Seems like kindov a big hassle just for a photo-op, but.. it worked.
Aminath Shauna, the event’s co-ordinator, said the ministers had signed their wetsuits, which would be auctioned on the protectthemaldives.com website to raise money for coral reef protection in the atoll-chain.
The government arranged a horseshoe-shaped table on the seabed for the ministers, who communicated using white boards and hand signals.
The Divers Association of Maldives said the ministers, who had trained over the past two months, felt confident about the unprecedented meeting.
Of the 14-member cabinet, three ministers did not take part in the dive, as two have a medical condition while the third is currently in Europe.
The Maldives, located southwest of Sri Lanka, has become a vocal campaigner in the battle to halt rising sea levels.
Hippie enviro-group Greenpeace spokesdude Gerd Leipold admitted on the BBC to ridiculously exaggerating the possible effects of global warming but justified it since, duh, no one’s gonna like totally care about the earth n stuff unless we scare the shit out of them with scary stories about us all drowning because of SUVs.
Reporter Stephen Sackur was all wtf about a July 15th press release that sounded the OMG alarm for immediate action against your lifestyle and the countries economy because if we don’t do as they say then all of the Arctic ice would disappear by 2030. You can watch the full interview here if you’re interested, but the golden moment is this admission where the Greenpeace leader immediately admits that the claim in the press release is laughable bullshit designed to scare women and children into submitting to hippie law and order.. or something.
Although he admitted Greenpeace had released inaccurate but alarming information, Leipold defended the organization’s practice of “emotionalizing issues” in order to bring the public around to its way of thinking and alter public opinion.
Leipold said later in the BBC interview that there is an urgent need for the suppression of economic growth in the United States and around the world. He said annual growth rates of 3 percent to 8 percent cannot continue without serious consequences for the climate.
“We will definitely have to move to a different concept of growth. … The lifestyle of the rich in the world is not a sustainable model,” Leipold said. “If you take the lifestyle, its cost on the environment, and you multiply it with the billions of people and an increasing world population, you come up with numbers which are truly scary.”
