Evo slams richest countries over global warming

Speaking at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Lima, Peru, Bolivian President Evo Morales called on the world’s richest countries to take responsibility for their role in exacerbating climate change, and to reduce their emissions to avoid environmental disaster.

The indigenous leader highlighted the detrimental impacts of global warming, felt most strongly by developing countries who, Morales said, are “historically the least responsible.”

Morales noted that developed nations had not changed their approach to reducing emissions over the past thirty years. He has been prominent in the campaign to make the wealthiest countries honor their commitments outlined by the Kyoto Protocol, demanded that northern nations listen to indigenous peoples to tackling climate change.

Developed countries “will carry on stealing from us. Stealing our future. Stealing our opportunity to development ourselves in a sustainable way,” Morales said at the conference, also known as the COP 20.

The recently re-elected Bolivian president outlined the causes of climate change.

As well as “exaggerated industrialization,” Morales pointed to the “politics of war” as being the “machine of death,” killing not only people, but the planet. He pointed out that a fifth of military spending could solve 50 percent of environmental issues.

Addressing the COP 20 just before Morales, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon emphasized the urgency with which members needed to respond to the challenges of climate change.

“The race is on to build more climate resilient societies,” he said, before calling on members to honor their commitments to current emissions-reduction agreements.

“I urge those countries that have not yet done so to swiftly ratify the Doha Amendment to the Kyoto Protocol, which established its second commitment period,” he concluded.

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