Post #645883 by christiki295 on Fri, Jul 27, 2012 10:51 PM

I never heard of this nation prior to the 2012 Olympics, and what a horrific, yet thought provoking warning its president issued:

Phosphate mining—first by European companies in the early 1900s and later our own—cleared the lush tropical rainforest that once covered our island’s interior, scarring the land and leaving only a thin strip of coastline for the island’s 10,000 people to live on. The legacy of exploitation left us with few economic alternatives and one of the highest unemployment rates in the world, nearly 90 percent.

I am not looking for sympathy, but rather warning you what can happen when a country runs out of options. The world is headed down a similar path with the relentless burning of coal and oil, which is altering the planet’s climate, melting ice caps, making oceans more acidic, and edging us ever closer to a day when no one will be able to take clean water, fertile soil, or abundant food for granted.