As the General Assembly continued the general debate of its sixty-first session today, the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs of the United Kingdom, Margaret Beckett, warned that failure to act on climate change ran the risk of undermining the very basis of prosperity and security, because dealing with climate change was no longer a choice but an imperative.
Concerned that rising sea levels could potentially threaten London, Shanghai, Singapore, Amsterdam and Manhattan, she said no country could protect itself from climate change, unless it protected others by building a global basis for climate security. We must all be ready to find a way to get the agenda moving — beyond Kyoto, she urged.
As an example of the impact of climate change on water availability, she said the Chinese Government knew that, as the Himalayan glaciers melted and agricultural land shrank, crop yields would fall, as would the national economy and the worlds economy. The question of having either a successful economy or a stable climate was a false choice.
Everyone should work together to find paths for economic growth that protected the climate. The technology for moving to a low-carbon economy already existed, but should be deployed much more rapidly. Actions taken in the next 10 years would make the biggest difference. …
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