Many scientists believe that, given enough political will, humanity can still manage to avoid catastrophic climate change. But the president-elect of the Maldives isn’t taking any chances.

Mohamed Nasheed, who was sworn in Tuesday as the Maldives’ first democratically elected president, says that rising sea levels threaten to inundate the tiny Indian Ocean island nation. He has announced plans for a fund to buy land elsewhere in the region, where the country’s population, estimated to be about 386,000, could rebuild their lives.
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The UN climate panel predicts that, unless greenhouse emissions are curbed, sea levels could rise by 25 to 58 centimeters by the end of the century. More recent studies, such as this one published in the journal Science, sharply increase the projected sea level rise, to as high as two meters.

If this happens, the Maldives would be uninhabitable. But Maldivians wouldn’t be the first population displaced by global warming.

That distinction probably belongs to the half million residents of Bangladesh’s Bhola Island whose homes were swallowed in 1995 by rising sea levels. In 2005, the 1,600 residents of Papua New Guinea’s Carteret Islands began evacuation, as the advancing sea continued to destroy gardens, sink homes, and contaminate freshwater supplies. Also that year, 100 residents of Vanuatu’s island of Tegua had to be evacuated as their homes became permanently flooded.

Other low-lying Pacific islands that could disappear in this century include those in Tuvalu, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, and Fiji.

Barack Obama, who has spent much of the time since his election closeted with his advisers in Chicago, sent a strong signal yesterday that he plans a decisive break with George Bush on environmental policy once he moves into the White House.

The move was part of a carefully coded series of messages from Obama meant to reassure America and the world about the shape of his administration, which does not assume power until January 20.
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In one such signal the president-elect sent Jason Grumet, a policy adviser mentioned for a possible energy post, to an environmental conference in Washington to offer reassurances that there would be swift movement on climate change legislation. "The whole transition team felt it important to be here," Grumet said. "I think it is going to be a very very busy 2009, and I think we are going to need all of you to be on top of your game."
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It was the second time in 24 hours that Obama had tried to reassure the world that he wanted a radical departure from Bush's policy on the environment. Obama has said repeatedly that the global economic crisis remains his top priority, but John Podesta, part of the troika overseeing the transition, said on Tuesday that the environment was at the top of the Democrats' agenda. "I anticipate him moving very aggressively and very rapidly on the whole question of transforming the energy platform in the United States from high carbon energy to low carbon energy," he said.