Wisdom of the small

A tiny country is planning to go carbon-neutral

ON MARCH 15th the president of the Maldives, Mohamed Nasheed, announced that his country would try to stop using fossil fuels—and thus eliminate most of its greenhouse-gas emissions—by 2020. The Maldives is not wealthy but it leads richer nations in tackling climate change.

Mr Nasheed has good reason to be so conscientious. The Maldives, a collection of atolls in the middle of the Indian Ocean, stands less than two metres above sea level. That means it will probably be the first country to disappear as sea levels continue to rise—and, in the meantime, growing storm surges will make life there parlous.

Yet the Maldives’ contribution to climate change is minimal. Fewer than 400,000 people live there and most of those own neither a car nor many electrical appliances. Even the carbon emissions generated by newlyweds flying in for their honeymoons—the mainstay of the economy—are negligible compared with what those holiday-makers generate at home.

Mr Nasheed has recruited two British environmentalists, Mark Lynas and Chris Goodall, to draft a plan for the Maldives to replace the oil that fuels the country’s generators, cars and boats with power from solar panels, wind turbines and biofuels. This, they reckon, will cost $1.1 billion. It will, however, spare the place the expense of importing petrol, diesel and kerosene, and so pay for itself in 10 to 20 years, depending on the price of oil.

Mr Nasheed says mildly that he hopes other countries will follow the Maldives’ example. He is too gracious to add that rich countries, which bear the lion’s share of responsibility for climate change, should be ashamed that his, which bears almost none, is doing relatively more to fight it than they are. European politicians like to congratulate themselves for setting the goal of generating a mere 20% of power from renewable sources by 2020. Many of their American counterparts, meanwhile, are arguing against even that modest target, on the grounds that their states cannot afford it. Income per head in Mississippi, one of the places protesting most loudly, is seven times that of the Maldives.

Perhaps a few politicians in the rich world will focus on this injustice. But a more important point is that overhauling the Maldives’ energy supply within a decade does not look impossible. The islands are famously sunny and also (though this is less widely advertised) quite windy, so there is plenty of raw material. And the falling price of wind turbines and solar panels makes turning that energy into electricity more affordable than it used to be—a trend that is likely to continue. Of course, the wind does not always blow and even the sunniest tropical paradise goes dark at night. But Messrs Lynas and Goodall reckon $315m-worth of batteries combined with a biomass-fuelled power plant should be enough to keep the lights on during windless hours of darkness.

In many ways, therefore, the archipelago is well suited to an energy makeover. But it is worse off in some others. The population is scattered across a chain of islands 900km long, which makes it expensive to connect everyone to a power source. It is also a bad time to be raising money for such a project. But even if rich countries do not have the decency to help pay for Mr Nasheed’s plan, they should, at least, shamelessly plagiarise it.

Source: www.economist.com