World Environment Day calls for end to CO2 addiction
WELLINGTON (Reuters) - The United Nations urged the world on Thursday to kick the habit of producing carbon dioxide, saying everyone must act to fight climate change.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said global warming was becoming the era's defining issue and would hurt rich and poor.
"Our world is in the grip of a dangerous carbon habit," Ban said in a statement on World Environment Day, which was marked by events around the globe and hosted by the New Zealand city of Wellington.
"Addiction is a terrible thing. It consumes and controls us, makes us deny important truths and blinds us to the consequences of our actions," he said in the speech to reinforce this year's World Environment Day theme of "CO2 Kick the Habit."
World Environment Day, conceived in 1972, is the United Nations' principal day to mark global green issues and aims to give a human face to environmental problems and solutions.
New Zealand, which boasts snow-capped mountains, pristine fjords and isolated beaches used as the backdrop for the "Lord of the Rings" film trilogy, has pledged to become carbon-neutral.
"We take pride in our clean, green identity as a nation and we are determined to take action to protect it. We appreciate that protecting the climate means behavior change by each and every one of us," said New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark.
New Zealand staged art and street festivals to spread the message on how people can reduce carbon usage. In Australia, the Adelaide Zoo staged a wild breakfast for corporate leaders to focus on how carbon emissions threaten animal habitats.
GLOBAL EVENTS
In Brazil, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, under pressure over his stewardship of the Amazon rain forest, unveiled plans to create three protected reserves covering an area the size of the U.S. state of Vermont.
The new reserves in Para and Amazonas state would expand the protected area of the world's largest forest by 2.6 million hectares (10,000 square miles). Deforestation of the Amazon has spiked in recent months, a trend environmentalists say may be linked to higher global food prices as farmers expand into the forest.
In Bangladesh's capital, Dhaka, people planned to clean up Gulshan Baridhara Lake that has become badly polluted, and in Kathmandu, the Bagmati River Festival focused on cleaning up the river there.
Many Asian cities, such as Bangalore and Mumbai, planned tree-planting campaigns.
But in Europe, which claims to be a leader in the climate change battle, Environment Day passed with barely a blip.
Britain urged individuals to take action and the Environment Agency called on people to be prepared for more flooding, to use less water and protect wildlife. Continued...
