Has the Global Warming been Exeggarated?

The UN’s top climate change body, The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has made a stunning admission. It has issued an unprecedented apology over its flawed prediction that Himalayan glaciers were likely to disappear by 2035. It has now emerged that the prediction in its landmark 2007 report was “poorly substantiated” and resulted from a lapse in standards. “In drafting the paragraph in question the clear and well-established standards of evidence, required by the IPCC procedures, were not applied properly,” the panel said. “The chair, vice-chair and co-chairs of the IPCC regret the poor application of IPCC procedures in this instance.”

So, in the global warming debate- is the debate not over after all?

One bucket of water for Tendulkar's bath!

Here's how Sachin Tendulkar, India's cricket star is promoting to conserve water. The master blaster is involved in a civic campaign that emphasises on the need to conserve water in Mumbai. The six lakes from which Mumbai gets its supply of water is unable to sustain the city's need of more than 20 million people- a perennial water shortage problem amplified last year by the less-than-average monsoon rains.

The main civic body responsible for the city's water supply, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has to cut its water supplies and Mumbai residents are struggling to cope with water shortages. As water woes continue, the Municipal Authority wants to spread the message to Mumbai residents- use every drop of water without any wastage. Here is Tendulkar's message.

"By his own admission, using just a bucketful of water - to waste a minimum quantity of the precious liquid.

He made the admission while shooting for a half-minute social awareness message for Mumbaikars to save precious water. Mumbai suffered a monsoon deficit last year, and the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has shot the clip to spread awareness among the Mumbai residents.

Sachin advised the people they must take only that quantity of water in a glass they require to drink and not waste it.

Elaborating, Sachin also said that his family has given up the luxury of shower for taking bath. Instead, each family member used just a bucketful of water for the daily bath, an official of the BMC said.

In the ad, Sachin will stress the need to conserve water to save the city, which is already plagued by nearly 30 percent water cuts - and faces the threat of more cuts in future.
Speaking in Hindi and Marathi, Sachin will convey an identical message "Paani ki raksha, Mumbai ki suraksha" in the ad shot by Eureka Films for BMC.

The commercial, directed by Meghnath Kulkarni, is expected to hit cinemas and television screens in the next 10 days. Sachin is the BMC's brand ambassador for water conservation." Link

Climate Talks stalled due to lack of Trust

China, India and other developing nations blocked U.N. climate talks on Monday, bringing negotiations to a halt with their demand that rich countries discuss much deeper cuts in their greenhouse gas emissions.

Representatives from developing countries — a bloc of 135 nations — said they refused to participate in any working groups at the 192-nation summit until the issue was resolved.

The move was a setback for the Copenhagen talks, which were already faltering over long-running disputes between rich and poor nations over emissions cuts and financing for developing countries to deal with climate change.

More on this article of AP.

A group of US Republican lawmakers have banded together and they are going to arrive Copenhagen to try to block President Barack Obama's efforts to push for mandatory reductions in greenhouse gases.

Better citizens--not politicians--can solve our nation's problems. Thomas Friedman

Tom Friedman Explains Causes Of America's 'Sub-Optimal Solutions' (VIDEO) in The Huffington Post, it reads : New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman is worried that America is producing "sub-optimal solutions" to big problems like global warming, an education system in decline and a weak economy.

The author of Hot, Flat, and Crowded appeared on The Charlie Rose Show on Friday night to discuss President Obama's recent trip to Asia, and more specifically China. Friedman lamented the failure of US governance and the "forces of paralysis" that surround President Obama. He is worried that China's streamlined, one-party system will be in a better place to implement solutions to large global problems more quickly than the US.

Holding us back, Friedman argues, is a political system too closely connected with money and well-funded interests. Gerrymandering on the part of politicians makes it so that our leaders practically pick us, not the other way around. Friedman also thinks cable news television distorts the truth and that the internet (at its worst) can be a terrible thing for our nation's politics. He also says American businesses have gone AWOL, and hover over America, participating only when it suits their industry's needs.

Friedman says that better citizens--not politicians--can solve our nation's problems.

