The Future of Climate Change Is on Mauritius

Excessive heat. Flash floods. Freak tornadoes. On Mauritius, people and wildlife are struggling to survive the island’s extreme weather conditions. And while government officials acknowledge the climate crisis, they’re limited by Mauritius’ weak economy. In this piece at The Dial—originally part of the essay collection Portrait of an Island on Fire—Mauritian writer Ariel Saramandi writes a poignant and urgent essay about a neglected corner of the world.

I think of the carbon emissions of each plane that lands here. The emissions of each of our 106 hotels. Air conditioning units struggling to cool rooms in peak season. Tourists pouring themselves a bath, cleansing themselves of their 12-hour flight. Ignorant that the rest of us have to live on only four to eight hours of water flowing through our taps most days in high summer. Tourists, their sunscreen-coated bodies plunging into the lagoon, leaving a film on the water, poisoning corals. Tourists, delighting in our bathwater lagoon, look it’s so crystal-clear you can see the bottom, a dead zone framed in buoys, cleansed of most of its creatures.

I read books written mostly by white men in supremely rich countries on how to think about climate disaster. Some concepts I understand in my body: global warming as a hyperobject, heat like honey glistening all over my skin, so viscous that showering won’t remove the stickiness.

I read books that trace the contours of my lifeline. The statistics that predict our future, that suggest the manner of our deaths, the stages and degrees at which our bodies will gradually shut down.