Kiribati's 11th Hour?

"We may be beyond redemption," said President Tong. "We may be at the point of no return, where the emissions in the atmosphere will carry on contributing to climate change, to produce a sea level change so in time our small, low-lying islands will be submerged."

Kiribati – a former British colony called the Gilbert Islands – is home to 97,000 people, most of them squeezed into the densely populated main atoll, Tarawa, a chain of islets surrounding a central lagoon. Along with other low-lying Pacific island nations such as Tuvalu, the Marshall Islands and Vanuatu, it is regarded as one of the places most vulnerable to climate change.

President Tong, a London School of Economics graduate, said emigration needed to start immediately: "We don't want to believe this, and our people don't want to believe this. It gives us a deep sense of frustration. What do we do?"


Kiribati was my inspiration for Mara's drowning island in EXODUS. I first read about the Kiribati islands in 1999. Almost a decade on, we, the outside world still have done nothing to help.

Read the full story here and here, and about how I was inspired by the Kiribati islanders here.

I've been so imaginatively involved with Kiribati's plight, all through the writing of my trilogy. They are part of the talks I do in schools and at festivals but I wish I could do something more than talk. I will think about what that might be. Ideas welcome.

Our 11th Hour?

The 11th Hour is an inspirational film from Titanic star Leonardo di Caprio, to be shown on the UK's Channel 4 this Sunday (25th May, 7.25pm).

It's a must watch; not just Doom & Gloom, the over-arching message is this:

THE HOPE IS YOU.

Here is the trailer (Linkin Park's magnificent What I've Done is the soundtrack.)

Join in 11th Hour Action here and here.

Watch it. Be very scared. But most of all, be inspired.

HAPPY EARTH DAY

I didn't even know it was. Join the party here.

What if we all ignored Earth Day? I certainly hope EXODUS is not the answer! Some other books on the theme.

SPLITTER!

Or Space Litter.... read all about it here.

21st CENTURY PENGUINS

How penguins are adapting to global warming! Look at this.

Polar Bear Eco-therapy?

Feeling eco-anxious about the future?

"People tell me how an article about the polar bears losing their habitat was making them ill," says [eco-psychologist/therapist Melissa Pickett]. "So I place a photograph of a polar bear into the patients' hands and encourage them to have an imaginary conversation with him as a way to ease their despair." She also advises we carry rocks in our pockets to remind us of our connection with the Earth and buy one of her "sacred matrices" (yours for $10 each).

Oh dear. But more tips here. If you must.

I'll stick with the Zen monks 12 Essential Zenhabits.

I'm going to work especially hard on Zenhabit no. 4: Do less

WORLD WATER DAY 22ND MARCH

It's WORLD WATER DAY on March 22nd.

Can you imagine what it's like to live with
'Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink' ? *

Well, have a look at the young water babies and bucket gangs here.

And enter the world of the floating village of Chong Khneas here.

And read what it's like to live in a flooded world here.

It's all so shockingly close to some of the things I've written as fiction: Tuck in his floating city in ZENITH; Wing and the urchins who paddle the toxic floods in salvaged junk, buckets and car bonnets in EXODUS.

But this is not an imagined scenario in some futuristic fiction - it's all happening right here, now, in our world.




*(Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner)