There is a fear that as sea levels rise, island countries such as the Maldives, and some Pacific territories, will simply be swamped and disappear.
But the town, situated on the west coast, had stunning views over Last Hope Sound, with snow peaks rising from islands across the water.
But for most of these migrants, that comparative wealth is found in places like this dumpsite, part of a growing sea of poverty that laps at the edges of small, high-rise islands of urban affluence.
The Rising Sea (Island Press, 2009), written with Rob Young, current director of PSDS, focuses on the global threat from sea level rise.
As seas rise, the islands are increasingly inundated by high tides, and islanders believe the sea will swallow their lands in less than a generation.
Isolated northwest-to-southeast tending mounorthwest-to-southeast tending inorthwest-to-southeast tending
Tall summits, golden in the level light, rose like islands over the lake of dark air below.
More immediately, as seas rise, the islands will more frequently deal with large waves that crash farther onto the shore, contaminating their drinkable water supplies with ocean saltwater.
He theorised that as the land rose, oceanic islands sank, and coral reefs round them grew to form atolls.
Thus, lines of reef islands rise from submerged volcanic islands in the central western Pacific, from Tuvalu through (western) Kiribati to the Marshall Islands.
