Climate Change Drives Instability, U.N. Official Warns (Duh)

The New York Times ^ | February 15, 2011, 1:10 pm | JOHN M. BRODER

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

The United Nations’ top climate change official said on Tuesday that food shortages and rising prices caused by climate disruptions were among the chief contributors to the civil unrest coursing through North Africa and the Middle East.

In a speech to Spanish lawmakers and military leaders, Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the United Nations climate office, said that climate change-driven drought, falling crop yields and competition for water were fueling conflict throughout Africa and elsewhere in the developing world. She warned that unless nations took aggressive action to reduce emissions causing global warming such conflicts would spread, toppling governments and driving up military spending around the world.

“It is alarming to admit that if the community of nations is unable to fully stabilize climate change, it will threaten where we can live, where and how we grow food and where we can find water,” said Ms. Figueres, a veteran Costa Rican diplomat and environmental advocate. “In other words, it will threaten the basic foundation – the very stability on which humanity has built its existence.”

Rising food prices were a factor in the January riots that unseated Tunisia’s longtime president, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, although decades of repression and high unemployment also fed the revolution. The link between food and resource shortages and Egypt’s revolution is less clear.

But Ms. Figueres said that long-term trends in arid regions did not look promising unless the world took decisive action on climate change. She said that a third of all Africans now lived in drought-prone regions and that by 2050 as many as 600 million Africans would face water shortages.

[OESY]

Left-wingers want to save the planet using population control and blocking development (i.e., using anti-business anti-jobs tactics). Ways to reduce world population, are by raising food prices, restricting the availability of food, and promoting/funding abortion. As Obama said, fuel prices must “necessarily skyrocket.” Rising fuel prices drive food prices higher making food less affordable for the world's masses. Leftists also restrict food availability by refusing to provide (say, through the UN) pestilence-resistant genetically-modified food. Leftists would rather have famines in which people starve because it's helps fund-raising when you can exacerbate Western guilt. In every wealth redistribution scheme, leftists as middle men rake off a commission or receive a salary. Further, they can blame all these problems on global warming and climate change, as is happening with the Arab Street uprisings. These uprisings may lead to a world revolution also favored by leftists. Thus, many left-wing goals are furthered by Obama's efforts.

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[WOBBLY BOB]

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

That is EXCELLENT!

[Force of Truth]

What are those polar bears doing to each other exactly?

[FrankR]

If that’s what you’re into, then there is no reason for me to explain the point of the graphic.

[TigersEye]

Apparently CO2 deprivation (CO2 levels are at historical lows) is causing the potted plants at the UN some serious mental confusion.

[Marine_Uncle]

We can’t expect them to give up at this point. To many years of brainwashing and orientation in one direction.

[SteamShovel]

Climate Change Leftist Enviro-Activism Drives Instability, U.N. Official Warns Doesn't Admit

There...fixed it.