LONDON ¨C Do you remember Mohamed Nasheed, the charismatic young president of the Maldives who dramatized the threat of rising sea levels to his low-lying island nation in the Indian Ocean by holding his first Cabinet meeting underwater, with all the ministers in scuba gear?
¡°This is what will happen to the Maldives if climate change is not checked,¡± he told the cameras as the fish swam past him. (Well, not exactly ¡°told,¡± because you can¡¯t talk when you are underwater, but he held up a sign saying that.) Were you wondering where he is now that the great conference to curb global warming is getting under way in Paris?
Nasheed can¡¯t be in Paris, unfortunately, because he was overthrown in a coup in 2012 and was then jailed for 13 years last March for ¡°terrorism.¡± And the promise he made to set an example for the world by achieving a carbon-neutral economy (zero net carbon-dioxide emissions) in the Maldives within 10 years has been modified a bit by the new government.
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