Prince Charles: Act Now on Global Climate Change

As climate change accelerates, so too will hunger, poverty, and perhaps even social unrest.

As the world edged into financial crisis, there were repeated warnings that we were headed for disaster. In the end, disaster struck. In many ways, the challenge of climate change has a similar feel, and the alarm bells are ringing just as loudly. But while it was possible to bail out the banks and to stimulate economic recovery with trillions of dollars of public finance, it will not be possible to bail out the climate—unless we act now.

Yet even when the basic science of climate change has been accepted by almost all scientists, many others still seem to think that it is unfounded, and that the world has more important questions to address. Reducing poverty, increasing food production, combating terrorism, and sustaining economic recovery are seen as more deserving of our attention. But this is a false choice, for climate change is not an alternative priority to all of these; it is in fact a “risk multiplier,” a factor that will undermine our ability to achieve any of these things.

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