Maybe go to Tuvalu and try some of their imported water, or eat some of their famous canned cargo "meat". Tuvalu and other islands really are becoming uninhabitable for humans so let's be nice ya?

I've lived for 2 years on a small island with imported table water and canned meat as a child. What's the big deal?

In case you missed the news, Tuvalu isn't sinking or becoming uninhabitable because somewhere else someone is doing something evil.

You're right no one is doing anything evil. I'm glad you realize that, because a lot of folks get hung up on morality and forget to process the actual concrete situation before their eyes.

Tuvalu isn't the International Space Station. If a population of 10,000 people have to import food and water, then their state has failed and it's time to wake up and start doing some accounting and maybe ask for help to stabilize the situation. Note when I say stabilize, I don't mean the medical definition where a patient can simultaneously be "stable" and also teetering on the edge of death, I mean true stability, like a bar of gold sitting at the bottom of a hill.

No one is doing anything evil. Despite that there are still a lot of problems with how basic needs like food and water are met in Tuvalu and solving those problems is going to be expensive and politically/socially very complicated. My cousin in Aotearoa burned his brother's house down because he didn't want to share gravel from his quarry. You think these men would share food with eachother if everything went off? Or water? There are tons of little blood feuds like that out here that would go off if it suddenly turned out there were no more boats coming.

Until the neocolonial period, there were massive land thefts in the pacific. A lot of the best land for fishing and farming was taken and converted to resorts and suburbs by people who have incorrectly taken the resources of wealthy nations for granted. In order to achieve stability, a lot of people have to move, buildings need to be cleared, ecosystems need to be restored. It all costs money, and it's only going to become more expensive as the situation develops over the next ten years.

I'm glad you see all states as blameless in this situation, because the work required to investigate and assign blame is a huge waste of time and resources. The facts are that there is a massive food and water crisis brewing in the pacific ocean; there are local actions which can help to stabilize communities in anticipation of said crisis; there are also measures that foreign stateses can take to reduce their emissions and such efforts could help avert or mitigate what will most certainly be a very wet and deadly refugee crisis.

How do you assign blame for sea level change? Is there any other offense where you can sue the offender before any actual damages happen?

Fine polluters proportionally based on net greenhouse gas emisions put the money into some kind of foreign aid fund.

Not sure why precedent is required, as such would be a logical fallacy; I will give an example because it sounds like that would reassure you that such policy could be just: in the U.S. you can sue the federal government to repeal regulations formed by arms of the executive branch. The requirements are different for different agencies, but for NOAA no damage to life or property is actually required for such a suit. One can simply argue that their rule is based on poor quality research.

Nice, everyone is culpable so no one is. Kind of like how mobs worked.

Of course it’s a money grab. I don’t think any of these countries are interested in retribution so much as wanting to preserve their current lifestyles. Increased flooding and storms means those lifestyles become more expensive.

> wanting to preserve their current lifestyles

You know the GDP per capita in Vanuato and Tuvalu is about $3000, or roughly one tenth of the poorest US state, Mississippi?

Source: https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&...

I'd like to see a comparison of what you can get with $3000 in Tuvalu vs. what you can get with $30000 in Mississippi.

Prices for most things would be (much, much) more expensive in Tuvalu than Mississippi, pretty much everything has to be imported at very small scale and high cost and if it's remotely affordable it's because of aid from countries like New Zealand and Australia subsidising it.

Then you need to look at the GDP per capita (PPP). The numbers are not that different.

What does the GDP matter?

Without putting too fine a point on it; if their way of life was being preserved in a large first-world community it might be a reason for government get involved or declaring a national emergency or somesuch. It isn't a very impressive standard.

People can go and live in a very basic way if they like; that is on them. There are communities that do it here and there. It just doesn't look like the Tuvaluvians have made that choice, and we know the vast majority of people prefer having luxury and comfort. Tuvaluvians are probably a lot like everyone else in the world in that they want to improve their living standard by an order of magnitude rather than keep on living with basically nothing on some island somewhere.

It is easy to romanticise subsistence lifestyles but very few people voluntarily choose them when they see an alternative. The consensus position is wealth and infrastructure is the right choice. It is reasonable to assume they also want this and that their actions are generally aligned to improving their position rather than holding steady.

There is no holding steady. Pouring more money on the situation in the hopes of maintaining the status quo will just get lots of people killed... more than the normal amount of people who usually get killed. Glamour is opium for the masses, it's a high-level mind-control spell cast on oppressed people to confuse and persuade them. Most victims of glamour will never actually have access to the fantastical things that they've witnessed and as they get wise to that, they start to break stuff. Remember the Oktober Revolution komrade? If Tuvalu really leans into that strategy, they'll be setting the course for their own destruction and also depriving the continental world of a good role model for climate hazard mitigation; any effective strategies from the pacific will eventually be exported to continental coasts and interiors as their situations degrade at a slower rate.