Climate change complacency `global suicide pact,' UN told

[CHIMO]

Source: WASHINGTON BUREAU

UNITED NATIONS – Complacency on climate change is tantamount to a global "suicide pact," the President of the Maldives warned today as the largest-ever gathering of world leaders grappled with the issue at UN headquarters in New York.

Delivering an impassioned plea that stood out among a series of marquee speeches from the leaders of China, the United States, France and others, President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives pleaded with his powerful counterparts not to let the crisis slip through their fingers.

"We cannot make Copenhagen a pact of suicide — we have to make a deal," said Nasheed, who in March emerged as a moral voice on climate change after unveiling plans to make the Maldives the first carbon neutral nation.

Today's UN summit, unprecedented and involving nearly 100 world leaders, marks one of the final opportunities for nations to trade warm rhetoric for hard commitment in the runup to December's Copenhagen conference, where the UN hopes a new global framework for emissions reduction will emerge to replace the failed Kyoto Accord.



Read more: http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/699107#

[polichick]

1. Great way to put it - exactly right! k&r nt

[shadowknows69]

2. Frankly I think we're a suicidal species and we aren't going to make it.

At the very least we have to be the greatest procratinators in the universe. We're probably a pretty good sitcom in another galaxy somewhere.

[ro1942]

3. Tantamount to Easter island

How dumb can we be?

[Lorien]

4. Exactly. And it amazes me that most of the people on earth have

so little intelligence and imagination that they just don't get that. I try to make it simpler for them; "How many people can you feed with the food in your home and what you could grow on your land? 10? 100? 10,000? 100,000? At what point would you no longer have enough?" or, in regard to species extinction, I say "All life is interconnected. Removing a species is like removing parts from a car. Removing the vanity mirror may not change much, but eventually you take away one critical nut or bolt (like bats or bees) and the vehicle stops". They still don't get it. They never will.

[Javaman]

6. Oh we still have a lot of dumb left in us.

never under estimate the power of stupid.

[fascisthunter]

7. Easter Island is a Perfect Example

how dumb? Some of us are "THAT" dumb. Humans have evolved but not far enough I suppose.

[ProudDad]

5. K&R - This is the final straw

The odds are a million to one against this latest 3 million year experiment in big-brained bipeds surviving into the 22nd Century.

And the odds are dwindling by the day...

So long, big brained bipeds (and most other large air-breathers)...

Good luck, Cockroaches... Don't grow your brains too big...

[Nihil]

9. No problem with growing brains "too big" ...

... just make sure you've learned to use them ... that seems to have been
the "problem" with humans over the last few centuries (at least) ...

[ProudDad]

10. The problem with humans is that the traits that allowed them

to become the biggest baddest predators on Earth...

Have rendered them unable to rationally implement a way out of the cul-de-sac that their own "cleverness" has allowed them to build for themselves...and the rest of the large air-breathers...

We know how to "use them" (in the aggregate) to dominate but don't know how to get along...

Bye, bye, big brained bipeds...

[fascisthunter]

8. kick(nt)

[Uncle Joe]

11. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, CHIMO.

[Quantess]

12. K & R