Fiji slams “selfish” Australia for letting it sink

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Courtesy of the ABC Australia Network:

Fiji’s interim prime minister Frank Bainimarama has accused the global community of abandoning Pacific island nations to “sink below the waves” instead of tackling climate change.

Opening a regional summit, he singled out “selfish” Australia for criticism, saying there is “collective disappointment and dismay” in the Pacific at the failure to address climate change.

“The rising sea levels caused by global warming threaten the very existence of some of our neighbours – Kiribati, Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands,” he told the Pacific Islands Development Forum (PIDF).

“[They] are already swamping the coastal areas of many Pacific nations, including Fiji.

“Yet if anything, the collective will of the global community to adequately address this crisis is receding.”

In a sane world this would be headline news.

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About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.