Ban Ki-moon - Secretary-General of the UN, identified the organizations priorities for

2010 in an address to the UN General Assembly in January. “The world has reached a
critical stage in its efforts to exercise responsible environmental stewardship”
He identified the UN’s primary focus, which is resolved annually, as fighting Climate
Change, rather than their historical pledge annual to combat global poverty.

This has always been the cursor for the general direction of the UN

Harmless – Right?

No

because it will mean the difference between hundreds of billions of dollars,

trillions into the future and far more valuable lives squandered in accordance to the UN’s
convoluted funding algorithms which will direct their limited resources into the
atmosphere.

….But… UN processes are not inflexible…

With reasonable social discourse, this aberration from their responsibility to humanity
will be amended.

But neither acquiesce nor apathy are acceptable…from you! Discontent is your due
responsibility.

Jaqueline Balkenen, the Dutch climate change and environmental minister condemned
the UN for their ‘poor’ decision after examining the extent at which measures aimed at
countering climate change had harmed the worlds poor.

This is not acceptable.

Local populations from developing nations are displaced to clear land for tree-planting
projects when foreign nations intend to offset emissions from their power plants via
mandate of the Kyoto Protocol. The United Nations Clean Development Mechanism
(CDM) has incited violations of the UN’s own declaration on humans rights. Amongst
other examples are investments in crop-based biofuels by foreign nations in developing
countries which have had the greatest media attention of the lot.

The United Nations needs to prioritize the imminent crisis of global poverty over the
nuisance of our climate change. This is important because evidentially, it cannot do both
effectively with its limited resources and these historical conflicts in outcomes.
 The scientific empirical evidence behind climate change is compelling, but the priorities
of the UN are a separate social, politically and economic debate.

Rational thoughts should no longer be allowed to be the weapons of irrational minds.

As citizens of a representative democracy we are each morally apprehensible in this

issue. Our nation expects us to form the an informed and modernized opinion on issues of
international importance.

If you can do that, we can make Australia proud.

We students are each at the doorstep of the voting age, when we will begin to play a more
direct role in Australians future on the world stage. We will elect officials who political
perspectives will have a lot of say in determining the course of the lives of the poor.

Our teacher Ms. Carol is already privileged with that right. But I hope she understands
the responsibility she has to form the pliable young minds of her students with the highest
caliber of decency on matters of international importance.

You now understand the context of this debate, why we should be interested in this
matter as young Australians, and why this is such not a theoretical debate with its grave
human consequences.

But why poverty over climate?

You may be aware that the real deal-breaker at Copenhagen was the conflict between the
rich and poor countries over funding. Finance provided to help developing countries deal
with potentially disastrous impact of climate change solutions is not entirely on top of
the aid sums they receive to help with their development – with agriculture, poverty
relief, health and education.

Oxfam's Robert Bailey said that: “poor countries fear that, without a guarantee of
‘additionality’, when the rich states have to start providing huge sums of compensation
money, they will simply divert their aid flows, and that money that once went to schools
and hospitals will be switched, for example, to wind farms”

According to UNICEF roughly 25,000 children die each day due to poverty. With less
funding, more kids will die with increasing frequency.

The ‘West’, has left the developed world in debt for their own unsustainable industrial
practical. Now not only are they denying them the chance at reciprocal economic
prosperity, they are recalling in their unjust debt in the form of human lives…. The
welfare of people should not have to be in competition with mainly environmental
concerns and the manchievallian self interests of greedy nations.

Does that last bit describe Australia to you? It doesn’t to me, and I don’t want it to either.
The ‘green’ fabrication that the world’s poor are on the same side as the environmental
activists has been torn to shreds

They clearly are not.

For developing countries, climate change reduction strategies and other environmental
tactics that impede economic development are unacceptable. They scored this into UN
orthodoxy at the Rio Earth summit in 1992. They executed the principle when they
emasculated the Kyoto Protocol by insisting only rich countries cut emissions. And they
will continue to do this again and again and again.

The failure at Copenhagen was not the result of greater influence of developing countries.
It was a failure, yet again, of green activists and environmental officials in rich countries
to understand the position of developing countries.

Poverty directly effects more humans than climate change could. Furthermore, it is a
more urgent crisis. Global poverty plagues nearly half of the world's population, where it
is the cause of extreme suffering, malnutrition and death. Global climate change,
conversely, may not have such a substantially negative effect on the world's population,
standards of living, health, and survival. Unlike climate change, global poverty is having
an extremely deleterious impact now.

