scientificamerican | President Obama used his final address to the U.N. General Assembly
yesterday to warn that climate change would worsen the kind of unrest
and inequality that has spurred a global refugee crisis.
Speaking before a high-level summit on migrants he convened at U.N.
headquarters, Obama told the assembly of world leaders and foreign
ministers that the problems they are seeing would only worsen in a
warming world.
“If we don’t act boldly, the bill that could come due will be mass
migrations, and cities submerged and nations displaced, and food
supplies decimated, and conflicts born of despair,” he said.
The president, as he has in the past, pleaded for a “sense of
urgency” from countries to help bring last year’s landmark Paris climate
agreement into force this year. The United States ratified the deal
with China early this month, and 31 more countries have done so today.
Obama also acknowledged the need for countries to do more than they
promised in the French capital last year if the world is to avoid the
worst impacts of warming.
“The Paris Agreement gives us a framework to act, but only if we scale up our ambition,” he said.
The president also alluded to what is likely to be a particular area
of focus at a round of U.N. climate talks that opens in Marrakech,
Morocco, in six weeks time: money. He said the $10 billion Green Climate
Fund (GCF) to help poor nations address warming “should only be the
beginning” of the wealthy world’s commitment.
“We need to invest in research and provide market incentives to
develop new technologies, and then make these technologies accessible
and affordable for poorer countries,” Obama said, adding that these
investments would help developing countries “leapfrog” directly to
lower-carbon solutions.
“And only then can we continue lifting all
people up from poverty without condemning our children to a planet
beyond their capacity to repair.”
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