Climate Change as Dangerous as War – UN Chief Ban

Climate change poses as much danger to the world as war, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Thursday as he urged the United States to take the lead in the fight against global warming.

In his first address on the subject, Ban said he would make climate crisis the focus of talks with leaders at a meeting of the Group of Eight industrialized nations — Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Britain, the United States and Russia.
“The majority of the United Nations work still focuses on preventing and ending conflict,” Ban said. “But the danger posed by war to all of humanity and to our planet is at least matched by the climate crisis and global warming.”

“In coming decades, changes in our environment and the resulting upheavals from droughts to inundated coastal areas to loss of arable land are likely to become a major driver of war and conflict,” Ban told an international UN school conference on global warming, meeting in the UN General Assembly hall.

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