 “Climate change is the greatest challenge facing this and future generations. According to the world's leading scientists, we have less than ten years to halt the rise in greenhouse gas emissions, if we are to avoid catastrophic consequences for people and the planet. Now is the time for action. Emissions are rising and the clock is ticking.”
Ban Ki Moon
UN Secretary General |
 “First, I worry about climate change. It's the only thing that I believe has the power to fundamentally end the march of civilization as we know it, and make a lot of the other efforts that we're making irrelevant and impossible”
Bill Clinton
Previous President of US |
 “Climate change is the most severe problem that we are facing today, more serious even than the threat of terrorism”
David King
Senior Scientific Advisor to the UK. |
Although climate change has been clearly identfied as a threat bigger than anything we have witnessed before, for some reason world leaders are not grassping the seriousness and urgency of the issue.
Commenting on the Stern Review in 2006, the Environmental News Services said: „global warming could inflict worldwide disruption as great as that caused by the two World Wars and the Great Depression.”
In 2004, a secret report by the Pentagon, suppressed by US defense chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a 'Siberian' climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world. The document predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies.
What makes things worth is what scientists call “tipping points”. We might reach soon a stage where climate change will become unstoppable and irreversible. Due to certain positive feedback mechanisms, such as the thawing of the permafrost, dying of the rainforests, and decreasing the sun-reflecting ice cover of the planet we could reach runaway climate change that will lead to economic, social and environmental devastation worldwide, and we will not have any breaks to stop it.
The fight against climate change is a fight for existence. The only way to be sure that we avoid these tipping points is for world governments to come together in a collective spirit of collaboration and cooperation and to decarbonize the whole world economy as fast as possible.
Fortunately for us, we do have most of the technology to fight climate change. We also have the money for it. In less than a year, governments of the world provided more than five trillion dollars to boost the economy. This is more money than we need to fight climate change in the coming decade.
Actually the only obstacle to fight climate change is the political will to do so.
To achieve this will, we need people and governments to realize that the fight climate change is similar to fighting a war, a non-violent war, where every Nation has the right to defend itself against a common enemy that threatens its survival.
„... if man can walk on the moon, we can unite to conquer our common carbon enemy“
Mohamed Nasheed
President of The Maldives