Defending Your Country From Extinction

ere in Paris, the vividness of people’s language often correlates to the intensity of the threats against them. “We have no time left for rhetoric,” Enele Sosene Sopoaga, the prime minister of Tuvalu, said Monday. “Any temperature increase beyond 1.5 degrees will spell the total demise of our and other island nations.” Barnabas S. Dlamini, the prime minister of Swaziland, spoke of a drastic drought destroying agriculture and ecosystems in his southeastern African country. Siaosi Sovaleni, Tonga’s deputy prime minister, said that his country’s “development achievement has been destroyed overnight” by climate change. These are people who would rather not become ghosts. They should haunt us and the powerful negotiating this treaty. They are doing their best to do so.