Premier Ewart Brown joined leaders of the other British Overseas Territories in calling for urgent action to address climate change but a local environmentalist says Bermuda must practice what it preaches.

Dr. Brown joined leaders from Anguilla, the British Virgin Islands, the Falkland Islands, Montserrat, the Pitcairn Islands, St Helena and Tristan de Cunha for the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen last week.

A press release issued yesterday on their behalf said they were "gravely concerned that climate change poses the most serious threat to the survival of peoples and the very existence of several countries around the globe, notably small island states, while undermining their efforts to achieve sustainable development goals".

It added that they were "alarmed that emerging scientific evidence shows that the effects of human-induced climate change are worse than previously projected and that the impacts of climate change such as sea level rise, more frequent and extreme weather events, ocean acidification, coral bleaching, coastal erosion, and changing precipitation patterns, will further intensify".

The statement said the leaders were "greatly disturbed that despite the mitigation commitments made by parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and its Kyoto Protocol, especially those of the developed countries, global emissions continue to increase, leading to rapidly accelerating impacts, accompanied by costs and burdens that are beyond the ability of many, especially the developing states and other particularly vulnerable countries, to control".

Finally, the leaders said they were "profoundly disappointed by the slow pace and apparent lack of ambition within the international climate change negotiations to protect particularly vulnerable countries, their peoples, culture, land and ecosystems from the impacts of climate change".

They called upon the international community, especially developed countries, to undertake urgent action to significantly reduce the emission of greenhouse gases and to support more vulnerable countries in adapting to the adverse impacts of climate change.

Reacting to news of the statement yesterday, Stuart Hayward of the Bermuda Environmental and Sustainability Taskforce (BEST) said: "It is laudable that the message of the vulnerability of Island states is being put forward. As many of us who dwell on islands will be first in line to feel the effects of global climate change, it is important that we convey that message abroad.

"However, we can't with any degree of sincerity preach sustainability to the leaders at Copenhagen while we are hell-bent on unsustainability at home. Our over-creation of jobs resulting in unnecessary importation of workers, the excessive size and power of our vehicles, the promotion of luxury tourism with its ostentatious and unsustainable lifestyle all are symptomatic of very same per-capita level of energy and resource consumption that are the driving force behind global climate change.

"If we are to achieve legitimacy in our preaching to the rest of the world, we must set an example and practice here at home what we preach abroad."