Reference: Action needed fast to save Maldives from drowning, Bangkok Post, September 19, 2009

Climate change scientists have warned the Philippines and the Maldives that if they fail to cut their carbon dioxide emissions they face devastation from intense typhoons, drought, and food shortage in the case of the Philippines and inundation by rising sea levels in the case of the Maldives (Action needed fast to save Maldives from drowning, Bangkok Post, September 19, 2009). This kind of scenario of death by climate change where each country suffers directly from its own carbon dioxide emissions is contrary to what climate scientists have told us in the past - that the whole world is affected by the sum total of global CO2 emissions. Neither the Maldives nor the Philippines produces sufficient emissions to have a measurable impact on global atmospheric CO2 concentration. If they are about to be destroyed by typhoons and rising seas, there is absolutely nothing that these countries can do about it for even if they stop using fossil fuels altogether the effect on global atmospheric CO2 will be immeasurably small.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand