UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urges world leaders to take immediate action on climate change
On Tuesday, at the organization's headquarters in New York City, the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon gave a strong speech at the opening ceremony of the U.N. Climate Change Summit, calling it the "defining issue of our age."
Ki-moon, in his speech, said that he grew up in post-war Korea in poverty and because of this, he dreamed of peace, prosperity and opportunity. He called his current position "a dream come true" in many ways. And he added that today, people's dreams are at danger and climate change is the number one threat to hard-won peace, prosperity, and opportunity for billions of people around the globe.
On Sunday, hundreds of thousands in more than 150 countries marched to demand action on the issue of climate change, putting pressure on world leaders who were about to gather at the U.N. summit for a climate change summit. Ki-moon was among the demonstrators, walking with the mayor of New York City Bill de Blasio. In his speech, he urged leaders to take action on the issue. "Climate change is the defining issue of our age. It is defining our present. Our response will define our future. To ride this storm we need all hands on deck." He emphasized the increasingly unbearable environmental and financial cost of climate change that we have never experienced before. Climate change has catastrophic effects that can not be reversed if necessary precautions aren't taken and carbon emissions, also known as greenhouse emissions, aren't cut down. Ki-moon said that the only thing that stands in the way of controlling climate changeis us, human beings, and it is up to us to change our future and the future of the Earth. A better future is possible, he added, if we choose a low-carbon, climate resilient pathway which could lead us to a cleaner, healthier, fairer and more stable future not for some, but for all. In order to accomplish such a future he asked, "...all Governments to commit to a meaningful, universal climate agreement in Paris in 2015, and to do their fair share to limit global temperature rise to less than 2 degrees Celsius,"
