Editor's note: Early Signs: Reports From a Warming Planet is a joint project of the U.C. Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, Salon and NPR's "Living on Earth." The series runs Fridays through May 5 in Salon, and you can find radio versions of each story on "Living on Earth's" Web site. Read about how the series came into being here.
One day in the late 1980s, Penisita Taniela was sitting on a straw mat in his stilt-raised house over a narrow slit of coral in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. He fixated on the mesmerizing news blaring via satellite from New Zealand: Scientists visiting the islands of Tuvalu had determined that someday, the entire country would drown. Waves had already washed over his island when big storms hit, so the news didn't sound entirely improbable. But it did sound scary.
"I was thinking there would be flooding, and maybe I would have to help my family survive… like building some big boat and paddle in the water to save my family," Peni remembers.
He rushed to his father, Telaki, who had already heard the rumors. But to Telaki, that all seemed very far away. "Don't worry about that," Telaki said to Peni. "We are just waiting for many years, not now."
But over the next decade, Telaki himself began to notice changes on their home island of Funafuti: high tides getting higher, eroding beaches, water coming up through the soil.
"I said to myself, 'Yes, the scientists are really telling the truth, so it's a good time to do something than wait until the last minute,'" said Telaki. He had decided that rather than stay in Tuvalu and watch the sea slowly overtake his island, it was time to change his fate. And as for the two houses he had built in Tuvalu? "I just got up and left them behind," said Telaki.
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/03/31/tuvalu/index_np.html
