Just yesterday I read in the HINDU that The UN Security Council has agreed to consider the fact that Global Warming is a threat to national security.
Here is an excerpt:
"So it's heartening to hear of one area, at least, where the British Government has taken a lead. On Tuesday, the United Nations Security Council discussed climate change for the very first time. Not some environmental subcommittee, not a platitudinous exchange of slogans in the General Assembly, nor even the intergovernmental panel on climate change, but the Security Council. It was debating carbon emissions and the danger they pose to the Earth.
The Security Council had never talked about global warming before — and it was not keen to start on Tuesday.the Security Council is meant for grown-up stuff involving bombs and bullets, not airy-fairy talk about trees and polar bears.That was the entire point of the exercise, to reframe the way people think about this problem. There's good, pragmatic reasoning behind that. The glum reality is that governments tend to take security threats more seriously than any other kind. Just think of what Washington has spent on the "war on terror." If George W. Bush gets his latest budget through Congress, he will have spent $750 billion of American taxpayers' money on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in a little over five years. Environmentalists drool when they imagine what they could have done with a fraction of that money. Even a quarter of the total, say a meagre $200 billion, could have paid for enormous strides towards a low carbon economy. It could, for instance, have paid to transform the way we generate electricity, by capturing carbon and storing it in the ground, rather than releasing it into the atmosphereThese changes matter. The big powers know how to put out fires when they want to. Now they just have to realise they are facing a blaze larger than any of us have ever seen — and one that could engulf us all. "
The Security Council had never talked about global warming before — and it was not keen to start on Tuesday.the Security Council is meant for grown-up stuff involving bombs and bullets, not airy-fairy talk about trees and polar bears.That was the entire point of the exercise, to reframe the way people think about this problem. There's good, pragmatic reasoning behind that. The glum reality is that governments tend to take security threats more seriously than any other kind. Just think of what Washington has spent on the "war on terror." If George W. Bush gets his latest budget through Congress, he will have spent $750 billion of American taxpayers' money on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in a little over five years. Environmentalists drool when they imagine what they could have done with a fraction of that money. Even a quarter of the total, say a meagre $200 billion, could have paid for enormous strides towards a low carbon economy. It could, for instance, have paid to transform the way we generate electricity, by capturing carbon and storing it in the ground, rather than releasing it into the atmosphereThese changes matter. The big powers know how to put out fires when they want to. Now they just have to realise they are facing a blaze larger than any of us have ever seen — and one that could engulf us all. "
I was really happy. Atlast they have realised that Environmental issues have to be taken seioursly. :-)
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