The status of Tuvalu

I encourage you to read this story about Tuvalu -- one of the South Pacific islands where environmental changes are causing significant problems for the residents.  http://ht.ly/3g91d . 

I find it interesting/sad that some of the people have such strong faith to believe that they will be o.k. when all evidence suggests otherwise.  I am less convinced that promises to Noah reportedly made a very long time ago are going to keep these people from having to find a new location for their country if they want to survive.

Recently, there has been a lot of talk about food insecurity in the U.S. -- people who don't always have enough money to buy sufficient amounts of food.  Poverty is something we need to do something about (around the world), but these small island nations have a much more serious issue at hand.  I hope that they are not the "canaries in the coal mine" for the rest of the planet.

The island nation of Tuvalu was is quite poor.  They couldn't affort to send a delegation to COP15 so had volunteers from Europe helping to get their message to the attendees and sell the woven signs to make money for the country.

Special Envoy Todd Sterns previews COP16

As the Moravian College delegation prepares to head to Mexico to attend COP16, we are paying close attention to the media reports, the comments of those who will be involved in the negotiations and public perceptions on the topic of climate change.

The press conference with the U.S. Special Envoy for Climate Change Todd Sterns gives an overview of the U.S. perspective on the international negotiations.  You can listen to this at:

http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1857622883?bctid=684537336001

You can read an article about my reflections on COP15 almost a year later at http://lgnc.org/category/news

We hope that you follow our reporting and commentary from Cancun starting next week.  dwh

High level session reports given during COP15 in 2009