UN Chief's SOS: 'The Ocean Is Overflowing'

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres wants the bucks coming in to fight climate change to go way up in order to make sea levels go down, and he says there's no time to waste. Speaking from Tonga, Guterres called sea-level rise a "worldwide catastrophe" that's specifically endangering Pacific islands. As CNN reports, Guterres put it starkly at the Pacific Islands Forum: "The ocean is overflowing. This is a crazy situation: Rising seas are a crisis entirely of humanity's making. A crisis that will soon swell to an almost unimaginable scale, with no lifeboat to take us back to safety." Guterres issued an SOS that he said stood for "Save Our Seas." More, also via the AP:

• A report that Guterres' office commissioned found that sea level lapping against Tonga's capital Nuku'alofa had risen 8.3 inches between 1990 and 2020, twice the global average of 3.9 inches. Apia, Samoa, has seen 1 foot of rising seas, while Suva-B, Fiji has had 11.4 inches. "This puts Pacific Island nations in grave danger," Guterres said. About 90% of the region's people live within 3 miles of the rising oceans, he said.
• Since 1980, coastal flooding in Guam has jumped from twice a year to 22 times a year. It's gone from five times a year to 43 times a year in the Cook Islands. In Pago Pago, American Samoa, coastal flooding went from zero to 102 times a year, according to the WMO State of the Climate in the South-West Pacific 2023 report.

• Sea level rise is now the fastest it has been in 3,000 years, Guterres said.
• Big cities that have seen sea levels rise at least 50% higher than the global average include Shanghai; Perth, Australia; London; Atlantic City, New Jersey; Boston; Miami; and New Orleans. New Orleans topped that list with 10.2 inches of rise in the 30 years preceding 2020.
• "The alarm is justified," said S. Jeffress Williams, a retired US Geological Survey sea level scientist. He said it's especially bad for the Pacific islands because most of the islands are at low elevations, so people are more likely to get hurt.
• Guterres' final word: Pacific island nations must "speak loud and clear," as they contribute so little to climate change and reap many of the penalties of it. "They have a moral authority to ask those that are creating accelerating the sea level rise to reverse these trends."

(More sea level rise stories.)