Fri, 02 Mar 2007

U.N. Head Warns on Climate Change

Reference article

The head of the United Nations, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, has spoken out about climate change. I'm especially interested in his comments about climate change's relationship to war. From the BBC article:

Speaking to schoolchildren at a UN conference in New York, Mr Ban said his generation had been "somewhat careless" with the planet but that he was hopeful that that was changing.

"The majority of the United Nations' work still focuses on preventing and ending conflict," he said.

"But the danger posed by war to all of humanity and to our planet is at least matched by the climate crisis and global warming."

[highlighting is mine]

I think it's important to note that of the crises expected to affect the world, he is comparing war with climate change in its impact on our world. We went on to state . . . in future years, the upheaval caused by environmental changes such as droughts and coastal flooding was likely to drive conflicts. Here, he is stating that climate change could actually cause armed conflict because of its effect on people. I can see this. If you have water and I don't I might want to take it so that my people will live.

He urged the U.S. which produces fully one quarter of the world's greenhouse gasses to take the lead in reducing their output. Are you listening George?

posted 08:55 [/globalwarming] permanent link