As the world’s leaders prepare to convene in Copenhagen towards the end of next week, in the hope of hammering out a climate change agreement that balances the requirements of the world’s economies with dire concerns about a warming world and all that brings with it, a great deal hangs in the balance for the world and for small island states such as Malta in particular.

Malta is certainly not Tuvalu, which faces a very real threat of being literally swamped and then drowned by the projected rise in the earth’s sea levels, but there is still a great deal at stake.

Malta, in fact, has a lot more to lose from climate change then most of its EU brethren, with small islands being particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

The next generation, and all generations to follow for that matter, are to face the direst of consequences of climate change, if reports by the European Commission, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and dozens of other reputable bodies are anything to go by.

The symptoms of what lies in store are already there for all to see. Spring has been occurring earlier, coasts are being slowly eroded and people’s lives across much of the world are affected every summer by increasingly dangerous heat waves.

Malta in particular faces a number of daunting challenges that will be brought on by rising sea levels, escalating temperatures, drought and coastal erosion over the coming decades.

Granted, warmer temperatures will lead to a somewhat longer spring and summer tourism season, which will give Malta something of a short-term benefit. But if the mercury continues to rise over the years, as is being forecast, the spring and summer heat in Malta is expected to become simply unbearable.

A future global tourism scenario could, in fact, see holidaymakers increasingly travelling to cooler climes for their vacations, reversing the current trend and rendering Malta a tourism destination along the lines of what Iceland is today in winter.

Southern Europe as a whole faces multiple threats in the coming decades should global warming fail to be addressed and be stopped dead in its tracks. Such threats include the forecasted ever-rising temperatures leading to drought, a significantly reduced availability of fresh water, plummeting summer tourism numbers, growing health risks related to heat waves, the threat of the spread of dengue fever to Malta as habitats change along with climates.

Small islands such as Malta are particularly vulnerable to rising sea levels and extreme weather events resulting from climate change. Such islands – and Malta is not by any stretch of the imagination excluded – also face deteriorating coastal conditions as beaches erode, while heavy flooding and storm surges are expected to have a similarly devastating effect. Higher temperatures are also expected to bring about an increased invasion of non-native species – wreaking havoc on local ecosystems and biodiversity.

Malta, as the Prime Minister acknowledged at the close of this week’s EU summit, has its work cut out for it if the country is to reach the EU’s target of cutting emissions by 20 per cent by 2020, let alone if the EU opts to up the ante to 30 per cent next week. The bloc will, however, only do so if other developed nations, including the United States, agree to do so in the final Copenhagen agreement to be thrashed out next week.

Much along these lines will hinge on the United States and China. The former, however, appears hopeful. Writing in today’s issue (see page 17), US Ambassador Douglas Kmiec indicates a good starting point for next week’s horse-trading.

He writes, “The US is prepared to put on the table an emissions reduction target in the range of 17 per cent below 2005 levels in 2020, ultimately in line with domestic legislation. This target puts us on a pathway towards a 30 per cent emissions reduction in 2025 and a 42 per cent reduction in 2030, in line with the President’s goal to reduce emissions by 83 per cent by 2050. When compared to a 1990 baseline, this pathway translates into an 18 per cent reduction in 2025 and a 32 per cent reduction in 2030.”

But in the face of all the evidence, there is another school of thought – championed by a not insignificant number of international scientists, academics and opinion makers – that throws cold water on the global warming issue.

While the majority of authoritative scientists – such as those on the IPCC – have unequivocally found that humans are responsible for warming the climate, and that the impacts are already being felt across the world, there is a strong lobby that argues the rising temperatures being recorded and predicted are not human-induced, but are rather a part of the earth’s natural climatic cycle.

Global warming, they argue, has become a big business that has seen multinational corporations and SMEs alike cashing in on what they construe as an artificial, marketing- and media-catalysed commercial phenomenon. This has been dubbed The Great Global Warming Swindle, after the eponymous documentary.

The most recent fodder for the sceptics were the emails between scientists that were stolen and published and which purportedly showed that scientists have ‘faked’ climate data to exaggerate the menace.

A study carried out by the Associated Press published yesterday showed, after sifting through over a thousand emails, that scientists harboured private doubts, however fleeting and slight, as they told the world they were certain about climate change. But, the AP found, the correspondence did not undercut the vast body of evidence that showed the earth is warming because of man-made greenhouse gases.

The scientists, AP concluded, were acutely aware of how their work would be viewed and used and, like politicians, went to great lengths to shape their message. But it also found “no evidence of falsification or fabrication of data, although concerns could be raised about some instances of very generous interpretations”.

Whatever the case, one should stop and reflect for a moment on one particular IPPC finding: a seemingly insignificant one degree rise in temperature could place up to 30 per cent of the world’s species at risk of extinction, while a rise of just a few more degrees would entail significant extinctions around the globe.

Whether the problem is man-made or not, mitigating measures certainly need to be taken and taken urgently.