Posted on 02/16/2011 10:36:22 AM PST by 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.
(Excerpt) Read more at green.blogs.nytimes.com ...
Well, I guess they got tired of using I B F.
These people are complete maroooons.
Seems to me, we need more PLANT FOOD. I wonder what that food would be?
UN Climate Chief: Middle East Was Peaceful When CO2 Was Below 350 PPM
“The United Nations’ top climate change official said on Tuesday that food shortages and rising prices caused by climate disruptions”
“Climate disruptions”? Whatever happened to global warming? /sarc
Where’s the “Aw geez, not this again” graphic?
Somehow I don’t think the instability we are seeing in the Middle east that threatens even nuclear war has anything to do with climate change. Ditto for N. Korea.
The real danger of climate change is that it drives already unstable enviromental nutjobs even crazier.
Ok, I’m convinced. Don’t you guys know that warm temperatures bring massive snowfall and sub-freezing weather? Why is everyone here so anti-science? /
mental instability, for sure
And U.N. Official Drives Climate Change...
I have yet to create a snowfall on my stove by boiling water.
LOL..outstanding
The Coming Ice Age balloon didn't fly.
Global Warming is no longer discussed.
Now, normal weather fluctuations are the boogie man. We're all going to die by global moderation!
Thanks! I LOVE that graphic!
How about all that food they’re using to make bad fuel?
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