The Elephant in the conference room

Last month, demographers from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) released a report which estimates the population of the world now exceeds 7,000,000,000 people. This is a critical context for any solution or remedy to anthropogenic climate change. 

The fundamental challenge of climate change is that traditional means of social and economic development reinforce the release of greenhouse gas emissions leading to global warming trends and changes in local and regional climatic conditions.  It is a Catch-22.  The more people there are in the world and the more they are raised from poverty the worse the climate crisis becomes.

Green Development vs. Social Development?

Ban-Ki Moon has made climate change and the UNFCCC negotiations one of his highest priorities since taking office as Secretary General of the United Nations. For him, "the reason is simple, climate change affects everything the United Nations does: poverty, peace and security, and human rights. We cannot sustain gains in Millennium Development Goals or preserve ecosystems that sustain us. We cannot ensure safety and stability for the poor and vulnerable without progress in climate change."

The Millennium Development Goals that he refers to are part of a project spearheaded by the United Nations with a number of laudable goals anyone can agree with: eradicating extreme poverty and hunger throughout the world, achieving universal primary education, promoting gender equality and empowering women, reducing child mortality, improving maternal health, combatting HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases, and ensuring environmental sustainability. While world leaders signed on to this agreement in 2000 to my knowledge, it has never been fully funded.