Serious effects of climate change are due to be seen within the lifetime of most people alive today, a member of the National Commission for Sustainable Development has warned.
Delivering a lecture organised by The Strickland Foundation, Martin Scicluna said no one can predict the exact outcome of extreme weather events in a changing climate but it appears certain that rising sea levels could make national coastlines unrecognisable.
During his talk, entitled Climate Change And Malta's Future Sustainability, Mr Scicluna showed images of how receding European and Maltese coastlines could look like in future years.
Mr Scicluna is a retired senior civil servant who served at the UK Ministry of Defence and a former defence adviser to both Eddie Fenech Adami and Alfred Sant when they were Prime Minister.
Malta, he said, has "just a few years" left to plan for basic survival in the face of a changing climate. Related water shortages and a looming energy dilemma must be met with a clear strategy.
Further damage to an already depleted underground water supply is a major concern. A decline to two-thirds of the present rainfall is forecast in an increasingly arid Mediterranean region with saline water flooding the aquifers as seas rise.
Reports by the Water Services Corporation reveal that the present rate of water extraction is already beyond sustainable yield. Illegal pumping from ground wells raises the figure to double the sustainable amount. Malta's underground water supply, already close to exhaustion, risks collapse.
Scientific evidence is stacking up heavily, leaving little doubt that the thawing ice caps are linked to burning fossil fuels and released gases which have triggered global warming. A hotter planet is no longer dismissed as scaremongering yet not everyone accepts that it could change their lives.
Mr Scicluna said decisive action is needed within the next two decades to offset the polluting effect of human activities on the atmosphere. Describing the country in the throes of a changing climate with receding coastlines, Mr Scicluna painted a Malta of the next few decades which was at best unrecognisable... at worst, "an arid, thirsty, over-heated rock".
"If climate change goes unchecked life here would be profoundly altered," he said.
Areas such as Burmarrad, a former harbour in Roman times, and other low-lying fields close to the main bays could end up underwater. The economic consequences this would have on the Maltese Islands as a tourist destination are enormous.
The tipping point, when conditions are expected to alter suddenly, has been set by most climate experts at 2030 leaving a brief window for island nations to prepare. Steps must be taken and should be viewed as an investment to avert catastrophe in the future. Reducing global warming could only be done at substantial economic and social cost.
Pressure from the European Union to hold energy demand and carbon emissions in check will help steer the shift to a low-carbon economy through solar and wind energy.
Mr Scicluna, director of the Today Public Policy Institute think tank launched in July, holds an open view towards other sources of energy. He remarked that the nation's requirements would be roughly that of the nuclear-powered vessels occasionally seen in Maltese ports.
Even without the prospect of a baking climate, the challenges ahead are formidable. Malta's economy is "teetering on a knife edge", unable to maintain the country's generous welfare system for much longer. Massive investment is needed to shore up the health and pensions costs of an aging population as the country's eligibility for EU structural funds runs out in 2013.
While the first duty of any government is to ensure the safety and security of its people, Mr Scicluna does not put much store on politicians coming up with the way forward since "our system of government militates largely against this". Difficult choices that come from proper planning are often not popular, even when there is hardly room for complacency over future survival.
President Emeritus Guido de Marco, who is chairman of The Strickland Foundation, presided over the discussion which followed the talk and advocated a more participative approach to democracy as part of the solution.
Foreign Minister Michael Frendo, freshly back from the Uganda round of CHOGM talks among Commonwealth heads of government, spoke of the difficulty in enticing large countries such as India and Canada not to stand in the way of binding commitments for globally agreed action on reducing carbon emissions.