The Tribune

We have failed.

Despite all the warnings, despite all the advice, despite all the pleas for action, the battle to avoid massive amounts of melting of ice due to global warning has failed.

Climate experts are now talking about us moving beyond the era of global warming, into the era of global boiling.

A new study in the journal Nature Climate Change yesterday revealed that no matter how much we cut back on carbon emissions now, a significant chunk of Antarctic ice is facing an “unavoidable” melt.

The melt will not be fast – the full melt could take hundreds of years – but it will add about six feet to sea levels.

Over the years, successive Bahamian Prime Ministers have warned of the danger we face.

In 2009, Hubert Ingraham warned the UN Convention on Climate Change that climate change “is a serious threat to our economic viability, our social development and our territorial integrity”.

In 2015, Perry Christie warned the 21st Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention on Climate Change in Paris of an “existential threat to the survival of a number of small island developing states”.

Dr Hubert Minnis asked the United Nations General Assembly in 2019: “When one storm can obliterate an island-state or a number of states in one hurricane season: how will we survive, how can we develop, how will we continue to exist?”

And incumbent Prime Minister Philip “Brave” Davis has repeatedly called for action on climate change, warning that climate change is “the greatest existential threat that The Bahamas has ever faced”.

The question we are asking may have to change. Repeatedly, it has been asked “what can we do?”, but now that may become something more pointed. Where will we go?

The Tribune has previously published maps showing the potential effect of global warming on The Bahamas – with vast swathes of islands at risk of flooding that would not just be a case of damage to buildings but would fundamentally reshape the appearance of our islands.

If that is the case, there will be parts of our archipelago that will become uninhabitable.

Waters will rise. Land will be covered. Flooding will increase. Homes will become swamped. How high, how far, those are the measurements now, no longer a matter of if but when.

The scale of the melt can be seen in the language used by researchers – one of the sections of ice, the Thwaites ice shelf, is melting so fast it has the nickname “the Doomsday Glacier”.

Oceanographer Kaitlin Naughten, of the British Antarctic Survey, said that it’s “unavoidable that some of this area is lost”, while University of California Irvine ice scientist Eric Rignot said that part of Antarctica “is doomed”. Another ice scientist from the University of Colorado, Ted Scambos, said the ice sheet “eventually is going to collapse. It’s not a happy conclusion and it is one that I’m only saying reluctantly”.

Naughten speaks of both some hope and regret, suggesting that in the future there may be ways to not just stop but reverse carbon levels, but also noting that if the Victorians of the 1800s had done something to affect the world as we have for future generations, we would not look kindly on them.

She quoted NASA scientist Kate Marvel, saying: “When it comes to climate change we need courage and not hope. Courage is the resolve to do well without the assurance of a happy ending.”

For The Bahamas, we need to summon our own courage. We need to determine our own path. We need to face the future. Or else we will be refugees of the future, fleeing from lands that are no longer inhabitable.

This is not a future we want to face, but it is a future we have to face.

There is a quote, of unknown origin, that we might bear in mind in our situation: The best time to start is yesterday. The next best time is now.