The IPCC, the UN’s bible on matters of Climate Change was recently brought to the
attention of the media with the Himalyan Glacier blunder.

The unreliability of data from this agency compounds doubts over the credibility of UN’s
prioritization decision.

The credibility of reports produced from this agency lie tatters. But they didn’t when
senior UN officials mediated the organizations priorities.

Misinformation makes for misinformed decisions with very serious consequences.

Activism, and even passive support, is necessary to rectify this situation

But, for all its bureaucratic flaws and operational redundancies in regards to climate
governance, the UN remains the preeminent international body on efforts to alleviate
poverty. Over the last twenty years the institution has amassed unparalleled knowledge
and expertise which should not be rebuffed.

It’s shocking to see desperate climate change researchers relying on alarmist theories as
they vie for funding

And It’s alarming to see desperate diplomats relying on shocking policies as they vie for
popular support.
We cannot let this happen any longer.

I’d like to take a few questions from the class before I go on and conclude.

8 min 30 sec.

UN mission: Is the UN's mission better for fighting poverty or climate change?

Considering that poverty is currently, and for the foreseeable future, the greatest road-
block to human welfare, the UN should Endeavour to prioritize this field of work over
other endeavors such as solving climate change.

They have had their greatest impact in helping the poor, mitigating conflict, and
protecting innocent civilians during conflict. In general, its mission has evolved to be
more of a humanitarian front than a global governance body. It should make an effort to
live up to this mission by prioritizing poverty over climate change, especially when the
two come into conflict.

Economics: Can the UN have a greater impact on poverty than climate change?

When money goes to the poor in the form of aid, it is directly addressing a clear human
need. You can cope with less of a variety of food through de-speciation from climate
change than you can with no food in respect to poverty. Therefore, it is better that the UN
focus its attention and limited resources on issues it can best affect, such as poverty.

Politics: Is poverty reduction more politically feasible than fighting climate change?

India's objections in 2009 to mandatory carbon emission targets are a good example of
the conflict between the climate and human welfare. They argued that meeting these
targets would impair its development and poverty reduction efforts. Clearly, there are
times when environmental aims have economic costs, and where the UN must prioritize
poverty reduction or climate change. Poverty reduction is the international communities
greatest concern.

Haven’t we enough humanity not to demand our transnational neighbors to sacrifice the
economic well being, health, and even survival of their people?

Security: Which is a greater priority for international security?

Poverty affects far more people than climate change, it kills around 20,000 children every
day. The UN, who have evolved into more of a humanitarian than global governance
body can also have a greater impact on a direct human need. Climate change under
standard modern modeling in not exected to have the same deleterious impact poverty is
having now.
Lets take a look at one specific example. Poverty is a greater threat to peace than climate
change. Aristotle called poverty the father of rebellion and crime. Global poverty is the
direct cause of illiteracy, misunderstandings, discontentment, tensions, and conflict. It
creates the conditions for revolutions, guerrilla warfare, gang warfare, desperation among
exacerbated governments, and nodes of tension that can escalate both civil war and
international military confrontations.

It is not clear that climate change could have such a negative effect on global stability and
peace. The only way that climate change could have such an impact is by simply
worsening poverty and the cycle of violence and conflict that result.

However, by untapping the potential of the millions of individuals that we can liberate
from poverty with the same funds that may be spent on say, a wind turbine, there will be
much greater democratic potential geared to help resolve issues of adaptation and
mitigation, such as building a wind farm for climate change.

A poor farmer from a rural agricultural community will not lobby for wind farms at his
town hall. Tell him that all his financial troubles will be taken care of while he is away,
and yet another voter is liberated. Systemic poverty is the main culprit of international
insecurity, and should be prioritized by the UN for this reason.

Thank you for your insightful questions.

Zealots have short life spans and when the cost and impracticality of what they urge
quickly becomes apparent and their beliefs die. Their possession of the UN through
political representation by leaders vying for votes will soon be exorcised as popular
support in democracies swings back from environmental reactionism, to stable
rationalism.

If Copenhagen was not a climate change epiphany for Western leaders then only through
the moral integrity of this generation and the sagacity of our teachers will we ever be able
to envisage a practical global strategy to both reduce climate change and extreme
poverty.

The United Nations needs re-orient itself as the compassionate agents against poverty that
it was...and we can and will compel it to be again.

14.00 mins