Tevun-Krus #100

73 - A Day at the Beach - @jinnis - ClimatePunk

A Day at the Beach

By jinnis 

Walking around the island before breakfast takes less time than cooking an egg. Not that there are any eggs left in my provisions. If I'd have an egg, I'd spend my time cooking it instead of walking around the island. But I have no eggs and nothing else suitable for breakfast — and this makes walking seem a reasonable option.

After all, on good days, the ocean carries something edible my way. This doesn't seem to be a lucky day, though. There are no fish, no dead birds, not even a few strands of seaweed to collect.

As it is a sunny day, I decide to ignore my hunger and spend it at the beach. The beach is a stretch of sand where an orchard used to grow not so long ago. The waves eroded away the topsoil and left me with the illusion of my private little sandy paradise. There are no palm trees, not even apple trees anymore, no coconuts, no ice cream, no alcoholic drinks and, sadly, no eggs.

Okay, I admit I keep dreaming of a plate heaped with steaming eggs and bacon. I know it's not going to happen, with the apocalypse, global warming and everything. But a man can dream, can't he? There's not much else to do, anyway. Except maybe to recalculate one more time the exact moment the level of the ocean will stop rising.

I sit down on the beach and dig the yellowed newspaper out of my backpack. The faded print has become near impossible to read, so many times the paper was folded, read, cried over, and crushed by my frustrated hands.

I pick up a stick and start to write the main parameters into a stretch of smooth sand: estimated volume of ice in Antarctica and the northern polar ice cap. Estimated volume of ice in the Greenland ice shield and major glaciers of the Alps. There must have been heaps of glaciers in other countries as well, I think. In the Andes? The Himalayas certainly, but have there been others? Canada, the Rocky Mountains possibly, and what about New Zealand? Why doesn't the newspaper mention them? Did they even bother to give remotely accurate numbers?

I based my strategy on this news clip. While most people fled in panic to major mountain ranges as soon as the water rose, I chose a perfect island-to-be, a place I'd claim as my own after the apocalypse.

Up until now, my venture was successful, even if I ran out of eggs and some other helpful items. I might have brought more provisions, a boat maybe. But all in all, my theory worked. With the only drawback that the place gets smaller by the day.

Calculating, I look up from the endless ocean to the summit of the hill dominating my island. It's not higher than a three storey house, twelve to fifteen metres at most. Then I decide to check the mark set to the left of the beach.

Sometimes it is hard to guess, but today, with the surface of the ocean as calm as a teacup, it's evident: The sea level has risen, again.