Prime Minister Patrick Manning is one of 90 world leaders who have pledged to attend crucial talks on climate change in Copenhagen, Denmark, next week, even as he maintains an aluminium smelter can be constructed in Trinidad and Tobago that will pose no risk to anyone or to the environment.
Manning announced he will be heading to Denmark yesterday after noting that all the government leaders who attended the 2009 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) had signed an historic climate change declaration at the Hyatt Regency hotel in Port of Spain.
’We have come to a conclusion which we would proudly like to present to you as the Port of Spain Climate Change Consensus-The Commonwealth Climate Change Declaration,’ he said at a news conference at the International Financial Centre.
Manning was joined at this news conference by United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, Australia Prime Minister Michael Rudd, Commonwealth Secretary General Kamalesh Sharma and Denmark’s Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen.
At the end of the news conference as Rudd noted 89 world leaders have committed to attending the climate change talks in Copenhagen, Manning said, ’You can add one more country to your list, it’s now 90; Trinidad and Tobago will attend.’
And even as debate continues to rage in T&T as to whether hosting CHOGM was worth millions of taxpayers’ money, Manning also announced yesterday his administration’s intention to bid for the hosting of the Commonwealth Games in 2018.
He made the announcement about T&T’s intention to bid for the 2018 Games at a sports breakfast meeting hosted along with Commonwealth Games Federation’s president Michael Fennell at the Hyatt.
Suresh Kalmadi, head of the organising committee for the Commonwealth Games, at a separate news conference, revealed that India has spent US$2 billion ($13b) to date to bid for the 2010 Games.
Despite Manning’s plans to head to the climate change talks in Copenhagen, he has reaffirmed his commitment to continue with construction of the Alutrint aluminium smelter in La Brea, despite concerns it poses health and environmental risks.
Declaring his administration has always subscribed to ’sustainable development’, Manning said, ’There are extremists who take the view that there are certain types of industries that should not be in the industrial mix at all in your country It is possible and it is being done right now where aluminium smelters are operating, and operating in a manner that poses no threat to the health and well-being of animal, plant or human life in the countries in which they operate. There are some people who are just not prepared to accept that.’
He said emissions standards have been placed on the aluminium smelter that ’are higher than the standards to which the rest of the world has become accustomed.’
Manning noted that Ki-Moon and Rasmussen had ’been extremely concerned about the rate at which things had been going’ prior to the Copenhagen meeting, adding that ’questions began to arise as to whether, indeed, the objectives we set ourselves as a world could be achieved in Copenhagen’, and it was this that led him to invite them to CHOGM to discuss the climate change issue.
