Long-term effects sold short

Short-term usually beats long-term, even if people know where their long-term self-interest lies. Take Russia and the Maldives.

Five years ago, it was hard to find senior people in Moscow's scientific institutes or universities willing to discuss climate change. But the 2010 heatwave, which killed a third of Russia's grain crop, seems to have changed that.

It was Russia that insisted on putting a reference to geo-engineering, the controversial array of last-ditch measures to combat global warming, into thelast paragraph of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's recent report. The Russians get it now. And yet ...

On September 18, the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise stopped near the drilling platform Prirazlomnaya, the first rig to drill for oil off Russia's Arctic coast, and launched four inflatable boats.

Their aim was to hang a banner on the platform denouncing Russian plans to exploittheoil and gas reserves of the environmentally sensitive Arctic, especially since burning all that extra oil and gas will speed up the warming process.

They had no weapons and Greenpeace's protests are always non-violent. But armed Russian security forces abseiled from helicopters and the ship and all its crew were taken to the nearest Russian port, Murmansk. A month later, all 30 crew members, including volunteers from New Zealand, are still in prison. Half have already been charged with "piracy".

Piracy carries a jail term of 10-15 years, and the Russian state is deadly serious. It may be months before the crew even stand trial. Russia has a tradition of not reacting very well when challenged, and the platform belongs to state-owned Gazprom - but even so, this is an extreme over-reaction by the state.

Besides, knowing how hard climate change will hit Russia, why did Moscow let Gazprom drill? Because Russia's relative prosperity in the past decade has depended on oil and gas exports. Because Vladimir Putin's rule depends on the continuation of that fragile prosperity. And because its onshore oil and gas reserves are declining.

Short-term comes first, so drill away, and charge protesters with piracy. And if you think this is as stupid as politics gets, consider the Maldives.

The Maldives are several hundred tiny islands in the Indian Ocean where most of the land is only about a metre above sea level. As the sea level rises, most of the country will disappear beneath the waves.

You would think the prospect of national extinction in two generations would concentrate anybody's mind, and in the Maldives it did - for a while. In 2008, dictator Maumoon Abdul Gayoom was ousted in the islands' first free election, by Mohamed Nasheed, who put great emphasis on fighting climate change.

Then, early last year, Nasheed was overthrown in a coup by police officers linked to the old regime. International pressure forced fresh elections last month and Nasheed came in well ahead of the other two candidates. Various interventions by police and judges linked to the former dictator have complicated the issue, and the election will now be re-run. Nasheed will doubtless recover the presidency, but here's the thing. In the whole election campaign, he didn't mention climate change once. Neither did the other candidates.

In a country full of people whose grandchildren are going to have to live somewhere else because the place is going under water, they still don't want to hear about climate change. You can't just blame the politicians. It's just too uncomfortable for people to stay focused on the issue for long.

Gwynne Dyer is an independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries