阅读理解 They seldom meet on the cricket or football fields, but the world's small island developing states are informally competing with each other to be the first to give up fossil fuels and embrace clean energy.
52 low lying poor countries have made the energy plans, who traditionally heavily depend on imports of petrol and oil.The Caribbean island of Dominica is leading the world with plans to become carbon “negative” by 2020.The Maldives is not far behind, hoping to be carbon neutral(无温室气体排放)by 2020.Tuvalu and the Cook islands intend to generate all their electricity from renewables by 2020 and TimorLeste, the poorest country in Asia, expects to provide solar electricity to all its 100，000 families by 2020.
With Tonga, Samoa, Nauru, Mauritius and many other countries also volunteering to switch to solar, geothermal and wind energy, the target of the group of 52 small island developing states is a 45% cut in emissions in the next 18 years—considerably more than the world's rich countries who have pledged 12～18% cuts by 2020.
“We are showing the world leadership，”said Dominican ambassador to the UN，Vince Henderson, at a UN development programme meeting ahead of next week's climate talks in Bonn, Germany.“This is about survival as well as economics.We are spending $220m a year importing fuel so it is in our interests.We are demanding that all countries take their responsibilities.”
“Small island developing states can leap toward the goal of a povertyfree and prosperous future by changing their energy sectors，”said Barbados prime minister, Freundel Stuart.“We hope the international community has a unified voice, sharing our aspiration to become fully sustainable.”
In a separate development, the world's 47 least developed countries (LDCs) will propose on Monday what they call a “bold new plan” to help speed up the UN climate talks.“Our countries cannot wait.We are already feeling the effects of climate change, but the time has come for us to be leaders in the international effort to address this global challenge.”said Pa Ousman Jarju, the chair of the LDC group.
Notes：
geothermal n ． 地热
