All too often we forget the people paying the biggest price for global warming are those individuals who live on small islands.  These islands are typically at or just above sea level and even small rises in global sea height are threatening to remove these islands from the face of the Earth.  When these islands dissapear, what will happen to the unique cultures that they were home to?  Here is a great poem written by a woman who is experiencing the effects of global warming in a very direct and very real way.  It is a beautiful poem that gives a real and personal insight into the effects of global warming.

OUR PEOPLE ON THE REEF

The swaying palms, the gentle surf lapping upon the sand
A gentle breeze so keen to please slowly gusts across our land
Our island home is all we have known as centuries rolled by
Our island people stood alone on reefs so barren and dry.

But as years go by we wonder why the shoreline is not the same
The things we knew as always true somehow do not remain
The breakers break on higher ground - the outer palms are falling down
The taro pits begin to die and the village elders wonder why.

For what is happening to the beautiful isles we know
Tuvalu, Kiribati and Tokelau - the Marshall isles, that place of smiles
The rising sea will reclaim our ground - nothing but water will abound
Our people forced to leave for higher ground.

While far away they pour their fumes into the clear blue sky
Not knowing and never caring why the world is beginning to die
So land of our forebears despite how much we cared for you
The time will soon be when we must bid you adieu.

Poem by Jane Resture