For the island nation of Tuvalu, climate change isn't a problem of the future. It's already here.
"I want the world to know that Tuvalu exists," Bernard Kato Ewekia says. We're sitting at a table outside the Big Slope, a pub in Glasgow. It's the second week of this year's United Nations Climate Change Conference, commonly known as COP26 (the twenty-sixth gathering of the UN's so-called Conference of Parties), and Ewekia, 25, is talking about how the climate crisis is destroying his homeland while the rest of the world watches on—or, rather, looks away. "We have small lands, but the people who live there are humans. We are humans." It doesn't matter if you spend over a grand or less than 150 bucks. You'll hear the difference immediately. Get ahead of the times with speakers, plugs, locks—anything made smart by Google. The United States is the only country that can drop bombs on other countries without being at war. Thursday was Veterans Day, which some media outlets greeted with headlines and chyrons about how this was the first November 11 in two decades where the U.S. is not fighting people in faraway lands. MSNBC went with, "BIDEN MARKS FIRST VETERANS DAY IN 20 YEARS WITHOUT WAR," while the New York Times initially had, "Biden Marks First Veterans Day in Two Decades Without a War Underway." It appears this was later amended to, "Biden Marks First Veterans Day in Two Decades Without Troops in Active Combat." These formulas will make your life a whole lot better. Act now, before the one you've had your eye on gets scooped by someone else. When the bell rings, a senator has fifteen minutes to make it to the floor and vote. Max Cleland has missed two votes in three years. He is rolling now, an aide pushing the chair; to keep up with him, you almost have to dogtrot by his side. People slide by, and he knows them all—a smile, a wink, the thumbs-up, a few words. He is feeding, and for a one-armed man, he knows how to press the flesh. The left arm goes around your back, he pulls you to him, and the stub of the right arm thumps against your chest. Max Cleland is a man who must touch and feel. |
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