9 Dec 2010

Nauru leader says climate change talks lost in fog of acronyms

1:10 pm on 9 December 2010

The president of Nauru, Marcus Stephen, has told the Climate Change conference in Mexico that many nations don't see the urgency to global warming.

Mr Stephen says the gravity of the crisis has escaped many, having become lost in a fog of scientific, economic and technical jargon.

He says none of the words are quite so exotic as the ones spoken by the climate change negotiators, who communicate in acronyms such QELROS, LULUCF, and NAMA.

Mr Stephen says without bold action, it will be left to the children of the small island states to come up with the words to convey the tragedy of losing their homelands when it did not have to be this way.