Over Thanksgiving I went to Rapa Nui, aka Easter Island. It’d been a dream destination ever since I encountered the gigantic stone heads (known as moai) in “Super Mario Land”, the 1989 Game Boy title. Seeing the moai in person—walking among them, peering into their empty, imposing eyes—was one of the most remarkable experiences of my life. I don’t usually brag about being a tourist, but I do about this one. Unlike virtually every other iconic cultural construction—the Eiffel Tower, the Taj Mahal, the Statue of Liberty, even the Great Pyramid of Egypt—Rapa Nui truly felt like an accomplishment to witness.
Aside from a few long-distance cruise lines, the only way to get to the island is to hop a five-hour flight from Santiago, Chile, making it a very long journey from most of the world. Flights from Tahiti and Peru that were suspended during covid have yet to resume.
But this remoteness is one of its biggest strengths. It is blissfully free of McDonald’s and Intercontinentals and shopping malls. According to our tour guide, the island’s roughly 8,000 natives like it this way. While tourists are welcome, they cannot visit the legendary moai sites without a local chaperone, also a change from pre-covid times. This is not a White Lotus locale in the making.
Unfortunately, the old adage that climate change knows no borders is especially relevant—and ironic—on a tiny island over 2,000 miles away from the next-closest cluster of human civilization. I hadn’t traveled to Rapa Nui looking for a climate story. In fact, I didn’t think much about climate at all. The weather was perfect: warm, sunny, breezy, and mildly humid. It rained for an hour or two on our first day but quickly calmed down.
Apparently, the place could use a lot more moisture: a multi-year drought is worrying residents, especially over the fate of the legendary moai. In 2022, a wildfire tore through a significant moai site, damaging several statues beyond repair. The tragedy of this incident is compounded by the fact that the fire was started by ranchers tending to their land and quickly grew out of control, according to Reuters.
This article is the only piece of English-language media I could find on the incident. The piece also describes tension over the island’s governance contributing to poor ranching practices and how wildfires have increased rapidly in recent years—indeed, we saw smoke rising from a distant field during our tour. Nowhere does the article mention climate change, although it’s not hard to connect the dots.
This is a classic story of climate change exacerbating longstanding societal tensions. As a Californian, I’m certainly no stranger to concerns over drought and wildfire. Still, I did not expect to spend my vacation digesting a similar story playing out in a vastly different context.
I’ve heard from more than one person that my moai photos look Photoshopped (I guarantee they are not). I think it’s the overall surreality of the place, the sheer cognitive dissonance that sets in when you think about what it took for the moai to exist at all, among the greatest accomplishments in the history of human art and culture. Modern technology has allowed their image to spread around the world, to become part of the visual fabric of humanity. I hope, for their sake, that technology also allows Rapa Nui’s climate story to spread, so that more people who cherish its heritage can help it survive.