As a Pacific island destination, Lateu struggles to sell itself. A typhoon
wiped away its only beach a few years ago and today a handful of squalid
thatched huts stand forlornly on its coastline. It will soon be a deserted
village, its population the first real victims of rising sea levels brought
about by global warming.
Even the village's palm trees are dying, their roots washed away by inexorably
rising seas. The roofs of its thatched huts are leaking, there are gaping holes
in the palm frond walls. All that remains of several are a few pathetic looking
poles, braced against the prevailing wind from the vast expanse of the Pacific.
Lateu's people don't bother to patch their huts anymore, and an unpleasant mould
covers the ground of every dwelling as a result of frequent flooding. For a
while the islanders tried to rise above the surging seas by putting their huts
up on makeshift foundations of coral, but they soon gave up. Now ...