All the arguments about what actually causes global warming look pretty pointless when you read a story like this one: the Maldive Islands – the highest point of which is a mere 2.4 meters above sea level – are planning to divert tourism income into a fund with which to buy a new homeland elsewhere. [image by notsogoodphotography]

[President Nasheed] said Sri Lanka and India were targets because they had similar cultures, cuisines and climates. Australia was also being considered because of the amount of unoccupied land available.

“We do not want to leave the Maldives, but we also do not want to be climate refugees living in tents for decades,” he said.

[snip]

Nasheed said he intended to create a “sovereign wealth fund” from the dollars generated by “importing tourists”, in the way that Arab states have done by “exporting oil”. “Kuwait might invest in companies; we will invest in land.”

Yet another straw on the camel’s back of geographically-defined nation states? You can bitch about the causes all you want, but when people’s homes start to disappear beneath the sea they’re not going to pay a damned bit of notice to you fiddling while Rome burns.