U.N. Security Council must act preemptively – on climate change
This global threat requires a war-room mentality.
By Gregory Meeks | March 24, 2008 edition
The United Nations tackled the task of troubleshooting climate change last month. Between holding special General Assembly meetings at headquarters in New York, bringing 100 environmental ministers to Monaco in the largest meeting of ministers since Bali, and launching a Climate Neutral Network to highlight best practices in tackling global warming, the UN appears to be doing what it can to ensure that climate change does not fall off the political radar. Yet, it still isn’t enough. A concerted international strategy, on a par with the seriousness and scope of an UN Security Council resolution, is what’s needed to counter this climate crisis.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon was right in comparing the effects of climate change to the effects of war, given the potential level of human and environmental devastation potentially wrought by rising sea levels and increasingly catastrophic weather conditions. Philanthropist Sir Richard Branson, who keynoted UN General Assembly deliberations on climate change, was correct to call for a “war room” to adequately respond to a rapidly warming planet.
Both leaders recognize the need for serious strategy and the comparisons to war were not casually made. The threat to international peace and security calls upon nothing less than the purview of the UN Security Council.
Under Article 39 of the UN Charter, the Security Council maintains the right to identify threats to international peace and security and to devise means to counter these threats. The potential impact of that on climate change is substantial: the Security Council’s toolbox includes the capacity to cap greenhouse-gas emissions on every country and sanction those who fail to comply. Both a carbon tax, as well as a carbon-trading scheme, could incentivize countries to reduce emissions below even capped levels.
It is a moral imperative that the Security Council acts quickly. While island nations like Palau and the Maldives stand to face warlike scenarios sooner than the Security Council’s five permanent (P5) members – China, Russia, United States, Britain, and France are not immune. Moreover, the culpability of the P5’s populaces in contributing to climate change must be recognized. China and the US rank as the world’s top two greenhouse-gas emitters.
Not surprisingly, this may well account for the Security Council’s reluctance to tackle climate change with carbon caps and concomitant sanctions. The P5 has a hard enough time wrestling with resolutions that put parameters on their own political prowess. To expect them to write a resolution that restricts their right to pollute may be unrealistic. But the alternatives to inaction on this issue are dire.
Disappearing Pacific islands, due to rising sea levels, are projected for within our lifetime. Catastrophic weather conditions accosting the coastal regions of China, the US, and the UK, once mere prediction, are already taking place. Conflicts escalating over depleted natural resources, due to disrupted and rising temperatures, are already occurring. The planet may not wait patiently until the Security Council overcomes its propensity for political pandering.
Unless we act now, and with formidable preemptive force, more of this is what could face the international community. Transcending the Security Council’s usual scope of nation-state conflicts, climate change-related conflict will affect all of us – with particular devastation to developing countries not represented by the P5. Thus it is incumbent upon the Security Council, which has a responsibility to protect weaker member states, to step up and save the world.
A global threat requires global commitment. And that commitment can be best coordinated in the Security Council.
Representative Gregory Meeks (D) of N.Y. is vicechair of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific and the Global Environment. Michael Shank is the government relations adviser at George Mason University’s Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution.
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Comments
2. Bryant | 07.24.08
I hate to burst the bubble of the person who posted the first comment. However, the organization that he is reffering to, to refute the notion that humans create global warming, is considered to be a joke. Further more the criteria that you must meet to be one of the signers of the supposed “document” is laughable. You could be a nurse, a medical doctor, or anyone else with a degree in science that is it!!!!!! It does not require any knowlege of geology or any other earth related science. If you do not believe me try to google the names of the people who signed this document. This “organization” receives financial backing from the oil industry. Huge shock. I am any rational person who was going to go on to this institute’s site would recognize that fact that it is a joke. Also look up the background of the person who founded it, it is pretty funny
3. Kevin | 09.10.08
The cap and trade proposal is a terrible idea for America. If you want to make fighting global warming a universal effort, you have to stop promoting these socialist ideas as solutions. This is not a Republican/Democratic issue as Al Gore wants you to believe while the media is simply espousing controversy for the sake of selling advertising.
Come on, can’t we all get along. Regards from a Republican.
4. Andrew | 01.26.09
Carbon trading is economically rational and environmentally friendly. It is not a socialist idea. Al Gore used scientific data and has been commended by the global scientific and academic community.
Regards from a Democrat.
5. Kevin | 02.04.09
Sad fact, gloabal warming is a religion not a science. Al Gore’s degree is in photo journalism. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have a good opinion about journalist, most of the ones I saw on campus where drug users and other lazy types. The good news is with Obama’s naive policies, much like Jimmy Carters, some of those good journalist will be wiped out when Iran nukes NYC. No more Catie Couric, ABC,CBS,NBC, that is something I could support. Go Iran!
6. Pata | 02.25.09
Good article! If only more people would get up to speed with it’s appropriate urgency.
A large consensus of climate scientists is laboring mightily to communicate the threats to outsiders. We should do all we can to help them. Unfortunately, some people with technical degrees stop thinking systematically when we move outside our own familiar niche, or when we have grown comfortable with what we think we know. Too many become luddites unawares. Equally unfortunately, those backsliders are often vocal.
We can all help in large measure by practicing personal energy efficiency, while saving 100’s, if not 1,000’s of dollars per annum, irrespective of whether we are up to speed with climate understanding or not.
