While governments debate the impacts of emissions, and politicians in developed nations bemoan the cost of reducing those emissions, the climate continues to deteriorate. Ice, from Antarctica to the North Pole, is melting at rates never seen before. Glaciers, like those in the Andes, may disappear in the next decade. As a result, sea levels have risen by about three millimeters per year since 1993, an upwelling enhanced by thermal expansion as warmer water expands to fill more space.

In Tianjin, China, a coastal port, the seas are about 195 millimeters higher than they were in 1978. On the port side of London, the Thames Barrier - designed to protect the city from the ocean - had to be closed in March due to a storm surge. The barrier was first built in 1982 when sea levels were rising about 1.8 millimeters per year, and has been closed 108 times since.

Some say the earth's temperature hasn't risen statistically since 2003. Robots confirm this, but scientists think the lack of warming may actually be a glitch in the way temperatures are measured, much like the mid-20^th century error that showed sudden cooling which didn't exist. Other scientists speculate that the oceans have kicked in to moderate rising temperatures, acting like heat sinks, and this has resulted in more melting ice. If so, it's a vicious cycle, and one that will put Bangladesh, and its estimated 160 million people, underwater by the turn of the century.

Bangladesh, with a land mass smaller than Iowa, has 20 million more individuals than Russia, a nation covering one-eighth of the world's land surface. In Bangladesh, people are packed like sardines in an alluvial floodplain that seldom rises above sea level except along its eastern border with Myanmar. There, a range of low mountains produces elevations less than 1,500 feet. Thirty percent of this land floods naturally during the annual monsoon season. Fifteen percent had been projected to disappear as a result of seas rising through global warming. New estimates suggest the entire country may disappear.

Flooding is an age-old problem, but people have adapted. Malaria and dengue fever (both water-mediated diseases) are other, ancient problems to which the population has adapted with the help of modern medicines. A 20^th century problem, water pollution - caused by  arsenic-containing compounds used to prevent rodents and plant pests in crops - further deteriorates drinking water supplies, and the Western companies (and their governments) who were glad to sell these compounds seem less amenable to financing new wells. Even so, new wells could be dug to provide water, except for one final - and seemingly inescapable problem - also caused by global warming and rising seas.

This is saline inundation. Seas have risen so high they are literally percolating through the soil in Bangladesh and contaminating the already polluted drinking water. The problem is exacerbated by falling water tables in the north and central portions of the country. As the hydrostatic pressure of surface water decreases, sea water makes incursions. The gradual subsidence of geological formations due to centuries of tapping surface waters is another cause, as is the increasing salination of water supplies due to the soil burden of salt deposited by aeons of monsoon activity. The exact mechanisms of saline inundation are not well understood, but their effects are evident. In Bangladesh, where 10 million people live within three feet of the Indian Ocean, and 80 percent of the protein in their diets comes from fish, the ocean - once friend - has turned into an enemy.

These same importunate oceans have, for the first time in modern history, sunk an entire inhabited island. Lohachara, located in the Bay of Bengal at the confluence of the Ganges and Brahmaputra Rivers, is gone, its inhabitants caught up in a migration which is projected to produce 50 million environmental refugees by the end of the decade. At least a dozen more islands in the Bay are slated to disappear within a decade, says Dr. Sugata Hazra of Calcutta University's School of Oceanographic Studies, and scientists now predict the demise of other low-lying islands from New Guinea - off the island chain of Indonesia - to St. Louis in Senegal (off the Atlantic coast of Africa).

The same holds true for low-lying coastal areas. In Alaska, the Yupik Eskimo community is being devastated by erosion, storms and flooding linked to global warming. This community of 400 individuals in six remote villages is receiving $13 million in government aid. It is one of the lucky ones, in terms of funding. According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, or GAO, 86 percent of Alaska's native villages face the same scenario - shoring up flood infrastructure until they can be relocated farther inland. Some of these villages, unwilling to wait for the government to respond, have sued corporations they believe are responsible for climate change.

One, Kivalina, filed a suit in federal court in February of this year charging oil companies like Chevron and BP, utility companies like Duke, and energy companies like Peabody (the world's largest private sector coal company), with providing the products and services that have led to massive carbon dioxide emissions and subsequent global warming. The charges include conspiracy to keep the science of global warming out of the spotlight, or so confuse the public and the media that warming is ascribed to causes other than emissions.

One of the companies Kivalina has charged with conspiracy is Exxon, whose original penalty of $2.5 billion for the 1989 oil spill off the coast of Alaska - the nation's worst - was reduced by the U.S. Supreme Court to a mere $507.5 million. Environmentalists, and the people fighting for Kivalina and other Alaskan native villages, were incensed by the ruling, since Exxon now makes $2.5 billion in two days, thanks to astronomical gas prices.

With Arctic ice breaking up and losing 23-percent of its mass yearly - a trend expected to worsen in 2008 - Alaskan native villagers aren't the only ones in danger. Polar bears, recently granted the designation of "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act, teeter on ice floes and face the wrath of politicians like Alaska's governor, Sarah Palin, whose primary motivation for wanting to de-list the bear seems to be a long-awaited proposal to grant state subsidies to a Canadian company, TransCanada, to build a natural gas pipeline. Again, as is so often the case where government and the environment collide, one need only follow the money to discover the motivation.

In the meantime, while the rich get richer and the energy companies continue pumping out oil and gas, or digging out coal, the poor of the world from the far north to tropical southern seas watch the rising waters with dismay, wondering how long it will be before they, too, sink beneath the waves.

Further Reading:

• Hunger and Climate Change in Bangladesh
• Water Everywhere and Not a Drop to Drink
• Climate Change and Disease: Ending with a Whimper
• The Exxon Valdez Decision
• Falling Water Tables, Falling Harvests
• The High Cost of Doing Nothing on Climate Change
• Polar Bears Didn't Receive Real Protection
• David Takes On Goliath as Alaska Village Sues Energy Firms for Climate Change
• Climate Change and Health: Brace Yourselves