Extract from Australia Network website:
Updated
United States secretary of state John Kerry has
warned Indonesians that climate change could threaten their "entire way
of life" as he called for all nations to do more to stop global warming.
Speaking
to students in Jakarta, Mr Kerry warned them that man-made climate
change could threaten their entire way of life, deriding those who
doubted the existence of "perhaps the world's most fearsome weapon of
mass destruction".Aides say Mr Kerry had chosen Indonesia for the first of what is to be a series of speeches on the topic this year, partly because as an archipelago of more than 17,000 islands, it is particularly at risk from rising sea levels.
"Because of climate change, it's no secret that today Indonesia is... one of the most vulnerable countries on Earth," Mr Kerry said in speech at a high-tech US-funded cultural centre at a Jakarta mall.
"It's not an exaggeration to say that the entire way of life that you live and love is at risk."
In the middle of a trip to Asia and the Middle East, Mr Kerry argued that it made no sense for some nations to act to stem climate change while others did nothing.
"Think about the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction," he said.
"It doesn't keep us safe if the United States secures its nuclear arsenal while other countries fail to prevent theirs from falling into the hands of terrorists.
"The bottom line is this: it is the same thing with climate change.
"In a sense, climate change can now be considered another weapon of mass destruction, perhaps even the world's most fearsome weapon of mass destruction."
He says climate change ranks alongside terrorism as an issue of global importance that needs to be tackled like any other.
"Terrorism, epidemics, poverty, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction: all challenges that know no borders," he said.
"The reality is that climate change ranks right up there with every single one of them."
Mr Kerry's public push takes place against a backdrop of a negotiation among nearly 200 nations about a possible new global treaty on climate change that is scheduled to be agreed next year and to address greenhouse gas emissions from 2020.
In Beijing on Friday, Mr Kerry announced that China and the US, the world's largest emitters of such gases, had agreed to intensify information-sharing and policy discussions on their plans to limit greenhouse gas emissions after 2020.
US officials made clear they hope that the example of the two countries, historically on different sides of the debate, working together might inspire other nations to do more to combat climate change.
Kerry faces tricky political decision
Despite evidence that human activities that emit carbon dioxide contribute to climate change, some sceptics believe a rise in global temperatures is due to natural variability or other non-human factors.Others question whether temperatures are in fact rising.
The fact that temperatures have risen more slowly in the past 15 years despite rising greenhouse gas emissions has emboldened sceptics who challenge the evidence for man-made climate change and who question the need for urgent action.
Mr Kerry, who faces a politically tricky decision at home on whether to allow Canada's TransCanada Corp to build the Keystone XL pipeline despite the opposition of environmental groups, had little patience for such sceptics in his speech.
"We just don't have time to let a few loud interest groups hijack the climate conversation," he said.
"I'm talking about big companies that like it the way it is, that don't want to change, and spend a lot of money to keep you and me and everybody from doing what we know we need to do.
"We should not allow a tiny minority of shoddy scientists... and extreme ideologues to compete with scientific fact.
"The science is unequivocal and those who refuse to believe it are simply burying their heads in the sand."
No comments:
Post a Comment