“It’s now or never in bid to curb climate change”, Ban warns

(Dec.15,2009): United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in his end-of-year press conference to the Media on Monday, referred to the Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen. He warned that in global efforts to forge a new deal to curb climate change, the world stood at the crossroads between a sustainable future and a path to catastrophe. “Now is the moment to act,” he told a news conference at the UN headquarters in New York, ahead of the culmination later this week of the UN climate change summit, where some 115 heads of State and government, including the leaders of the world’s top two emitters of greenhouse gases, China and the United States, will gather to hopefully seal the deal on an agreement. He said “Seldom in history has a choice been so clear. We can move toward a future of sustainable green growth, or we can continue down the road to ruin. We can act on climate change now, or we can leave it to our children and grandchildren – a debt that can never be paid, that threatens our planet and its people,” he added.
Ban appealed to negotiators to redouble their efforts, find room for compromise and make a final push. “If everything is left to leaders to resolve at the last minute, we risk having a weak deal – or no deal at all. And this would be a failure of potentially catastrophic consequence,” said Ban..
Ban also announced that he would appoint Kenyan Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai as a Messenger for Peace on climate change, calling her “an excellent choice”, in light of her long record of achievement in environmental conservation and sustainable development.