At the United Nations climate conference in Poland this week, a coalition of over 40 island nations called for extremely ambitious reductions in world greenhouse-gas emissions, fearing the effects of rising seas. The nations proposed that industrialized countries slash their emissions more than 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 and more than 95 percent by 2050. “We are not prepared to sign a suicide agreement that causes small island states to disappear,” said Selwin Hart of Barbados.
