Outgoing UN climate chief Yvo de Boer said yesterday he was “appalled” at the international community’s response to climate change, after the failure of last year’s Copenhagen summit on global warming.
“The one thing that has appalled me most is to witness the degree to which the international community is cutting off its nose to spite its face,” he told a Hong Kong business conference sponsored by The Economist magazine.
“[The world] is behaving as though climate change is somebody else’s problem ... This is in the collective interest and it’s a collective challenge,” Boer said.
“Unless we deal with that challenge ... we really are in big trouble,” he said.
De Boer’s blunt assessment came a week before steps down from the UN post to take a climate advisory job at international consulting firm KPMG.
De Boer was appointed executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in September 2006. In February, he suddenly announced his resignation effective July 1, three months ahead of schedule.
Praised by some for his work on climate change, de Boer also came under fire for the outcome at the Copenhagen talks, which ended in December in near-chaos as world leaders scrambled to find a face-saving deal.
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