Prime Minister Patrick Manning has noted that the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting to he held here this month is the last such conference anywhere in the world before world leaders meet next month in Copenhagen to try to firm up an international treaty to regulate man-made carbon emissions held responsible for global warming and climate change.

As Mr Manning put it, the leaders will ’consider a matter that is life and death for certain parts of the world’ as they seek to hammer out a global convention to replace the ineffectual Kyoto Accord. However, nobody is under any doubt that each will be seeking their perceived national interests. For example, countries such as China and India face enormous problems of rural poverty, despite their respective advances in manufacturing and information technology and are hardly likely to accept reductions in their emissions.

Trinidad and Tobago, too, has its own national interest to pursue , whatever our genuine stake in the preservation of the planet. Ours is a small country almost entirely dependent on our petroleum and natural gas resources and, as a consequence, our Copenhagen delegation will have to press for a total emissions quantification as opposed to the per capita emissions argument, as already been outlined by Mr Manning at the United Nations.

Using the per capita equation will see tiny Trinidad and Tobago having per capita emissions levels that are among the highest in the world and this unequivocally demonstrates that that is hardly a standard that could be applicable to all. Thus we are somewhat reassured that Senator Dick Forde, Minister of the Environment, and the Environmental Management Authority have ventured that some sort of official policy has been prepared that would make the national case even as it includes steps to reduce and clean up our inevitable emissions.

Our economy continues to be based on exploitation of fossil carbon resources and while there are many ways in which individuals and groups may reduce their carbon footprints the core question continues to challenge us: Can the country realistically reduce its carbon footprint at the same time as expands its heavy industrialiSation in aluminium and steel, both producing enormous quantities of greenhouse gases? There has not been the slightest indication that the government is going to step back from this path which means that in Copenhagen we would have to present specific proposals as to how we plan to go about marrying our economic requirements even as we do our best, as international citizens to help save what, after all, is our world as well.