Climate talks mean life or death for island states - The China Post

Grenada's Foreign Minister Karl Hood, chairman of the 43-nation Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), whose members are in the frontline of climate change, was even more blunt:

“If we don't act now, some of us will die.”

Many low lying nations can already calculate the cost of rising greenhouse gas emissions in lives lost, economies shattered and landscapes transformed.

...Herman Rosa Chavez, El Salvador's environment minister, said a tropical depression that swept across Central America two months ago flooded 10 percent of his country, causing losses of US$840 million — some four percent of GDP.

“We went from being impacted by one extreme weather event per decade in the 1960s and 1970s, to nine in the last 10 years,” he said, illustrating the accelerating pace of climate change.