UN Chief Warns of Increasing Global Hunger

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon opened the three-day UN World Food Security summit in Rome Monday, warning the international community that the world cannot achieve food security without first tackling global warming.

Mr. Ban said the human cost of the food crisis has been enormous. Millions of families have been pushed into poverty and hunger. In the past year, food insecurity has affected about 30 countries.

The U.N. secretary general said there can be no food security without climate security.

"The food crisis is a wake-up call for tomorrow. By 2050 our planet may be the home of 9.1 billion people, over two billion more than today," he said. "At a time when the global population is growing, our global climate is changing. By 2050 we will need to grow 70 percent more food, yet weather is becoming more extreme and unpredictable," he said.

Mr. Ban said a comprehensive agreement is needed at a climate change summit next month in Copenhagen. Such an accord, he said, must provide a firm foundation for a legally binding treaty on climate change.

FAO Director General Jacques Diouf gave a clear picture of the numbers involved.

"One billion hungry people, that is one of every group of six persons in the world, 105 million more than in 2008, five children dying every 30 seconds. Beyond numbers this means suffering for each of these human beings," he said (Link)


As the world's top leaders including the US President Barack Obama have not turned up for this summit, there are fears that the new commitments to deal with the food crisis may not materialise. The Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is the only leader of a G8 country attending the summit. Italy of course is hosting the summit.

The Perils of Climate and Capitalism

We have come a long way from the subsistence fishing of our forebears and many of the values and social norms that served us well have changed. We are facing different challenges now- environmental threats due to global warming and sea level rise, an illegal drug epidemic, appalling living conditions in the capital Male', a highly polarised political atmosphere, religious extremism and intolerance are some of the major problems.

Our forefathers should be lauded for the manner they endured the rigors of harvesting the sea to thrive on a livelihood dependent on fishing. Fishing was the principal industry which was the mainstay of our national economy until the development of the tourism industry which started in the early 1970s. Thrift was the way of life for our forefathers. For them, living by the values of thrift meant that they earned more than what they spent. Our society's needs at that time were the basic necessities relevant to living a simple life.

Just like other capitalistic countries of the world that embraced consumerism through the process of industrialisation, eventually Maldives made consumerism as an integral part of its economy. The Maldives economy depends heavily on foreign imports and the major portion of the country’s revenue is derived from: import duties, tourism tax, dividends from state-owned enterprises and land lease rent. All of these revenue sources are influenced the development of tourism. Tourism is the main driver of our economy today.

As is the case with other capitalist consumer based economies of the world, Maldives too has become a consumer obsessed society following an unsustainable economic model. The more our society consumes, the better for our economy. Globalization has also made it possible for goods and services previously out of reach in developing countries to be much more readily available. Items that at one point in time were considered luxuries—from cars, air conditioning, televisions to cell phones,—are now viewed by many people as necessities. Some of them have have become fashion accessories and status symbols. Scientists have now warned the global community that our environment faces catastrophic consequences due to our excessive consumption leading to global warming and sea level rise. Our planet is in peril and radical changes in our industrial development and in our social behaviour of consumption habits are necessary to create sustainable economic growth.

The Maldivian government has declared its intention to make the country carbon-neutral within a decade. British climate change experts Chris Goodall and Mark Lynas are working to develop a package of measures that aims to eliminate the use of fossil fuel in Maldives by 2020.

The plan includes a new renewable electricity generation and transmission infrastructure with 155 large wind turbines, half a square kilometre of rooftop solar panels, and a biomass plant burning coconut husks. Battery banks would provide back-up storage for when neither wind nor solar energy is available.

The cost for the package of low-carbon measures is estimated to be about $110m a year for 10 years. The scheme should pay for itself quite quickly, because the Maldives will no longer need to import oil products for electricity generation, transport and other functions. If the oil price were to rise to $100 per barrel, the payback period would be as short as 11 years. At current prices, it would take roughly twice as long to break even. (Link)

Carbon dioxide is the main greenhouse gas produced when fossil fuels (oil, gas and coal) are burnt. Presently almost all aspects of our lifestyles from transport, power generators to household appliances rely on oil and that creates the the greenhouse gases detrimental to our environment.

