President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives told a Hay festival audience that grassroots 'street action' was needed to change the focus of the debate on climate change in the US
Patrick Barkham, guardian.co.uk 29 May 10;
A 1960s-style campaign of direct action must ignite on the streets as a catalyst for decisive action to combat climate change, according to President Mohamed Nasheed of the imperilled Maldives. Nasheed told the Hay festival that it was the United States, not China, that was the biggest obstacle to a global agreement to check carbon emissions.
Nasheed, who held an underwater meeting of his cabinet last autumn and is presiding over the relocation of people from some islands because of the effects of warming oceans and rising sea levels, put his hopes in the emergence of "huge" grassroots action after the failure of talks in Copenhagen in December.
"What we really need is a huge social 60s-style catalystic, dynamic street action," he said. "If the people in the US wish to change, it can happen. In the 60s and 70s, they've done that."
But he said the US was where the focus of pressure had to be, whereas China and India were actually far more receptive to the concept of climate change.
"My sense of China is that they tend to believe in climate change. My sense of the US is that a fair amount of them simply don't believe in it," he said.
Interviewed by Ed Miliband, the former energy and climate change secretary, on a video link from the Maldives, Nasheed spoke of the devastating effect that changes in sea levels are having on the islands, which are on average just 1.5 metres above sea level.
People living on 16 islands of the Maldives archipelago are already being relocated but Nasheed, who was educated in Britain and became president at the first multi-party elections in 2008 after spells as a political prisoner, said moving the people of the Maldives somewhere else was not a solution. "Even if we go, I always think where would the butterflies go? Where would the sounds go?"
Miliband, who while in office struck a resolutely optimistic note about the involvement of the US in a new deal on climate change, was now more ambivalent about the American commitment to tackling its emissions. "I have a real fear about where the debate is in the US," he told the audience at Hay.
Nasheed said countries committed to tackling climate change should press ahead with agreements and emissions reductions regardless of whether they took more recalcitrant nations with them.
"We cannot wait for the lowest common denominator where everyone agrees to doing almost nothing," he said.
In a rebuke to the developed world, Nasheed noted how India listened to small countries' fears over the issue. "The refreshing thing about India is they listen to people, certainly they listen to the Maldives," he said.
The Maldives is embarking on a radical programme to become the first carbon-neutral country within 10 years. Its president claimed it was on track with three large wind farms under construction and photovoltaic technologies being developed, although the country is also having to build sea walls to repel the ocean and energy-hungry desalination plants to replace fresh water supplies lost to the sea.
The president, who has endured two spells in prison over the last two decades for criticising the former president and was granted refugee status in Britain, said he was still optimistic that with renewed grassroots action governments would act on climate change.
"I could have lost my life if I'd given it up. By simply believing in life you can get out of situations. I believe in human ingenuity. We are not doomed. We can succeed and we must work along those lines."
Asked whether he would support Ed Miliband in his bid to lead the Labour party, Nasheed said he had met both Miliband brothers. "Have a good fight and may the best man win," he answered diplomatically.
"That's what my mother says as well," added Ed Miliband.
