The Maldives: Small Country, Big Step

Robert McKnight
3-20-09
11:22 AM

The Maldives, a chain of low-lying islets in the Indian Ocean, are going to have a go at being the first carbon-neutral nation in the world. They plan to fully transition to renewable energy within ten years. Wind turbines, rooftop solar panels, coconut husk burning power plants, batteries, and electric vehicles will be implemented by the Maldives to combat global warming and the rising sea levels it causes that threaten their nation's very existence.

The new energy plan will cost hundreds of millions of dollars a year, but designers of the plan say that it "should pay for itself quite quickly, because the Maldives will no longer need to import oil products for electricity generation, transport, and other functions. If the oil price were to rise to $100 per barrel, the payback period would be as short as 11 years. At current prices, it would take roughly twice as long to break even."

How very nice it is to hear of a country that's willing to go the whole hog on this renewable energy thing. Not 20% by 2050, but 100% as fast as humanly possible. The Maldives aren't a wealthy nation, either. They rely on mostly fishing and tourism and they're in the same economic downturn as everybody else. So, if the Maldives can do it, so can we! It wouldn't take much to wipe them out (a slight rise in sea level would do it), so naturally they have more incentive at present than we do. We're all in this boat together, though. Just because our "island" isn't going to capsize, we'll get what's coming to us...

Plus, the Maldives is a country of 400,000 people. It's tiny. It's people can emit as much or as little carbon as they want, it won't doom or save them either way. It's the big industrialized nations that bear the bulk of the burden. It's what we do or don't do that's going to doom or save countries like the Maldives. But it's what countries like the Maldives are doing that we should do ourselves.

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