Multimedia Collection
Rising Waters: Global Warming and the Fate of the Pacific Islands
DVD
57 min
2000
QC981.8 .G56 R56 2000 DVD
For 7 million people living on thousands of islands scattered across the Pacific ocean, global warming is not something that looms in the distant future: it's a threat whose first effects may have already begun.
Through personal stories of Pacific Islanders in Kiribati, the Samoas, the atolls of Micronesia including the Marshall Islands, and Hawaii, as well as researchers in the continental United States, RISING WATERS: Global Warming and the Fate of the Pacific Islands puts a human face on the international climate change debate.
The majority of scientists around the world now agree that global warming is real, and key studies show that the tropical Pacific islands will be hit first and hardest by its effects. The water temperature in the tropical Pacific has risen dramatically over the last two decades, bleaching coral and stressing marine ecosystems. Sea level rise threatens to inundate islands, and extreme weather events – such as more frequent and intense El Niños, severe droughts, and mega hurricanes – could wipe out ecosystems and the way of life that has existed for thousands of years.
Already, unusually high tides have swept the low-lying atolls of Micronesia, destroying crops and polluting fresh water supplies. Ancestral graveyards are being destroyed by the impacts of rogue waves and erosion never witnessed before. An increase in the frequency and intensity of hurricanes is making it difficult for island communities and ecosystems to recover.
While the policy makers and scientists argue about when and how much to reduce greenhouse gas emissions over the next twenty years, many Pacific Islanders are wondering if they will have a future.
Distributed by Bullfrog Films (www.bullfrogfilms.com).
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