Today’s New York Times reports that the rising sea levels due to global warming are soon going to submerge the Marshall Islands.
I lived on the Marshall Islands for four months when I directed the training program for eight new Peace Corps Volunteers. It’s a beautiful place with an amazing culture, but as the Times notes, the islands (all coral atolls) are barely a few feet above sea level and often no more than a few hundred feet wide, even though some of the larger atolls circle around a center lagoon that may be ten miles across.
Click here for the story and for some eye-popping video footage taken from the air. You’ll see how precarious the islands’ future is.
I lived on the main atoll, Majuro, for half my time there. (See photo above. Population: about 30,000.) We held much of the actual training on a smaller atoll, Namorik.