In the past people lived within their means, accumulating individual savings, planning for education and a better future. Now it has become a feature of the capitalist economies to make consumer credit available to to buy houses, to start small and medium businesses or to take student loans. Maldives is following this path of economic development. The ability to borrow money can help to improve the livelihood of people by providing them access to financial resources which they do not possess. But as economists like to point out that consumer credit is a double-edged blade: It can lead to greater opportunity and freedom, but, if promoted deceptively and used recklessly, it can lead to disaster, as has so painfully been revealed by the American subprime loan crisis. The unprecedented loan defaults of the subprime home mortgages, which caused the collapse of the US housing market at the epicentre of the recent financial crisis triggered the current global recession. Click here for a multimedia guide that illustrates cause, and implications of the current financial crisis.

While financial advisers in advanced economies still emphasize the timeless principles of thrift, planning, and living within one's means, they also say the use of productive credit, or credit used to enhance one's financial future, as wholly acceptable. In their view, productive credit included debt incurred in purchasing a home or even such goods as sewing machines, or furniture. In contrast, the use of consumptive credit, or credit which satisfied an immediate need or wish that had little to no future value, is unacceptable.

This is turning out to be only a feel-good theory. By the time American students leave college, many of them often come out with twenty or thirty thousand dollars in debt even before they start a career.

The capitalist world's consumer conformism mentality creates artificial needs promoted by a multi-million dollar advertising media who work for powerful corporations only interested in making more profits. Every individual is made to become a perpetual consumer who is hungry for more.

While the International Monetary Fund (IMF) often quotes the principle of privatising state owned companies as a standard prescription to developing countries who need their assistance, developed countries have now shown us that the state has to intervene to save the private companies, many of them too-big-to-fail. Recent financial crisis in US and Britain has revealed that a number of their top banks and corporations cannot stay afloat due to the shortage of 'liquid cash' and the only way to save these too big-to-fail corporations is to nationalise them. These corporations and banks demand that the state should bail them out. The state is being forced to bail these enterprises out on condition that they shall sell the bulk of their shares to the state. This means that these capitalist states are being forced to move in the direction of central planning and management of the economy of the socialist model.

This course of action is just the opposite of what the IMF prescribes to the developing countries.

Amartya Sen who has won the Nobel Prize for Economics has written some thoughts on the limitations of the market based capitalism in an essay in the New York Review of Books.

He wrote: "Historically, capitalism did not emerge until new systems of law and economic practice protected property rights and made an economy based on ownership workable. Commercial exchange could not effectively take place until business morality made contractual behavior sustainable and inexpensive—not requiring constant suing of defaulting contractors, for example. Investment in productive businesses could not flourish until the higher rewards from corruption had been moderated. Profit-oriented capitalism has always drawn on support from other institutional values.

The moral and legal obligations and responsibilities associated with transactions have in recent years become much harder to trace, thanks to the rapid development of secondary markets involving derivatives and other financial instruments. A subprime lender who misleads a borrower into taking unwise risks can now pass off the financial assets to third parties—who are remote from the original transaction. Accountability has been badly undermined, and the need for supervision and regulation has become much stronger.

And yet the supervisory role of government in the United States in particular has been, over the same period, sharply curtailed, fed by an increasing belief in the self-regulatory nature of the market economy. Precisely as the need for state surveillance grew, the needed supervision shrank. There was, as a result, a disaster waiting to happen, which did eventually happen last year, and this has certainly contributed a great deal to the financial crisis that is plaguing the world today. The insufficient regulation of financial activities has implications not only for illegitimate practices, but also for a tendency toward over speculation that, as Adam Smith argued, tends to grip many human beings in their breathless search for profits."

While capitalism has swept aside other economic systems like the feudalism, socialism and communism and has enormous potential for positive change, it has not solved problems of inequality and poverty. Infact, while capitalism continues to provide opportunities for creating more wealth, the gap between the rich and the poor is also widening.

Social entrepreneurship is an emerging business trend, where the creative vision of the entrepreneur is applied to today’s most serious problems: feeding the poor, housing the homeless, healing the sick, and protecting the planet. This is the world of social business.

