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New Energy World
New Energy World embraces the whole energy industry as it connects and converges to address the decarbonisation challenge. It covers progress being made across the industry, from the dynamics under way to reduce emissions in oil and gas, through improvements to the efficiency of energy conversion and use, to cutting-edge initiatives in renewable and low carbon technologies.
Fixing climate change: the world leaders’ perspective
10/7/2024
10 min read
Feature
Former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and former Ireland President Mary Robinson discussed climate change and related issues in a Chatham House panel discussion on 3 May. Both are now part of global advisory group The Elders, working as, respectively, Deputy Chairman and Chairman. Below is an edited and abridged account of the session, introduced and moderated by Bernice Lee, Chatham House Research Director – Futures.
Ban Ki-moon (BK-m): Rapidly-approaching climate phenomena will affect the whole spectrum of our daily life. While working as a Secretary General [2007–2016], I worked very hard to make sure that succeeding generations, including ourselves, should be able to live in peace, harmony and security without being hit by all of these natural disasters. That’s why we are here, to discuss how we can really join together to address the climate issues.
Mary Robinson (MR): I don’t think there’s any doubt that the climate and nature crisis should supersede everything else, because it is threatening our very existence. But unfortunately, we’re not putting science where it should be. During COVID we listened to Chief Medical Officers in every country, and we complied when we were told to mask up. We need somehow to have Chief Scientists in every country now to remind us, daily, of the impacts of climate change, because they’re evident now, everywhere.
I was very shocked when I was working in Africa to discover that climate change [disproportionately] affects the poorest countries, small island states and developing countries. I had been previously President of Ireland for seven years [1990–1997] and said nothing about climate change, because it wasn’t affecting us. I had to learn on the ground in Africa. In 2003, 2004 and 2005, women were saying to me: ‘Is God punishing us? We don’t understand. We have no rainy seasons anymore. We have flooding, then we have drought and sometimes flooding in one part of the country and drought in another part. We’ve never had this before. What is it?’ And of course, it was rich countries who had built their economies on fossil fuel causing this problem.