Today, looking at the cavernous gulf between rich and poor, the irresponsibility that caused the global financial crisis, and the weak and divided responses to climate change, I feel bitter. The opportunity to build a safer, fairer and more united world has largely been squandered.
To echo the demand made of me by my late friend and sparring partner former US president Ronald Reagan: Mr Obama, Mr Hu, Mr Singh and, back in Berlin, Ms Merkel and her European counterparts: “Tear down this wall.”
For this is your wall, your defining moment. You cannot dodge the call of history.
I appeal to heads of state and government to come in person to the climate change conference in Copenhagen next month and dismantle the wall.
The people of the world expect you to deliver. Do not fail them.
Mikhail Gorbachev, former general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, was awarded the 1990 Nobel Peace Prize for his leading role in the peaceful conclusion of the Cold War. Today, as the founding president of Green Cross International, he is heading an international climate change task force.
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