Creating a World Without Poverty tells the stories of some of the earliest examples of social businesses, including Mohammad Yunus’s own Grameen Bank. It reveals the next phase in a hopeful economic and social revolution that is already under way—and is the worldwide effort to eliminate poverty by unleashing the productive energy of every human being.

Among the several challenges we face in Maldives; playing our part to avoid further destruction to the environment has now become the imminent priority on the world stage.

Maldives holds underwater cabinet meeting

The government of the Maldives has held its first underwater cabinet meeting to attract international attention to the dangers of global warming.

President Mohamed Nasheed, dressed in full scuba gear (above photo by AFP), conducted the 30-minute meeting at a depth of 20 feet off the coast just north of the capital Male.

Most of the island nation, a tourist paradise featuring coral reefs and white sand beaches, lies less just over three feet above sea level and scientists have warned it could be uninhabitable in less than 100 years. (Link Telegraph)

This marks an important step in the quest for survival against a predicted sea level rise due the effect of global warming.

Grim forecast with El Nino set to return

The dreaded news of warming patterns of the El Nino weather conditions comes in the midst of the worst global recession since the Great Depression of the 1920s. The last severe El Nino was in 1998, when the Asian financial crisis was at its peak.

Reports say the 1998 El Nino killed over 2,000 people and caused billions of dollars worth of damage to crops, infrastructure and mines in Australia and Asia.

According to a report from Australia's Bureau of Meteorology on Wednesday, an El Nino weather pattern this year appears almost certain, raising the prospect of drought in Australia and a weaker monsoon in India.

As per the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD), rainfall so far has been well below normal and the onset of monsoon in large rain-dependent agricultural states of central India has been delayed, forcing water levels to fall sharply and hampering irrigation in many parts. The monsoon rains are the lifeblood for farmers in India. Its faltering sugar crop is a prime reason why sugar prices are at their highest levels in three years.

El Nino is driven by an abnormal warming of the eastern Pacific Ocean. The severe drought caused by the deadly cycle of El Nino across the Asia-Pacific region will destroy crops and increase the price of commodities like wheat. Australia is one of the world's biggest wheat producers and has barely recovered from the worst drought in 100 years which hit a few years ago.

The mainstay of Maldivian economy is tourism. The beauty of tranquil Maldives includes the lagoons of crystal clear water surrounding the islands with coral reefs and brightly colored schools of fish. The El Nino of 1998 wreaked havoc on the hard corals of Maldives due to the extensive bleaching. However, these reefs have subsequently recovered showing their resilience to bring back the spectacular colours of marine growth and the bright-coloured fish.

For the global economy still in recession, the El Nino of 2009 could not have come at a worse time.

No place to flee

The Maldives has fragile environment and our Environment Minister has said global warming is destroying coral reefs of the world and this is posing serious threats to economic and social development and survival of many countries. He said about 27% of coral reefs has already been lost and faster loss of coral reefs is inevitable unless global warming is tackled urgently.

We have a fragile democracy too, one that is just beginning to shape and is fraught with difficulties as the political parties remain polarized and jostling for power.

In December 2004, a major earthquake followed by a tsunami hit Asia and Africa, devastating many coastal areas. Almost 200,000 people in eight countries perished in a few hours, and over 100,000 are still missing.

According to the UN, the estimated cost of the Indian Ocean mechanism would be US$30 million (not including maintenance), a far cry from the billions in damage caused by last month's Asian tsunami disaster, and a worthwhile investment to avoid the massive human loss suffered by the affected countries.

The Meteorological Department in Male' informs that it has the capacity of sending an early warning signal to Maldivians before a tsunami or earth quake affects Maldives.

Following such a warning, where are our people to run to get away from the disaster even if they get few hour escape time? We live in such cramped living conditions, the government will have to come out with clear guidelines on where the people can escape before such disaster occurs. The easier part will be to to issue the warnings. The difficult part will be to educate the vulnerable communities and implement the evacuation plans by our Government departments.

Global Warming : Spread the message

A High School Teacher's Web Video Is Among YouTube's Most Watched. Whether global warming is caused by humans or cows, climate change is a reality that affects all of us.

What action will Maldives need to take if the islands were to be wiped out?

Mayor of Mumbai calls for a no-car day.

Mumbai formerly known as Bombay has a population of 19 million and is the commercial and the entertainment capital of India. Mumbai houses many important financial institutions, such as the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), the National Stock Exchange of India (NSE) and the corporate headquarters of many Indian companies and numerous multinational corporations. The city is home to Bollywood, the largest film industry in the world.

This vibrant city is being choked by heavy vehicular traffic, immense air and noise pollution which is putting their lives in danger. The mayor of Mumbai Dr Shubha Raul is urging, just for a day, not to use four-wheelers and two-wheelers. Instead, to take public transport like local trains and BEST buses to help cut the pollution level in the city.

While every one accepts that pollution is silent a killer, keeping the private cars off the roads, even for one day will be quite a difficult challenge in a city that is gasping for breath.

Fight for climate change begins with Maldives

The Maldives, a country that is entirely dependent on oil to run its economy and tourism has to start walking the talk and cut down on its own greenhouse gas by reducing the emissions from vehicles that are jam packed on our streets in Male'. We must use less energy and be more efficient in our use of energy. We need to promote energy efficiency and conservation measures, and our Government has to help the population achieve these aims by offering incentives and creating awareness. We need stringent efficiency standards for appliances, homes and offices, industrial processes and vehicles. We need more renewable energy. We need more public transport.

What if oil runs dry?

Humanity's way of life is on a collision course with geology—with the stark fact that the Earth holds a finite supply of oil.

No one knows for sure, and geologists and economists are embroiled in debate about just when the "oil peak" will be upon us.

Peak oil takes the premise that the amount of oil left for us to use has "peaked" (or is just about to peak). Once worldwide production begins to fall and with no corresponding decrease in demand, oil prices will skyrocket, leading to widespread chaos. Richard Heinberg, a Californian college professor paints a dire picture.

"It's not just going to be a matter of replacing gasoline with something else and continuing on our merry way. We're actually going to have to change our transportation systems and reduce the amount of transportation that we do."
Heinberg is also sceptical of the prospect of biofuels saving the day. "It's clear ethanol and other biofuels are going to entail a trade-off between food and fuel. If we try to replace gasoline and diesel fuels with biofuels we'll simply fail because we don't have enough land and people will starve in the process."

If we are to gently surf the downward slope of Hubbert's bell curve rather than precipitously tumble off the edge, Heinberg says, it will take a social transformation of no lesser magnitude than the industrial revolution. "I don't think we are going back to exactly how people lived 200 years ago but we are going to need lots more human labour in agriculture and that means the middle class is going to start shrinking."

New York mayor takes the train to work

Michael Bloomberg is an American businessman, and the founder of Bloomberg L.P., currently serving as the Mayor of New York City.

Bloomberg entered politics as a self-made media mogul and struck a populist note early in his mayoral campaign by pledging to use mass transit. Since starting at City Hall he has invited reporters, photographers and television news anchors to ride along with him.

The mayor's spokesman said that he "walked to the subway when he first started as mayor, and he stopped doing it when cameras staked out his house every morning and walked with him." Now the mayor is driven to the subway station at 59th Street and Lexington Avenue, where he can board an express train to City Hall.

Being driven to the 59th Street station shaves the mayor's commuting time by one-third, based on a reporter's test runs. It also saves him aggravations like taking the local train and transferring to the express.

"He goes to various stops depending on where he is going and where he is coming from," said the spokesman.

He is public transportation's loudest cheerleader in New York, boasting that he takes the subway "virtually every day." He has told residents who complain about overcrowded trains to "get real," and he constantly encourages New Yorkers to follow his environmentally friendly example.

Increasing climate change refugees

Environmental degradation around the world is creating a new category of people known as "environmental refugees."

According to a National Geographic article in 2005, there are at least 20 million environmental refugees worldwide, the group says—more than those displaced by war and political repression combined. This figure continues to increase rapidly.

