Live at Copenhagen: The Trouble With Tuvalu

Ben Lieberman /

The Heritage Foundation’s Steven Groves and Ben Lieberman are live at the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference reporting from a conservative perspective. Follow their reports on The Foundry and at the Copenhagen Consequences Web site.

The tiny Pacific Island nation of Tuvalu is a perfect microcosm of what is wrong with both global warming policy and the UN Copenhagen climate conference. Although it has a population of only 12,000, Tuvalu has garnered a great deal of attention here at Copenhagen, thanks to the claim that it is perhaps the nation most vulnerable to climate change.

The Island sits barely above sea level, thus Tuvaluan officials (along with their many activist friends here) are claiming that they risk being obliterated by rising seas caused by global warming. “Being one of the most vulnerable countries in the world, our future rests on the outcome of this meeting,” said Ian Fry, an official with Tuvalu’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment.

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