It is 2014, and today is World Environment Day. To mark the occasion, the National Statistics Office yesterday issued figures to mark the day, and the conclusions are quite worrying.

The mean temperature in Malta over the past 30 years was higher than the climatic norm of 18.6C. It has been a long established benchmark that if the world’s temperature rises by 4C, we would see a catastrophic alteration of the world’s climate, leading to huge surges in sea levels and the disappearance of clouds, which would in turn lead to widespread desertification. This, in turn, would also lead to less ability to grow more food to accommodate a burgeoning world population.

Despite the current lack of wealth distribution in the world, there is enough food grown to feed every single person adequately.  But unless emissions are cut drastically, the world’s temperature is set to rise by that catastrophic amount – which is 2 degrees higher than what the world believes it needs to achieve in order to prevent a planetary meltdown.

The irony of it all, is that even though small island nations like Malta might do their damndest to curb emissions, they are will contribute the least (in terms of volume) to the world’s situation, but they will be the hardest hit.

Some islands in the Pacific are already disappearing and their governments are appealing to Australia to give them a spot of land to rebuild their nation. And the situation in Malta is not all that different, despite our indifference as a people.

Prof. Lino Briguglio yesterday unveiled a 3-D simulation of what could be expected to happen to Marsascala if sea levels rose by one metre and the situation is not at all expected to be pretty. Large swathes of the locality would literally be underwater within 40 years. And here is the horror of it... in the last 40 years, sea levels have actually risen by that same amount over the past 40 years, and given that the process is accelerating, it could take much, much less for it to happen.

And this is where we need to start thinking ahead. Malta cannot stop rising sea levels and climate change. We are too small and our effect would be minimal on the overall environment.

While we have a global obligation to curb our emissions – if not for our sake, for the sake of future generations – we have a moral obligation and a duty to find ways to mitigate rising sea levels. We are but a speck of rock in the middle of the sea and ways must be found to tackle this massive threat to our nation’s existence in the future. If not, we might be asking for a small slice of Sicily so we can relocate there.