Their Islands Are Being Eroded. So Are Their Human Rights, They Say

MASIG ISLAND, Australia — Every weekend, Yessie Mosby visits the sandy, washed-out graves of his ancestors to gather their scattered bones. Their shallow burial place, just yards from the shore of Masig Island, north of mainland Australia, has been eroded by rising seas.

A view of Masig Island, north of mainland Australia.
 As climate change pushes the tides ever higher, this
island and others nearby are at risk of vanishing.

“Other parents around the world go to the beach with their kids and pick up shells,” Mr. Mosby, 37, a craftsman and father of five, said as he moved fragments of his sixth great-grandmother’s bones to a spot beneath a coconut tree. “We pick up remains.”

The lives of the people here are tied to the island, one of 18 spits of earth in the Torres Strait inhabited by Indigenous Australians. It holds the histories of those who came before; it protects and nourishes. But as climate change pushes the tides ever higher, these islands, and their ancient culture, are at risk of vanishing.

Read the story from The New York Times by Livia Albeck-Ripka - “Their Islands Are Being Eroded. So Are Their Human Rights, They Say.”

The Cup's over, another challenge and climate change ignored, again

This year's America's Cup was
unquestionably spectacular,
but damnably expensive, both in
dollars and in cost to our
environment. 

On the same day the U.S. Government shut down it was announced that Australia’s Hamilton Island Yacht Club would challenge for the America’s Cup.

Unrelated? Yes, but both are about economics.

A dispute between America’s Democrat and Republican parties, that is ultimately ideological, but supposedly about giving the nod to president Obama’s belief in decent medical care for all Americans however, it has the potential to see the country default on its debts.

So as America was labouring under an economic cloud, the Hamilton Island Yacht club led by winemaker, Bob Oatley has successfully made a multi-million dollar challenge for the cup.

The cost of the remarkable yachts at about $10 million each is not the rump of the costs, rather it is the employment, training, maintenance and support of not just the actual crew of the yacht, but the more than 100 people needed to keep the project “afloat”.

In the midst of all this, America is struggling to understand its economy and facing default and just a handful of Americans and Australians are spending millions in what in reality is simply a frivolous pastime.

Does that matter? In the scheme of things probably not, except that it illustrates most people have not yet grasped that climate change is serious and rather than spend billions of dollars on a project that will only worsen the dilemma, it would be better for the world if they chose to spend that money helping us better understand how we can mitigate this worldwide cataclysm.

And while that is happening, many in the world are trying to understand how we can pay for the damage caused by significant weather events, including in America such as super-storm Sandy and the Colorado floods.

USA Today has reported in a story headed: “Report urges extreme weather superfund in wake of Sandy”, that a levy on carbon emissions would fund relief for future disasters.

It said: “Sandy cost the American economy about $70 billion, with more than half of that in New Jersey, where uninsured losses and unmet needs are estimated to between $8 billion and $13 billion in permanent losses – businesses property and public infrastructure costs that cannot be covered by government aid or private insurance.”

Oddly here in Australia, the Abbott led coalition government has just scrapped the colloquially named “carbon tax” ending any likelihood that we would have money in another fund to cover the costs of disruptive weather events.

Julian Cribb, Sandy and 'A gaping wound in democracy'

Julian Cribb.

Julian Cribb has forthrightly said exactly what need to be acknowledged about America’s recent super-storm, “Sandy”.

Cribb, a science communicator and author of ‘The Coming Famine: the global food crisis and what we can do to avoid it’ and who has spoken in the Goulburn Valley, writing on ‘Online Opinion’ argues that an emerging victim of Sandy is democracy and free speech.

Writing in a story headed: “A gaping wound in democracy”, Cribb said many public figures had ignored the real cause of “Sandy”, such events that are coming with increasing fury.

Many comments about US east coast troubles

The difficulties that troubled America’s east cost in the past week have prompted many observations, including this from Paul Berg, who sent this New York Review of Books’ link to Transitions Tatura organizer, Ross Musolino.

Bill McKibben.

In forwarding the link, Paul said:

“The same researchers who predicted events like this week’s horror have warned that unless we cease burning coal and gas and oil the planet’s temperature—already elevated by a degree—will climb another four or five. At which point “civilization” will be another word for “ongoing emergency response.”

Environmental activist, Bill McKibben, wrote “A Grim Warning from Science” arguing that the U.S. dealings with “Sandy” were relatively clean compared to wilful incompetence associated with the country’s response to “Katrina”.