Year 2, Month 11, Day 18: It’s Cheap, Considering The Alternative

USA Today runs an AP article on Ban Ki-Moon’s statement to the Climate Vulnerable Forum:

DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) – U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged world leaders Monday to finalize the financing for a multibillion-dollar fund to fight the effects of climate change.

Ban told the opening session of a climate meeting in Bangladesh’s capital that the world should make a concerted effort to finance the fund.

Read more about the CVF here. Naturally the only comments on the USA Today website at the time of writing were from wingnuts prating that we should defund the UN, or something. Sheesh.

Sent November 14:

The nations of the Climate Vulnerable Forum are among the world’s least significant contributors to the greenhouse effect — a sad irony, given the fact of their susceptibility to the rising ocean levels and extreme weather events brought in global warming’s wake. It is a further demonstration of the inherent inequity of a globalized consumer economy that the lands and lives of the planet’s poorest citizens are now at profound risk from the activity of the richest.

But while the CVF’s members may be cash-poor, they’re second to none in their moral authority. Countries like Kiribati, Bangladesh and the Maldives are working hard to reduce their own CO2 emissions despite the fact that it is the wealthiest members of the global community who’ve made such a mess of things.

America’s politicians and their corporate masters ignore the simple and obvious principle we all learned as children: clean up after yourself.

Warren Senders