7. Kevin | 06.01.09
The only solution is mass suicide! Everybody that is fearful of Global Warming must go to an Al Gore concert and drink the cool-aid, that is the only way to solve this problem. That is satire fools!
It is time to recognize the Global Warming propaganda for what it is. it is a system to control and tax people. When the governent has private companies do thier bidding it call good-ole-fascism.
If a 6-12F temperature increase will kill off all of mankind how come we are still here? During the end of the Roman empire it was at least that much warmer, but the “Romans” are still here???? Just before the little Ice age that almost killed off all those silly Barbarians :) The climate changes and poeple adapt or die, that is what we do!
8. Jock Shockley | 09.30.09
What concensus? Name names? OISM may have credibility problems, but they do have a lot of signatures. IPCC has no such list, and with thoughts of pending scientific fraud charges, they aren’t likely to. Where is any list of Consensus scientists? Where is the simple statement explaining why CO2 is a problem?
The problem is that the activists and alarmists are so intent on global social change that they haven’t kept up as the science supporting their darling project has collapsed. The proof is there for all to see - CO2 can NOT drive atmospheric temperatures much beyond current levels. As concentration increases its effect on temperature decreases to zero impact. That is science!
Try to find the “proof” for your pet theory, guys, then look at the ways the “evidence” has disappeared. Have you seen the all powerful Hockey Stick Graph now that its fraudulent practice was blown open?
I am very tired of know nothing blowhards like Bryant, Pata and Andrew, who have not done their homework, but still actively push their pet cause.
9. Steven Chittenden Croft | 10.21.09
Stewardship should prevail regardless of politics. That we inject our poisonous wastes into this fragile biosphere we call Earth that sustains us with little regard to the consequences was once borne of ignorance which can be forgiven by is now borne of arrogance which cannot. I know that the world I travelled in my youth is far different than the one I travel now some 50 years later and it is not for the better. We are all pulled from our mother’s womb and have the same needs and regardless of our differences we need to roll up our sleeves and reach out a helping hand to our neighbors regardless of their color or faith or ethnic heritage for we are all in this together and it will require all of our effort to change our course. We should not fear change even though there will be sacrifices and compromises that we must make. The longer we argue and deny what is so obvious the greater the impact to future generations. I do not want to leave in my wake a wasted wounded world that will no longer sustain the quality of life that we take for granted and squander away. There is hard work ahead and the sacrifices we make now will pale in comparison to the hardships and grief that will prevail if we fail to take heed to the cries of our wounded world.
10. wrongstring | 10.22.09
@Mike Higgins. Contrary to what you have posted, that report has not passed peer review or credited under scientific scrutiny,not by climatologists or geologists with published research and supported by the National Academy of Sciences you sir are ill-informed. “In reality, neither Robinson’s paper nor OISM’s petition drive have anything to do with the National Academy of Sciences, which first heard about the petition when its members began calling to ask if the NAS had taken a stand against the Kyoto treaty. Robinson was not even a climate scientist. He was a biochemist with no published research in the field of climatology, and his paper had never been subjected to peer review by anyone with training in the field. In fact, the paper had never been accepted for publication anywhere.”
11. Chris G | 10.26.09
Ah, so many targets…OK
@8 Jock,
You say, “IPCC has no such list, …”
For a tip-of-the-iceberg start, you might try this
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter9-supp-material.pdf
scroll to the end where in says ‘References’.
If you really feel up to it, get on Google Scholar and do a search for some of the names you see there, for other work they might have done. Then do the same for the names from OISM. Let us know what you find.
12. bradfregger | 11.03.09
Sorry, I don’t buy into this scenario and I really don’t want my life controlled by a UN that has shown many times to be ineffective in handling some real issues like genocide.
With all of the current information coming out throwing additional doubt on this whole human-caused global warming issue, it is very surprising that any intelligent people are in favor of moving ahead at this time.
13. Senilodon | 11.11.09
Here are 3 criteria to consider when the subject of Climate Change arises:
1 Politics
2 Economics
3 Ignorance
Look at each separately or blend them together.Some research will be required.
At the end of your day ( and it will require 8 hours or more) you might have
some information that is worthwhile blogging about.Or more research to do!
To get started,contact your local library or use your best resource at hand:
your kids,or grandkids.Do not consult Google,workmates or drinking buddies.
Happy trails.
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1. Mike Higgins | 07.08.08
All this doom and gloom and still no empirical evidence that support the man-made global warming hypothesis… Don’t take my word for it. Read the 12-page peer-reviewed report that’s supported by 9000+ American scientists (all with PhDs).
“There are no experimental data to support the hypothesis that increases in human hydrocarbon use or in atmospheric carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are causing or can be expected to cause unfavorable changes in global temperatures, weather, or landscape. There is no reason to limit human production of CO2, CH4, and other minor greenhouse gases as has been proposed.”
“As coal, oil, and natural gas are used to feed and lift from poverty vast numbers of people across the globe, more CO2 will be released into the atmosphere. This will help to maintain and improve the health, longevity, prosperity, and productivity of all people.”
“Human activities are producing part of the rise in CO2 in the atmosphere. Mankind is moving the carbon in coal, oil, and natural gas from below ground to the atmosphere, where it is available for conversion into living things. We are living in an increasingly lush environment of plants and animals as a result of this CO2 increase. Our children will therefore enjoy an Earth with far more plant and animal life than that with which we now are blessed.”
To read the complete report (filled with real scientific data, not doom and gloom hysterics), visit http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p36.htm.