John Kerry, current U.S. Secretary of State, is saying that nature "is screaming" at humans to slow, and halt, the effects of climate change. Some observers are saying that Kerry has now adopted the mantle of spokesperson for the environment from former Vice President Al Gore.
The Secretary of State compared the danger of climate change to that of weapons of mass destruction and terrorism, as one of the greatest threats to global civilization.
Kerry's comments were made during a speech to business leaders on Sept. 22, on the first day of Climate Week NYC.
"You don't have to take my word, or Al Gore's word on it. You can wake up pretty much every day and listen to Mother Nature, who is screaming at us about [it]," Kerry stated, prior to a climate summit scheduled to start at the United Nations.
The United States will also contribute $15 million to the World Bank auction facility, developed to reduce emissions of methane. The gas is produced from drilling and mining for fossil fuels, and vast quantities of the chemical, stored in permafrost at the poles, are being released to the atmosphere from rising temperatures. This was the first of what are expected to be a series of small announcements from the administration during the week.
Kerry opined that the U.S. and other developed nations are not doing enough to combat the effects of global warming. Some politicians in Washington claim reducing greenhouse gases will cost vast sums of money, harming the economy.
"It doesn't cost more to deal with climate change; it costs more to ignore it ... and we need to make that clear to people in this country," Kerry told reporters.
The Obama administration intends to encourage leaders of the 17 nations responsible for 80 percent of greenhouse gas emissions to reduce their production. The plea is being made at the Major Economies Forum (MEF) in New York this month. The same leaders will meet again early in 2015, in order to make sure nations are tackling the problem previous to a meeting in Paris in December of that year. That meeting is aimed at producing an international agreement to combat man-made climate change.
The U.S. government intends to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide by the year 2020 by 17 percent below levels recorded in 2005.
Several hundred thousand people gathered in New York City on Sept. 21 to express their support for action to reduce greenhouse gases, in order to control global warming. It was the largest climate change rally in history, according to organizers.
