Ousted Maldives president Mohamed Nasheed, the subject of the new climate documentary “Island President,” told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell about the challenge of saving his nation from extinction by the effects of greenhouse pollution. “Climate change is a very real issue to the Maldives. It’s not something in the future. We already have 16 islands where we have to relocate people.” The entire nation lies below 1.5 meters above sea level. By 2100, sea levels are likely to rise by at least that amount unless immediate action is taken to reduce the amount of fossil-fuel pollution in the atmosphere. “What happens to the Maldives today will definitely happen the same to everyone else,” Nasheed said. “Maldives today, Manhattan tomorrow,” Mitchell agreed.

“The Island President” opens this weekend in New York City, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, and next week in Washington DC and San Diego.

Photo by Chiara Goia

by Eban Goodstein, reposted from Grist

“A cross between paradise and paradise.” This is how Mohammed Nasheed of the Maldives describes his nation in Jon Shenk’s powerful new film, The Island President.

Shenk follows President Nasheed over a one-year period, leading up to the Copenhagen climate summit, in a beautiful, courageous, and strangely hopeful story. The film resonates all the more deeply following last month’s coup in the Maldives. The story’s ending — perhaps tragic, perhaps a powerful continuation — is today unfolding in real time.

The Maldives is a string of 2,000 islands off the coast of India, home to about 300,000 people. The highest point in the country is only a few feet above sea level. Until 2008, the islands had been under dictatorial rule for decades.

After returning home from college in Britain, in the late ’80s, Nasheed became an activist for democratic reform. He was imprisoned 12 times, and tortured, enduring 18 months of solitary confinement. In 2008, he led the nation to free and fair elections, winning the presidency.

Shenk, with unprecedented access to a head of state, films a year-long journey of this charismatic, newly elected president. With climate change a clear and present threat to the very existence of his nation, Nasheed begins speaking out globally, and passionately, for all those on the front line of climate change. Finally, he arrives in Copenhagen to play a pivotal role in crafting a global climate deal in 2009.

This is the best film dealing with global warming in years. It is a story of classical proportion: of true heroism, courage and nobility, of eloquent soliloquy, of intimate moments, and of political intrigue, compromise, and betrayal.

Read more

Our guest blogger is Glenn Hurowitz, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy. Follow him on Twitter @glennhurowitz.

The Obama administration has announced its support for the junta that ousted democratically elected Maldives president and climate hero Mohamed Nasheed in a military coup.

Even though President Nasheed was apparently forced to resign at gunpoint, the State Department has continued to address the coup-makers as the “legitimate government” of the Maldives, referred to Nasheed as the “former president,” and called the leader of the junta that seized power “President.” Here’s State Department spokesperson Ambassador Victoria Nuland last week:

In that context, Assistant Secretary Blake spoke this morning to former President Nasheed conveying our assurances that the United States supports a peaceful resolution of this, that we are also expressing our views to the government that his security should be protected, but also encouraging him, as we encouraged President Waheed, that this needs to be settled now peaceably through dialogue and through the formation, as the new president has pledged, of a national unity government. And as we said, Assistant Secretary Blake will be there on Saturday…

QUESTION: So does – the U.S. considers the new government a legitimate government of the Maldives?

MS. NULAND: We do.*

*The United States will work with the new Government of the Maldives but believes that the circumstances surrounding the transfer of power must be clarified, and suggests all parties agree to an independent mechanism to do so.

The italicized remarks were issued following Nuland’s briefing; the following day, she maintained the administration’s backing for the coup – saying that while “the circumstances need to be clarified,” the United States is “going to work with the government.”

In diplo-speak, that means, “We support the coup, though we’re putting on a display of squeamishness.” And that “national unity government?” The idea may sound good, but the people of the Maldives elected President Nasheed’s government. They certainly didn’t elect the aides of former dictator Abdul Gayoom that have been put into key cabinet posts. Read more

The Wonk Room is blogging and tweeting live from Copenhagen.

President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives, the first head of state to come to the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, is here to save his nation of low-lying islands. Last month, Nasheed held a Cabinet meeting literally underwater to highlight the peril his nation faces from uncontrolled global warming. On Tuesday, he met with subnational leaders, including Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-CA) and Gov. Jim Doyle (D-WI) to learn how the state governments have been taking action during the Bush years and are continuing to lead despite Congressional paralysis. The Wonk Room caught up with President Nasheed in the Bella Center:

I was just speaking with the governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and also the governor of Wisconsin. A number of American states are offering much better than what the center [federal government] is offering. Once we do the maths — Let’s do the maths now, and see what these states — because energy is not a central government issue, it’s a state government issue.

Watch it:

State and local governments leaders have been an untold highlight of the Copenhagen conference. Also Tuesday, 80 mayors “from New York, Toronto, Buenos Aires and Copenhagen” and around the world “led city leaders in signing a resolution calling for ‘an ambitious and empowering deal’ on carbon-dioxide emissions cuts.”

In the Bella Center, the delegation office of ICLEI — Local Governments for Sustainability — has been a nexus of action since the conference began, with leaders in transport, planning, development, and infrastructure discussing practical efforts to create sustainable solutions — even as these issues are almost entirely ignored at the treaty-level negotiations.