Helen Benedict
Source: The Washington Post [1]
November 22, 2009

Last October, the president of the island nation of Maldives, Mohamed Nasheed, made all his ministers put on diving gear and held the first underwater cabinet meeting in history. His point? If nothing is done to slow global warming at next month's United Nations climate-change conference in Copenhagen, his country will drown.  

The gesture may seem amusing, but it underscores the danger facing low-lying lands all over the world, from Venice to Hawaii, the Netherlands to New Zealand, London to Manhattan. The difference is that island nations in the Indian Ocean, such as Maldives, are expected to drown first. 

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