Nothing expresses my thoughts better than the statement of the Secretary-General of the United Nations: Kofi Annan.
"Secretary-General Kofi Annan told the U.N. conference on climate change Wednesday that those who would deny global warming or delay taking action against it are "out of step" and "out of time."
"Let no one say we cannot afford to act," Annan declared. The United States, for one, contends that reducing global-warming gases would be too costly to its economy.
The U.N. chief lamented "a frightening lack of leadership" in fashioning next steps in mandatory reductions of global emissions. "I would want leaders around the world to really show courage and to know that if they do, their people and the voters will be with them," he told reporters after his speech.
The chief U.S. delegate, at a later news conference, countered that Washington has been a leader with "groundbreaking initiatives" on clean-energy technology. Those are voluntary programs, not mandatory.
Hundreds of delegates from some 180 member nations of the 1992 U.N. climate treaty were entering the final three days of their two-week annual meeting, where they've been working on technical issues involving the Kyoto Protocol, which obliges 35 industrial nations to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases by 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012.
The United States and Australia are the only major industrialized countries to reject that 1997 treaty annex."
Source:
http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/11/15/annan.climate.ap/index.html
