Maldives Unimpressed with G-8 Pledge to Limit Emissions

Climate Change Requires a Real Movement
by Mohamed Nasheed, president of Maldives
September 20, 2009
cross-posted from Huffington Post

"...[N]o one in the Maldives is applauding the recent pledge of the G-8 nations to try and hold temperature increases to 2 degrees and the atmospheric concentration of CO2 to 450 parts per million. A few years ago, those might have been laudable goals, but new science makes clear they're out of date."

"After the rapid Arctic sea ice melt in the summer of 2007, scientists realized that global warming was happening more quickly and on a larger scale than they had anticipated. Wherever they looked -- high-altitude glaciers, hydrological cycles, the spread of mosquitoes -- they found change happening decades ahead of schedule. In January 2008, James Hansen, one of the world's leading climatologists, published a series of papers showing that the actual safe limit for carbon in the atmosphere was at most 350 parts per million. Anything higher than that limit, warns Hansen, could seed "irreversible, catastrophic effects" on a global scale."

"We're already above that figure -- the current concentration is 390 ppm and rising. For the Maldives, climate change is no vague or distant irritation but a clear and present danger to our survival. But the Maldives is no special case; simply the canary in the world's coal mine. Neighboring Asian countries like Bangladesh are already suffering from saltwater intrusion as seas rise; Australia and the American southwest are enduring epic drought; forests across western North America are succumbing to pests multiplying in the growing heat. And all of this is with temperature increases of nearly 1 degree -- why on earth would we be aiming for 2 degrees?"


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