The inhabitants of the Carteret Islands are the first climate refugees due to sea level rise attributed to global warming and climate change. Other inhabitants of low lying islands and Island states, are also at risk. Tuvalu and Maldives are especially susceptible to changes in sea level and storm surges.

By 2010 the number of environmental refugees could grow to 50 million, the Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS) predicts.

Professor Norman Myers, who is a British environmentalist and authority on biodiversity has estimated climate change will increase the number of environmental refugees six-fold over the next fifty years to 150 million.

Equatorial countries that are home to hundreds of millions of people will become uninhabitable as food and water run out due to climate change, scientists are expected to warn this week.

A report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), to be published on Friday, will warn that the temperature rises of 2-3C predicted by 2050 spell global disaster for both humanity and the environment.

Australia has said that it will prepare to play its role as a part of a global coalition to do their share of assisting the low lying Pacific island states such as Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, and Tuvalu - which sit just a few metres above sea level - are at risk of being swamped as global warming forces sea levels to rise.

Maldives needs to quickly put its house in order internally and start taking action for long term survival/relocation without being content on asking the international community to reduce the greenhouse gases. The environmental threat is already looming on the horizon and we really don't have the time to waste in playing unproductive games.

Wake up Maldives!

On the day when the Maldivian ambassador to UN told the United Nation’s General Assembly that climate change and rising sea levels were our country's biggest enemy, Indian south east monsoon wreaked havoc on parts of India, Bangladesh and Nepal.

According to a BBC report the rising flood has affected so far:

India: 12 million people stranded, mostly in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Assam.
Bangladesh: Seven million people marooned.
Nepal: Thousands of people displaced in the south.

Millions of people have lost their homes, their crops inundated by the floods and they have no food to eat. Helicopters dropped food to some two million people in 2,200 villages in eastern Uttar Pradesh, India.

India's monsoonal weather is an annual phenomena that brings natural disasters such as major floods, droughts, cyclones and this has killed or displaced millions. India's long-term climatic stability is further threatened by global warming.

Maldives is on the leeward side of India and is very fortunate not to suffer the disastrous consequences that our neighbours face every year. But we should avoid complacency and do whatever we can do to protect our small community scattered over small islands barely above sea level in the Indian Ocean.

While it is necessary, much more needs to be done urgently beyond our pleas for world action to stop rising temperatures that is contributing to the global warming.

Such efforts for our small communities to relocate or rebuild are thwarted by the organized chaos in the country's political system. After more than 38 years of presidential system of government, politicians have forced our nation to go through an absurd exercise.

Instead of addressing the issues of the current system, the people are asked to decide on the presidential system or the parliamentary form of government.

Few people know the difference between the two systems, even fewer genuinely want to know the difference, and most don't care what it is as long as the current system is changed.

Isn't it time for some introspection? For the leaders of this nation feared to sink by rising waves to ask themselves, 'What is the purpose of what we are doing when our survival is at stake?

What's the case for Male'/Hulule bridge?

Maldivian government is proposing to build an overhead bridge connecting Male' to Hulule at the cost of Mald RS 700 million. A further Mald Rs 7 million has to be paid to the consultants.

Doesn't the government have more urgent and pressing priorities to spend its money?

Following the tsunami of 26 December 2004, there are many Maldivians still living in temporary shelters awaiting permanent living conditions. There are several outer lying islands still without proper landing facilities. There are also many islands where residents do not have proper sanitation, though the capital Male' enjoys good sanitation and medical care.

It seems development is focused only for the residents in Male, while needs of the people living in the outer islands are largely neglected.

A bridge between Male' and Hulule is not a necessity as there is good sea transport between the airport island and Male' which takes about 10 minutes travelling time.

On the fragile coral reef seabed of the cramped and bustling capital city Male, divers are reported to have seen a crack at one end.

The fallacy of belief in unfounded political glory coupled with the desires of greedy business elite and stupidity gives a deadly combination of factors for an ecological disaster.

The worry over waves

The Maldives is a cluster of 1192 small coral islands, spread over a geographical area of 90,000sq kilometres (including sea) in the Indian Ocean.

