Maldives President Calls for "Survival Pact"

President Nasheed

President Nasheed, leader of the Maldives -- a low lying nation faced with the real threat of extinction from rising seas, last week delivered a powerful and emotional speech at the "Climate Vulnerable Forum" at Barcelona.
Anyone who cares at all about this issue needs to read his speech.

We are gathered here because we are the most vulnerable group of nations to climate change.

Some might prefer us to suffer in silence but today we have decided to speak ... we will not die quietly.

Members of the G8 rich countries have pledged to halt temperature rises to two degrees Celsius. Yet they have refused to commit to the carbon targets, which would deliver even this modest goal.

At two degrees we would lose the coral reefs. At two degrees we would melt Greenland. At two degrees my country would not survive.

As a president I cannot accept this. As a person I cannot accept this.

I refuse to believe it is too late, and we cannot do anything about it. Copenhagen is our date with destiny. Let us go there with a better plan.

At the moment every country arrives at the negotiations seeking to keep their own emissions as high as possible. They never make commitments, unless someone else does first.

This is the logic of the madhouse, a recipe for collective suicide.

We don't want a global suicide pact. And we will not sign a global suicide pact, in Copenhagen or anywhere. So today I invite some of the most vulnerable nations in the world, to join a global survival pact instead.