UN Reaching for Any Excuse to Tackle Climate Change
Nicolas Loris /
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is never afraid to make headlines when it comes to his stance on climate change. In 2007 he likened the war on climate change to actual war saying, “”The majority of the United Nations work still focuses on preventing and ending conflict. 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.” More recently, in defense of his position after Climategate, he emphasized, “Climate change is happening much, much faster than we realized and we human beings are the primary cause.”
Now Mr. Ban is using natural resource depletion, specifically water, as a motive to reach a global accord to cut carbon dioxide emissions. At a speech to the Organization for Security and Cooperation (OSCE) he said of the Aral Sea, “where once there was water, sea, I saw endless sand and a graveyard of ships, and “As waters recede, tensions will rise. We need to work together, with full political engagement, to bring the various parties to the negotiating table, before tensions grow worse.”
Ban also addressed disarmament and non-proliferation issues in the speech. In some respects, Ban’s simply throwing things at the wall and hoping something sticks so he can claim a scalp.