 Former US Vice-President Al Gore and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Photo credit, Earth Negotiations Bulletin |
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Drawing parallelism between the Great Depression of the 1930s that gave birth to a “New Deal” under President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the current financial crisis, Ban told the United Nations Climate Change Conference in PoznaÅ„ December 1-12 meeting of 100 environment ministers, reviewing progress toward a new U.N. climate treaty meant to be agreed at the end of 2009, that "We must re-commit ourselves to the urgency of our cause".
During the Great Depression of the 1930s, Roosevelt created the “New Deal” to provide relief for the unemployed, recovery of the economy, and reform of the economic and banking systems.
Ban told the ministers that the financial crisis should not be an excuse for inaction or for backsliding on the commitments in combating the challenges of climate change. The climate crisis "affects our potential prosperity and peoples' lives, both now and far into the future."
Ban called for massive stimulus devoted to investing in low-carbon economy as right step in solving the current financial crisis. -- "an investment that fights climate change, creates millions of green jobs and spurs green growth".
And speaking on Friday, former US Vice-President Al Gore urged the world's leaders to meet several times during 2009 to secure a new treaty to tackle climate change. Mr Gore said US President-elect Barack Obama had assured him that combating the climate change would be a top priority of his country's new administration.
Mr Gore, a Nobel laureate, founder and chair of Alliance for Climate Protection, highlighted steps already being taken to make a case that a new deal was possible by next year's deadline meeting in Copenhagen.
in 2007, Mr Gore announced that he would donate all of his share of Nobel proceeds to the Alliance for Climate Protection - a nonprofit group Gore founded last year that is devoted to changing public opinion in the U.S. and around the world about the urgency of solving the climate crisis.
The conference drew to a close at about 3:00 am on Saturday morning. However, despite initial high expectations prior to the meeting, most delegates, observers, environmentalists and civil society groups expressed disappointment especially with the lack of a positive outcome on the share of proceeds issue in the group considering the second review of the Kyoto Protocol under Article 9.
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