UN Calls for Urgent Action on Climate Change

The United Nations is calling for urgent action to halt climate change on the 20th anniversary of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The U.N. Secretary General and other eminent personalities were present at the official ceremony, which celebrated this event in Geneva from where Lisa Schlein reports for VOA

For much of the past 20 years, studies by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have been greeted with skepticism and even vilified in some quarters. But, UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, says any lingering doubts that the globe is warming were laid to rest in the Panel’s Fourth Assessment Report.

He says the report established that climate change is real, that it is happening, and that human activity is the primary driver of this phenomenon. “It has developed into a full-scale crisis that makes it increasingly difficult for us to reach and maintain development aspirations such as the Millennium Development Goals. But, the crisis needs a commensurate response. After 20 years of the work of the IPCC, we have the science. We know what needs to be done,” he said.

Voice of America