One Blue Marble Blog

The Republic of Maldives — a bevy of coral atolls in the Indian Ocean that are particularly vulnerable to climate change and rising sea levels — is becoming the change it wishes to see in the world by pledging to become the world’s first carbon neutral nation. President Mohamed Nasheed says that his country will switch to renewable sources of energy — including wind and solar — to power the 250 inhabited islands, now home to 400,000 residents. The Maldives would also burn coconut biomass to run a power plant when wind and solar are not available, and gradually switch to electric boats, cars, trucks, and buses for transportation needs.

The plan is expected to cost $110 million per year for a decade, which is a fair chunk of change for such a small population base, but then importing gasoline and oil is expensive, too. If oil prices rebound to $100 a barrel, as many analysts expect to happen within three years, then this investment will be repaid in 11 years.

“Many politicians’ response to the looming catastrophe, however, beggars belief,” Nasheed wrote in an editorial in The Observer.

“Playing a reckless game of chicken with Mother Nature, they prefer to deny, squabble and procrastinate rather than heed the words of those who know best…. In a grotesque Faustian pact, we have done a deal with the carbon devil: for untold fossil fuel consumption in our lifetime, we are trading our children’s place in an earthly paradise.

Today, the Maldives will opt out of that pact… Spearheaded by a switch from oil to 100 percent renewable energy production within a decade, the Maldives will no longer be a net contributor to greenhouse gas emissions.”

Editor’s Note: I have several thoughts. On one hand, a few analysts are suggesting that the Maldives’ low-carbon transition is intriguing because it could provide a model for poorer nations to improve their circumstances while making a contribution to slowing climate change.

But on the other hand, the recent science is far from encouraging, and it seems very likely that people in the Maldives will have to evacuate the atolls in a generation or two. A cynic would tell them to save their money, and start evacuating now.

But I find myself moved by the symbolism, and angry on behalf of a people I have never met.

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were. Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee…