Climate change and the U.N. Security Council

Source: The Christian Science Monitor | by Gregory Meeks (*) and Michael Shank (**)

The United Nations tackled the task of troubleshooting climate change last month. Between holding special General Assembly meetings at headquarters in New York, bringing 100 environmental ministers to Monaco in the largest meeting of ministers since Bali, and launching a Climate Neutral Network to highlight best practices in tackling global warming, the UN appears to be doing what it can to ensure that climate change does not fall off the political radar. Yet, it still isn’t enough. A concerted international strategy, on a par with the seriousness and scope of an UN Security Council resolution, is what’s needed to counter this climate crisis.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon was right in comparing the effects of climate change to the effects of war, given the potential level of human and environmental devastation potentially wrought by rising sea levels and increasingly catastrophic weather conditions. Philanthropist Sir Richard Branson, who keynoted UN General Assembly deliberations on climate change, was correct to call for a “war room” to adequately respond to a rapidly warming planet.

Both leaders recognize the need for serious strategy and the comparisons to war were not casually made. The threat to international peace and security calls upon nothing less than the purview of the UN Security Council.

It is a moral imperative that the Security Council acts quickly. While island nations like Palau and the Maldives stand to face warlike scenarios sooner than the Security Council’s five permanent (P5) members – China, Russia, United States, Britain, and France are not immune. Moreover, the culpability of the P5’s populaces in contributing to climate change must be recognized. China and the US rank as the world’s top two greenhouse-gas emitters.

Not surprisingly, this may well account for the Security Council’s reluctance to tackle climate change with carbon caps and concomitant sanctions. The P5 has a hard enough time wrestling with resolutions that put parameters on their own political prowess. To expect them to write a resolution that restricts their right to pollute may be unrealistic. But the alternatives to inaction on this issue are dire.

Disappearing Pacific islands, due to rising sea levels, are projected for within our lifetime. Catastrophic weather conditions accosting the coastal regions of China, the US, and the UK, once mere prediction, are already taking place. Conflicts escalating over depleted natural resources, due to disrupted and rising temperatures, are already occurring. The planet may not wait patiently until the Security Council overcomes its propensity for political pandering.

(*) Representative Gregory Meeks (D) of N.Y. is vicechair of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific and the Global Environment;
(**) Michael Shank is the government relations adviser at George Mason University’s Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution.

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