: post #42
beervirus wrote: post #34

Pure theater. > Kofe said he delivered the video address, scheduled to be aired at COP26 on Tuesday, in a place that used to be dry land, adding that Tuvalu was seeing a lot of coastal erosion. Coastal erosion, not climate change, not rising sea levels.

"Since 1993, sea levels have risen about 0.5cm (0.2 inches) per year, according to a 2011 Australian government report." That's 14 cm of elevation on sea level alone. Coastal erosion can be mitigated, but I don't think Tuvalu has the resources to build and deploy the required amount of breakwaters required to protect the island themselves. Climate change is something that has to be addressed at a global level. edit:…

Your math is off by an order of magnitude. Sea levels are up by more like 0.1 meter since 1993.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_level_rise

Re: Tuvalu looking at legal ways to be a state if it is submerged

#54

Post by yorwba »

ocschwar wrote: post #20
bin_bash wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

call me cynical, but would any country be willing to give up its land like that? Tribal lands only exist to give back a small fraction of stolen lands back. Would any country give land to another country just for goodwill?

Brittany and Galicia are both the result of an explicit land grant to British refugees from the English invasion.

Who granted it to them?

Re: Tuvalu looking at legal ways to be a state if it is submerged

#55

Post by mistrial9 »

ocschwar wrote: post #19
toomuchtodo wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought of that, but didn’t mention it because there are a lot of unknowns like China just straight up ignoring them or how you’d license, govern, and patrol the waters. It’s a valid asset though, good point.

China doesn't have to wait for the islands to submerge to do that. Chinese fishing fleets have violated fishing rules in Ecuadorian waters. The Tuvaluans have no chance when all they have is a few motor dinghies and M-16s.

multiple nationalities are doing this -- its an active situation.. Spain for example, in addition to China.

Re: Tuvalu looking at legal ways to be a state if it is submerged

#56

Post by jorgen123 »

advice_thrwawy9 wrote: post #30
nharada wrote: post #12

So have we moved from "climate change isn't real" to "it's real but we aren't gonna do anything"? Nobody making long term plans is questioning the science of it, they're just trying to figure out how to be the last ones to starve.

If we were really going to prevent catastrophic climate change the realistic time to act would have be probably 50-70 years ago. I've become fairly patient with climate deniers over the years since it is both a difficult to imagine idea and contains serious amounts of existential dread, making it very hard to reason about. Because of the latter I don't know anyone, climate scientists and myself included, that aren't…

No. The heart of the problem is this narrative. Granted, you paint the picture that is the prevalent narrative, but narratives can change.

There are profitable solutions out there today and many have a potential to scale. Paul Hawken has done some great work recently describing them and calculating their contribution potential (https://drawdown.org and https://regeneration.org)

Re: Tuvalu looking at legal ways to be a state if it is submerged

#57

Post by lazide »

ahevia wrote: post #43
advice_thrwawy9 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we were really going to prevent catastrophic climate change the realistic time to act would have be probably 50-70 years ago. I've become fairly patient with climate deniers over the years since it is both a difficult to imagine idea and contains serious amounts of existential dread, making it very hard to reason about. Because of the latter I don't know anyone, climate scientists and myself included, that aren't…

Much of what you say is true. We could theoretically still avoid catastrophic change and stay below 1.5 degrees but I’m increasingly doubtful of that after COP26 and pitiful net zero (instead of net negative) commitments Solar Geoengineering is something that could be considered. It is underfunded these days but we should do a better job of studying & modeling it’s effects if we ever hope to deploy it. Heck I think t…

That would require a high degree of international trust and cooperation (as it could be turned into a super weapon with only a little imagination). For something like that to happen, there often needs to be a clear and unambiguous external threat that is ‘worse’

Re: Tuvalu looking at legal ways to be a state if it is submerged

#58

Post by rbanffy »

bencoder wrote: post #50
rbanffy wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Since 1993, sea levels have risen about 0.5cm (0.2 inches) per year, according to a 2011 Australian government report." That's 14 cm of elevation on sea level alone. Coastal erosion can be mitigated, but I don't think Tuvalu has the resources to build and deploy the required amount of breakwaters required to protect the island themselves. Climate change is something that has to be addressed at a global level. edit:…

14cm, not 1.4m

Oops. Fixed.

Re: Tuvalu looking at legal ways to be a state if it is submerged

#59

Post by kevinmchugh »

nharada wrote: post #12

So have we moved from "climate change isn't real" to "it's real but we aren't gonna do anything"? Nobody making long term plans is questioning the science of it, they're just trying to figure out how to be the last ones to starve.

Tuvalu has been relatively unique among small, poor nations in caring about climate change for a while

Re: Tuvalu looking at legal ways to be a state if it is submerged

#60

Post by rbanffy »

beervirus wrote: post #53
rbanffy wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Since 1993, sea levels have risen about 0.5cm (0.2 inches) per year, according to a 2011 Australian government report." That's 14 cm of elevation on sea level alone. Coastal erosion can be mitigated, but I don't think Tuvalu has the resources to build and deploy the required amount of breakwaters required to protect the island themselves. Climate change is something that has to be addressed at a global level. edit:…

Your math is off by an order of magnitude. Sea levels are up by more like 0.1 meter since 1993. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_level_rise

Sorry. Fixed. I blame Windows Calculator.
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