I am sitting next a Christmas tree. It is 88 degrees out and 95% humidity, but I am sitting next to a Christmas tree. I guess I still haven't gotten used to Christmas in the tropics. The Gizo Hotel hasn't missed a beat though.

We're back at the Hotel again today for Internet part two. We have to restock on Malarone, our anti-malarial of choice, which you can't get here. We are also trying to time our mail forwarding with the holidays, and ensuring that all of the stuff we just bought online at defender.com for the boat is there before we ship. The list goes on.

We met an NGO aid worker here today. He says the Gilbertese are having the hardest time recovering from the tsunami because they have no kastom land to move to. The entire country of Kiribati is slowly being submerged as the climate changes and sea levels rise. Kiribati consists of three island chains, the Line, Pheonix and Gilbert islands. Some of the Gilbert folks (for reasons of reduced habitable space and unsustainable levels of reproduction) were relocated here to the island of Ghizo, just across the harbor from Gizo town. When the wave came it wrecked their settlement pretty good, but unlike the Solomon Islanders they don't have other hereditary land here to retreat to.

Climate change is causing problems in all of the low lying atolls in the Pacific. The country of Kiribati is perhaps the most threatened. The entire nation consists of atolls and will perhaps disappear below the waves in a hundred years if the scientists who predict a 50 centimeter sea level rise are correct. There are atolls in the Solomons, like Ontong Java, that have the same problem. In fact, Papau New Guinea, the Federated States of Micronesia, French Polynesia, nearly every nation in the Pacific has concerns.