The islands that make up the Republic are very small, barely 3meters above sea level- the total area being around 298 square kilometres and Male' the capital island being only 450.6 acres.

The rough weather and tidal surge Maldives is experiencing over the last few days has resulted in damage and destruction of property in several islands.

Strong winds, heavy rain and rough seas in the past years coincide with low pressure trough in the southwest Bay of Bengal.

In view of the global warming and climatic changes that are occurring, should Maldives worry about a sinking feeling? Or is still early to tell?

Well, not everyone believes that global temperature is rising or it is bad.

People have always "created" experts to justify their arguments. Tobacco companies have "scientists" to claim that nicotine is not addictive, asbestos companies have "doctors" to claim that asbestos does no lead to asbestosis of the lungs, and confectionery companies have "dentists" to claim that sugar does not lead to tooth decay.

No one argues that greenhouse gas concentrations are going up extremely rapidly. No one argues that changing this will change the way the atmosphere behaves. The debate is about whether those changes will cause global warming- and whether they are the cause of the global temperature increases.

While looking up to the international community to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions, what can Maldives do to help its citizens avoid the wrath of the waves.

Vanishing Maldives?

This picture of the concrete wall around Male' is taken from Global Coral Reef Alliance, a non-profit organization dedicated to growing, protecting and managing the most threatened of all marine ecosystems—coral reefs.

GCRA is a coalition of volunteer scientists, divers, environmentalists and other individuals and organizations, committed to coral reef preservation.

The GCRA findings reveal a grim picture. They say, "All around the world the corals are dying. There are many causes, but the major one is global warming, caused by the fossil fuel addiction of people often on the other side of the world.

Global warming has an equally evil twin, global sea level rise, caused by the melting of glaciers and ice caps, and the volumetric expansion of warmer oceans. The result of this double onslaught is that almost all the white coral sand beaches of the world are vanishing with ever increasing speed before our eyes.

The most serious effects are in the world's lowest lying islands, where the winds may have piled beach sand no more than a few meters high. Whole nations, the Maldives in the Indian Ocean, and Tuvalu, Kiribati, Tokelau, and the Marshall Islands in the Pacific, along with thousands of other low islands around the world, could vanish entirely in the coming generation—as could most of Bangladesh."

No scientist can know what the future holds for us but the predicted weather patterns are worrying signs that require immediate attention and action.

Male': Developing To A Social Disaster

Male', the capital island of the Republic Of Maldives is a community unto its own. This island had the laid back calm of a small town community untill a few decades ago.

At that time, the street lanes of coral sand lined with imposing white-walled houses with spacious gardens. Day and part of the night, the doors of these houses were left open so that neighbours can drift in and out to have a chat or gossip about the day's events.

Ironically the tranquil peace that was so refreshing to the residents as well as to the visitors has changed to what we now call a progressive lifestyle. Tourism has become the lifeline of Mladives since the early 1970s.

The tourist dollar has created an elite class that can, not only afford first class travel but are also able to own property outside the country and control businesses within the country. A community that was driven by their desire to live in harmony is now clamouring to forge a new social order. An order where the increasing gap between the rich and the poor is reduced so that the wealth of the country is equitably distributed, opportunities are available and social justice is assured and meted out to all.

The lack of a sustainable housing policy in Male' since the 1960s has seen the spacious gardens and their enclosed homes divided many times over to give rising cubicle homes to the next two generations, that has jammed Male' almost bursting at the seams. This is the inevitable result of a centralized policy to control everything from running the government to control business and commerce to communication and transportation from Male'.

Lack of adequate living space has brought about shoulder to shoulder living, crammed within the one and half square mile island of Male' creating health hazards and a social nightmare. A culture of drug abuse is prevailing among the younger generation and law enforcemnet agencies are unable to control rampant corruption. The crooks seem to be having a field day putting the law abiding citizens at their mercy.

Superficially we are rich and living a life of abundance in Male'. But this feeling is only skin deep as evident from peoples homes to hospitals to public services and to the way we are struggling to look after an aging population.