Politicians rarely admit when they sink to new depths but for the Maldives government, it's a badge of honour when fighting global warming is concerned. President Mohamed Nasheed is to host an underwater cabinet meeting on October 24 to draw attention to the impact of climate change on the Indian Ocean archipelago, his office told AFP on Friday.
"The purpose of the underwater cabinet meeting is to show commitment from the highest political level to the 350.org Global Day of Climate Action," it quoted Deputy Under-secretary Aminath Shauna as saying. 350.org is a grassroots group campaigning for present levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) to be reduced to 350 parts per million (ppm) to restore Earth's atmosphere to safe levels.
Clad in scuba gear and communicating by whiteboards and hand signals, the 14 cabinet members will approve a statement "from Maldivian citizens" that will be presented at the December 7-18 UN climate summit in Copenhagen. "We call upon all citizens from all countries, big and small, rich and poor, high and low, to join hands and reduce carbon emissions and bring down the level of carbon in the atmosphere to below 350 ppm," the statement will read.
350.org's founder, Bill McKibben, an environmentalist who wrote "The End of Nature," said some ministers were diving neophytes and would undergo scuba training to attend the motion-in-the-ocean meeting. "It will be an actual, official session of the government, but it will be underwater," he told AFP by phone.
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