2008 End-of-Year Quotes by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon on the United Nations and Selected International Issues
Climate Change and the Global Economy
This is the Year of Climate Change. We have just 12 short months to the summit in Copenhagen, where nations will try to reach an agreement on global warming that all nations can embrace.
Nothing is more important. Yes, the global financial crisis is serious. But only climate change is a genuinely existential threat. It is the defining issue of our era. As leaders, we must remember that the world is watching. Future generations are counting on us. We must not fail.
That is why, wherever I go in the world, I beat the drum on climate change. As Secretary-General, I have seen its effects first-hand – melting glaciers in Antarctica, hurricanes in Haiti and Myanmar, the advancing sands of the Sahara. Our planet is in peril. And it is in peril because of what we, each and every one of us, are doing to it.
Some people say that we cannot afford to deal with climate change amid these times of economic trouble. I say that we cannot afford not to.
We face two great crises: climate change and the global economy. But these crises present us with an opportunity—an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. Managing the global financial crisis requires a massive global stimulus. A big part of that spending should be investment—an investment in a green future that creates millions of green jobs and green growth. We need a Green New deal.
Safeguarding the Bottom Billion.
The global economic crisis hits the most vulnerable people the hardest. Climate change most harms those who are least able to adapt, and who did the least to cause the problem. They are the “bottom billion,” the poorest of the world’s poor who live on less than $1 a day. We have a moral obligation to protect them. Yes, we are our brothers’ keepers.
A New US Administration
Not long after I became Secretary-General, nearly two years ago, I happened to sit next to Barack Obama on the shuttle from Washington to New York. Recently I spoke to him again, shortly after his election. One fact emerged from these conversations: we can look forward to a new era of global cooperation—a new multilateralism. We will see the United States and the United Nations in close partnership on a broad range of global issues, from climate change to reviving the global economy. I believe we will do so in a spirit of fairness and solidarity. We will not retreat from our commitments to fight poverty and disease. We will defend the right of the poorest nations to grow and share in a renewed and truly global prosperity. And we will work, together, for justice, human rights and the peace and security of all people.
Nuclear disarmament and Non-Proliferation:
As I see it, the greatest threat we face is the danger of losing heart and turning inward. If we turn inward and embrace protectionism, trade and global growth will suffer. If we turn inward, we lose our chance to deal with climate change while there still is time. If we turn inward, we miss great generational opportunities—to finally win a Middle East peace, for example, or save humankind from the threat of nuclear holocaust.
A few months ago, I called on world leaders to convene a great push on non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament. Few people realize it, but we have a chance in 2009 to pick up where Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan left off more than two decades ago, a hair’s breadth away from abolishing nuclear weapons. Pause, for a moment, to think of what that might mean. Last year global military expenditures topped $1.3 trillion, dwarfing the largest economic bailout. Think of the financial peace dividend of beating swords into plowshares. The parties to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty meet in 2010. The coming year requires serious prep-work. Let us seize this moment, in the name of peace and the universal human right to life.
The Middle East
We will not see an Israeli-Palestinian peace treaty in 2008, as hoped. Yet there is reason for optimism. The parties have been holding direct, intensive negotiations. They have built trust, where none existed, and a framework for talks. In short, they have done far more to set the stage for peace than many thought possible. Now is the time for the international community to do its utmost to help realize this elusive dream, so that 2009 will mark a new beginning in the Middle East.
The Internet
This year, the UN put me on YouTube. I was not looking for air time; the point is to mobilize people to change the world. True, technology can be abused. Terrorists, too, use the internet. Yet as the recent U.S. presidential campaign has proved, this new media has become a powerful force for social change. I see in the not-too-distant future a day when people, young and old, will more and more connect online to tackle problems from climate change and poverty to global hunger and issues of peace and security. The UN may be an organization of states, but we understand the power of a viral video.
