PM ratchets up climate crisis warning

UNITED NATIONS – The Prime Minister today stepped up the challenge to the world to tackle the climate crisis, warning world leaders gathered here today of a backlash of mass migration to the world’s richest and biggest polluters.

She told a United Nations special summit on climate of an influx of climate refugees in coming years as a consequence of failing to take action to stop climate change.

Mottley said: “Make no mistake, there will be mass migration by climate refugees that will destabilize the countries of the world that are not on the frontline of this climate crisis.”

Speaking on behalf of CARICOM countries being battered by powerful hurricanes and other climate impacts, Prime Minister Mottley made it clear that the Caribbean would not roll over and play dead.

She told the UN: “We refuse to be relegated to the footnotes of history and be collateral damage for the greed of others, for we have contributed less than one per cent of greenhouse gas emissions.

“If it was up to our community of small nations to solve the problem of climate change, it would have been solved three decades ago when we raised it.” 

She declared that survival of Barbados and other Caribbean countries which make up the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) bloc in the UN required far more than the current plan to stop global temperatures from rising by 1.5 degrees Celsius, 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit.

The Prime Minister said: “In other words, two degrees needs to be taken off the table once and for all.

“The real solution is for us to not keep asking people to make commitments that are small… but the global community must accept that it is within our power to halt and reverse climate change.”

If the world can make driverless cars, it can tackle climate change, said Mottley.

She declared: “There simply can be no more coal power plants after 2020 if we are serious about our future.”

Mottley stressed the need for those in power and those capable of developing new tools and technologies to reevaluate their priorities toward the greater good.

“The world finds it possible to apply resources to solving male baldness while it cannot find the resources to cure malaria. These misplaced priorities will lose us the battle.

“We have brought our plans as small nations, we are implementing them and we have fully embraced the responsibility to act. The young people of the world demand climate justice, as do we,” she said.