Delegates from island nations have come to the climate summit in Cancun to talk about sea level rise. Their concerns are understandable. Current projections for sea level rise range from 1 to 2 meters by end of the century if global temperatures rise 2 to 4 degrees C. A recent Oxford University study estimates these islands face devastatingly high annual costs to repair damage and maintain infrastructure from sea level increases of these magnitudes.
"All of us face disaster. We don't want to be the forgotten, the sacrificed countries of the 21st century."
Antonio Lima, UN ambassador for the Cape Verde Islands
The 43 nations making up the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) have come to Cancun to demand action. Unfortunately, they will only get excuses and lies from the big carbon polluters.
The 43 have flatly rejected suggestions by rich countries that they could use adaptation money to build sea defences and say they cannot compromise on their position that the world must seek to hold temperatures to no more than a 1.5C rise rather than the 2C now proposed by Britain, Europe and the US.
"For us, anything not below 1.5C is a red line," said Dessima Williams, vice-chair of Aosis. "It costs $4,500 a metre just to protect airports, so we would need hundreds of billions of dollars. We cannot compromise. But now the rich countries want us to be collateral damage," said Albert Binger, science adviser to the alliance.
The Guardian, Dec 1, article by John Vidal
There in no real commitment to a rapid transition to low carbon energy, especially in the United States. The political will for pulling government supports for fossil fuels and increasing the price of carbon beyond global market levels does not exist. When the largest carbon polluter per capita refuses to act, the precedent for inaction by other countries is set. Japan and Brazil just announced their intention to walk away from even the weak goals set forth in the Kyoto Protocol. As a result, even the "target" of limiting greenhouse gas emissions and global temperatures to a 2 degree C rise over this century is not meaningful. The most recent global temperature projections for "business as usual" carbon dioxide emissions cluster near an increase of 4 degrees C (7.2 degrees F), probably within 50 years. In other words, mitigation of sea level rise and other adverse consequences is likely to fail.
The evidence available from new simulations with the HadCM3 GCM and the MAGICC SCM, along with existing results presented in the IPCC AR4, suggests that the A1FI emissions scenario would lead to a rise in global mean temperature of between approximately 3°C and 7°C by the 2090s relative to pre-industrial, with best estimates being around 5°C. Our best estimate is that a temperature rise of 4°C would be reached in the 2070s, and if carbon-cycle feedbacks are strong, then 4°C could be reached in the early 2060s—this latter projection appears to be consistent with the upper end of the IPCC’s likely range of warming for the A1FI scenario.
Betts et al. (2011)

The failure of the world largest carbon polluters to change their ways in the foreseeable future means that island nations need to prepare for an increase in sea levels in this century of at least 1 meter. However, preparation and adaptation is expensive and the developed nations have no intention of providing financial assistance.
Promises of financial assistance to poorer countries made in Copenhagen have not been kept. Of $30 billion in pledges to developing nations for 2010-2012, only $3 billion has actually been committed. Even those commitments must be regarded with suspicion. Those funds have been subjected to a variety of accounting stunts by donor nations that in many instances double count the amount delivered. To add insult to injury, now many of the industrialized nations want to change financial assistance from grants to loans. For island nations with small tourism and agriculture economies, they will drown in rising seas and debt.
Europe was accused of taking unfair advantage of poor countries last night when senior officials said that it was better to make them pay for loans to reduce climate emissions rather than give them grants.
Aid campaigners and developing nations have also condemned as a "complete mess" the differences between rich countries in how they account for aid pledges. They say donors are double-counting climate aid and using "creative accounting" to make climate pledges look more impressive.
The Guardian, Dec 1, article by John Vidal
Some of the lowest life forms on the planet are now demanding that the United States walk away from the pitiful pledges it has already made to assist poor nations.
Four Senate Republicans are urging the State Department to freeze new funding for international climate change programs, saying the spending should cease to help rein in the deficit.
The lawmakers wrote to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Thursday amid the United Nations's climate change summit in Cancun, Mexico, where climate finance is a key topic.
“As the sixteenth Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is set to enter its second week, we remain opposed to the U.S. commitment to full implementation of the Copenhagen Accord, which will transfer billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars to developing nations in the name of climate change,” states the letter from Sens. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), David Vitter (R-La.) and George Voinovich (R-Ohio).
Never mind that these four "deficit hawks" have long supported the transfer of billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars to subsidize oil, gas, and coal companies.
Without meaningful mitigation of sea level rise associated with climate change and financial assistance to facilitate adaptation, island nations face a difficult future. Their concerns about being "sacrificed" or becoming "collateral damage" are well-founded.
Vulnerability to sea-level rise is not uniform and small islands, Africa and south, southeast and east Asia are recognized as the most vulnerable regions. This reflects their high and growing exposure and low adaptive capacity. These regions are the areas where protection is most likely to not occur or fail, and they collectively contain a significant proportion of potential environmental refugees, especially the Asian regions. Many of the people in Asia live in deltas, which are extensive and often subsiding coastal lowlands, amplifying global changes and making them more challenging environments for adaptation. Small islands have relatively small population and given that implementing protection could also present significant problems, forced abandonment seems a feasible outcome for small changes in sea level. Hence, the threats to these vulnerable regions provide some of the strongest arguments for mitigation to avoid a 4°C world. In addition, adaptive capacity needs to be enhanced in these vulnerable regions, regardless of the magnitude of sea-level rise. Realistic assessments of responses are required across the spectrum of adaptation: at the extreme, planned retreat is to be preferred to forced abandonment.
Nicholls et al. (2011)
It should also be noted that projections of sea level rise focus on a gradual increase tied to global temperatures. These gradual increases are driven by sea water expansion from rising water temperatures and increased influx of glacial melt water. However, the paleoclimate record provides evidence of abrupt increases in sea levels, probably from dynamic changes in continental ice sheets.
Planning and infrastructure construction also has to account for storm surges on top of sea level increases to avoid catastrophic failures. Here is an example of the impact of a 5-foot storm surge on top of a 2.5-foot increase in sea level on the Boston area. It shows the synergistic effect of a modest increase in sea level with a large extratropical ("nor'easter") storm.
Fort Point would be entirely flooded. Along the Neponset River, water would swell onto the shore, submerging areas well over six feet. And the Harbor Point Club House, where the presentation took place, would also be swamped.
While waterfront areas like South Boston, Dorchester, East Boston, and Charlestown would be immediately affected, a severe storm would also overwhelm the Charles River Dam, bringing flood waters to the Back Bay, the South End, and parts of Cambridge.
For island nations, a direct hit from a powerful hurricane will produce much larger than 5-foot storm surges. When combined with a three- to six-foot increase is sea levels from climate change, the effects would be catastrophic on vulnerable infrastructure.
It will take a miracle of conscience and courage by the big carbon polluters to avert a bleak future for island nations. Miracles do not happen. No matter how legitimate the concerns of island nations, their pleas will fall on deaf ears. The industrialized nations are not going to substantially reduce carbon emissions or provide the financial assistance to those countries that can least afford to adapt to the consequences of climate change. Humanity will gladly sacrifice the planet before it will rein in the excesses of laissez faire capitalism.