Here is why I spend all of my time working on climate change issues and why we are gathering on the beach here in Southern California on October 24 in Manhattan Beach for 350.org International Day of Climate Action to demonstrate what sea level rise will do to us here on the West Coast:
Please watch this BBC video and learn what’s going on right now in your own world. You will be amazed and you will wonder why you never saw anything about this in the mainstream media.
Like the people of the Carteret Islands I wrote about in my “We Are ALL Tongan,” post of last month, the people of Pacific islands of Kiribati are suffering from sea level rise and other climate change impact right now and they will be forced to leave their home of the past thousands of years. They will have to evacuate their islands.
Their President doesn’t know where they will go or who will help them.
So far, very few people know anything about this and even fewer seem to care when they do find out.
They remain uncaring at their own personal risk for those who are safe now will not be safe tomorrow. Unless we step up and start acting right now it will be too late a few years from now.
Only the most ignorant and incompetent among us denies the reality of climate change and what it is bringing our way unless we drastically cut our use of fossil fuels and greenhouse gas emissions.
The rest of us have no acceptable excuse. We know better. We understand the concept of climate justice and know that we will be judged by what we do and how we respond. We also know there will be no escape for us.
The clock is ticking, every year we delay, the greater the damage, the more extensive the human misery.
So join me and the South Bay Los Angeles 350 Climate Action Group on October 24 on the beach at the Manhattan Beach pier to be part of the Amazing Waving Human Tide Line. We’ll demonstrate for Southern California and the rest of the world what’s coming our way unless we change our ways right now.
Creative Greenius 
Kam na mauri raomi,
I worked on Nauru from 1963 to 1966 for the BPC as an electrician – it was my privilege and joy to meet and work with the iKiribati and on return to Australia I bought a 25ft yacht – the “Austral Vertue” – and set sail for NZ, Fiji, Tuvalu and Kiribati in 1971. I love the iKiribati dearly, I owe to them much of my education in life, manners, ideals and philosophy – I should have learnt all this from my Aboriginal Australian brothers and sisters but we Anglo Aussies were kept away from these wonderful people while they were disgracelfully treated by officialdom.
So instead it is to the people of Kiribati that I owe so much. I spent nearly 12 months in the Kiribati on my first visit on the yacht and met many of my friends that had returned home from working on Nauru. I returned in 1974 and helped deliver the “Teika Raoi” fishing boat from the UK with Taom Ball [i Betio] again I spent some months in the islands. Although I have been a member of Friends of the Earth since 1975 and have learnt much of the human impact on our fragile planet I never thought that my favourite people would be threatened with having to evacuate their beautiful country, I was more concerned with the threat from nuclear weapon experimentation, and war mongering by you know who!!
I also made a brief visit in recent years with my wife and was saddened to see the damage the Betio/Bairiki causeway caused and the over-crowding on southern Tarawa but it was still great to be amongst the people and see some of my friends again, thrill to the batarei – for me, the music, dance and oratory of iKiribati is one of the richest in the world.
I made out my will to leave something for Aboriginal Australia and the iKiribati – now what do I do?
After seeing the BBC film my heart aches for these wonderful people, their slapstick sense of humour their honesty, pride, dignity and joy for living, may the gods whoever they are, bless and care for them because our capitalist/greed system sure is not prepared to do anything. Tiabo, Mike McKeon
The Greenius – Thanks, Mike! Really appreciate you sharing your first hand experiences with us. Peace and blessings to you in the new year ahead.