These images come from Peter Rudiak-Gould, a cultural castaway, who writes winningly of life on a remote island in the Pacific that may be one of global warming’s first casualties. Just one month after his twenty-first birthday, Peter moved to Ujae, a remote atoll in the Marshall Islands located 70 miles from the nearest telephone, car, store, or tourist, and 2000 miles from the closest continent. He spent the next year there, living among its 450 inhabitants and teaching English to its schoolchildren.
Click here to find out more about the island and the book.
Peter says: "Ujae Island is a third of square mile large and as flat as the ocean that surrounds it. It may be seventy miles from the nearest telephone, store, or hotel, and two thousand miles from the nearest continent, but it has hardly escaped geopolitics. Its country--the Republic of the Marshall Islands--has been a WWII battleground and U.S. nuclear testing site. Now the archipelago is one of four sovereign nations expected to become uninhabitable due to global climate change. News of this doomsday prophecy has entered the country, causing internal debate - the notion of devastating sea level rise agrees with local environmental observation and the widespread conviction that life is deteriorating, yet rubs uneasily against belief in God's providence and the Biblical covenant that the Flood will never be repeated."
