A group of people surfaced.
Fang Youqun was the first to say in disappointment: "Brother Yang, you are just a country bumpkin."
"That's not a mound of earth, it's an island." Xiang Yang said with a smile.
"Island?" Fang Youqun's eyes widened and he said directly, "Impossible."
"Nothing is impossible. Every year, countless islands disappear and appear on the sea. This is just a newly-born dark island." Xiang Yang said.
"What? The island will disappear?" Now everyone was surprised.
“This is totally unscientific.”
"On the contrary, this is science." Xiang Yang smiled, "If the earth is divided into four hemispheres, the center of the earth should be at the junction of the Pacific Ocean across the north and south latitudes and the east and west longitudes. This point happens to be surrounded by the unfortunate Kiribati. Although Kiribati has a land area of only 800 square kilometers, if the sea area is included, it is more than 3.5 million square kilometers. Let's take Kiribati as an example."
"Unlucky? Why is Kiribati unlucky? And why do we use it as an example?" Fang Youqun asked puzzledly.
"Kiribati is unlucky because other island countries are trying every means to expand their land area as much as possible, even if they do not have the conditions to do so, they will reclaim land. Only Kiribati had 813 square kilometers of land when it gained independence 40 years ago. Today, 40 years later, it has lost 13 square kilometers, leaving only 800 square kilometers of territory." Xiang Yang replied.
Kiribati has a very special international status.
About 5,000 years ago, Austronesians began to live in the Kiribati region. In the early 19th century, Britain took the opportunity of laying the Pacific cable to incorporate it into the British Empire, and later gave it to the United States.
Unfortunately, the United States did not consider Kiribati as an overseas territory and conducted a series of hydrogen bomb tests in Kiribati after World War II.
As we all know, the principles of hydrogen bombs and atomic bombs have many similarities, the most similar of which is that they both have nuclear radiation.
A series of hydrogen bomb tests turned Kiribati, which used to have blue seas and blue skies, into an uninhabitable zone where at least 10% of its land is forbidden.
Although the islands where nuclear tests were conducted were relatively remote, the spread of nuclear radiation caused many surrounding islands and reefs to be contaminated.
Even more unfortunate is that due to global warming, two islands where Kiribati conducted nuclear tests have been submerged by sea water, and now even fishermen dare not go to the nearby waters.
Of course, just because fishermen dare not go there, it doesn’t mean that there is no life under that sea.
Unmanned underwater cameras discovered many creatures in that sea area.
Among them, there are two most representative ones. One is a strange crab that cannot be eaten. The crab has great strength and extremely long limbs. They are more bloodthirsty and ferocious than ordinary crabs. Some biologists suspect that it is a mutated creature after nuclear radiation, but this statement has not been recognized by the mainstream scientific community.
Another creature is a white worm. Its habits are the same as those of sea cucumbers. It hibernates in the summer. The colder it is, the faster it grows. If the temperature rises, it will turn into a pool of water and disappear. Its appearance, except for its color, is generally similar to that of sea cucumbers.
This creature is also believed to be a mutated sea cucumber born from the effects of nuclear radiation.
Of course, the people of Kiribati still live a comfortable life, thanks to world peace.
As a remote island country in the Pacific Ocean.
Kiribati's only source of income is fishing.
But people in their own country basically don't fish, and their fishing skills are not even as good as Qinglongwan.
Those who fish in Kiribati are basically New Zealanders, Austrians, and people from our country.
All the fish caught are exported to New Zealand, Australia and China.
In theory, there is no shortage of seafood in our country, New Zealand or Australia, because we all have very vast territorial waters.
But Kiribati has more than three million square kilometers of territorial waters. In exchange for fishing rights in Kiribati's vast waters, everyone has put in a lot of effort, importing seafood and providing manpower and material assistance.
On Wall Street, there was once a financial tycoon who wanted to spend a lot of money to turn Kiribati into the second Hawaii.
But after the financial tycoon invested billions of dollars, he gave up.
In the whole of Kiribati, apart from some plants with extremely high salt tolerance, only coconut trees can survive.
The salinity of all their land soils is very high, and no matter how deep the wells are dug, fresh water cannot be obtained. From collecting rainwater in the early days to learning how to distill water, and then to today's desalinated water, the islanders have been worrying about fresh water for almost every generation.
The financial giant discovered through practice that selling fresh water in Kiribati is more profitable than tourism.
Xiang Yang shook his head and sighed: "We all think that global warming and the problem of melting icebergs are very far away from us, but in Kiribati, this is a very serious problem."
"From 2009 to now, nearly twenty islands have disappeared in Kiribati, an average of one island per year. The United Nations even predicts that by 2100, the entire Kiribati will be submerged by sea water, and they will be the first country to be submerged," said Xiang Yang.
"W-what?" Everyone opened their mouths wide. "The whole country is submerged by the sea?"
"This is entirely possible. The highest altitude in the entire Kiribati is only 2 meters," said Xiang Yang.
Kiribati's leaders publicly admitted more than a decade ago that they had "run out of options".
With the assistance of the European Union, the United States, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, Kiribati spent 6.3 million US dollars to buy 22 square kilometers of land on Vanua Levu Island in Fiji. However, most people in Kiribati are unwilling to leave their homes and still cling to the precarious island.
Why not leave
New Zealand reporters once interviewed the islanders there, and the answers they got were "it's difficult to adapt to the cultural customs and living habits", and some even said "too many people means too many germs, and it's easy to die".
However, the actual reason is that the islanders have been accustomed to enjoying assistance from various countries and charitable foundations for decades and have developed a mentality of getting something for nothing.
This is actually easy to understand. Although the conditions on Kiribati Island are not good, there are still at least water and electricity rations, and daily necessities as well as education and medical care are all donated by outsiders.
For example, Australia donates 15 million Australian dollars to Kiribati every year, New Zealand donates 6 million Australian dollars, and even our neighbor to the east donates 2 million.
Including the aid from the United Nations, the World Bank, the World Health Organization and the Asian Development Bank, Kiribati, with a population of 110,000, receives hundreds of millions of Australian dollars in aid every year. Based on 500 million, an average person can receive more than 20,000 Chinese yuan per year, which is almost as much as the basic salary of a small county town, and this does not include aid such as food and medicine.