Sorry for the cliché but Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and caldron bubble! Global warming is generating an “unholy brew” of vexatious weather events that threaten “international peace and security.”
So said Secretary Herr General Ban Ki-moon in an attempt to persuade the Security Council to accept climate change under its purview. But even with his Shakespearean flourishes, he could not convince enough of the member States to accept his horrific visions. For the moment, climate change will remain a matter of science. 
Ban Ki-moon’s usurpation would have been momentous because if the Security Council accepted global warming onto its watch lists changes in barometric pressure would have become a matter subject to intervention by UN armed forces.
If the UN changes its mind and says climate change is equivalent to genocide or rouge nations engaging in nuclear weapons research, Tim Black at Spiked suggests the UN switch from pastel blue helmets to verdant green ones. Then the nations that are invaded will know they are beset by eco-warriors.
Ki-moon did not help his cause when he said what was false: Climate change is “accelerating in a dangerous manner.”
Extreme weather events continue to grow more frequent and intense in rich and poor countries alike, not only devastating lives, but also infrastructure, institutions, and budgets — an unholy brew which can create dangerous security vacuums.
Extreme weather events are not growing more frequent and intense, whether in rich or poor countries. What is true is that storms of a given magnitude cause more damage now than historically because now we have more people, and more people concentrated in small areas, all who have more expensive toys to break.
China envoy Wang Min voted against Ki-moon and said what was true, that climate change was “essentially a sustainable development issue.” Russia’s envoy Vitaly Churkin was similarly skeptical and voted no. Brazil’s envoy allowed that the UN “must take a holistic view of conflict,” but put the kibosh on Ki-moon’s grand scheme.
But France and England was on Ki-moon’s side. And so was the Obama-appointed US ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, who “blasted” the Security Council for not agreeing with her. She said there was “‘manifest evidence’ that climate change posed a direct threat to peace and security.”
Rice was petulant:
This is more than disappointing. It’s pathetic, it’s shortsighted, and frankly it’s a dereliction of duty.
There is no word whether she stomped her feet, but pouting remains a distinct possibility.
Perhaps the fretful Rice was influenced by Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme Achim Steiner, who, using the military vernacular, called climate change a “threat multiplier.”
In a document dizzy with empty phrases and cheap horror movie twists, Ki-moon cried that “Minimalist steps will not do.” There are also mysterious implications about a sort of climate bank, monies which would be administered by the (incorruptible, surely) UN.
There’s not much meat among the sinew of words. It will take an expert political butcher to cut out what’s useful. What to make of “The science suggested continuing, expediting and ‘tipping point’ trends linked to climate change” or “This Council needs to be prepared for the full range of crises that may be deepened or widened by climate change”?
What is obvious is that there are one or two genuine zealots like Rice and Steiner, more than a few countries with their hands out, so anxious to lay claim to the alms the UN might disperse that they will say the most outrageously false things, and a handful of stalwarts who don’t want to be the source of these alms.
It is clear that the UN through the Security Council, as all political organizations do, seeks to increase its own power. They were stopped only because China and Russia did not want to play along. A curious situation: our enemies (of a sort) taking a position against our government but which ultimately supports us. So, at least for now, thank God for China and Russia.
This is a wonderful example of post normal science where reality is whatever you claim it to be. The so called climate science is a wonderful example of post normal science where the so called facts are made up to support a hypothesis. Trofim Denisovich Lysenko is alive and well.
Dude,
Why do you care if the “UN nearly makes climate change a peace and security matter”? The UN has less power than the hosts of The View. Also, we don’t have enough information to make certain conclusions about climate change.
” Also, we don’t have enough information to make certain conclusions about climate change.” Please email this useful observation to Ban Ki-Moon.
SM, less power? In some ways, perhaps, but they are much more expensive than the View.
We need to face exactly what the make-up of a rouge nation might be. Puns intended.
I am not so surprised that Russia and China appear to be the last supports of reasonable and conservative people in the West .
The former had already gone through all this Ban Ki-Moonish s..t and had to live with it during 70 years .
The few things they know with certainty after 3 sacrified generations is that they don’t want to go saving humanity and awaiting tomorrows that sing AGAIN .
The latter are masters of revolutionary dialectics and probably consider Ban Ki-Moon as a ridiculous amateur trying to fool the master . Their “No” meant “You don’t really believe that we don’t see through your laughable petty attempt at getting power , do you ?”
The US representative must have appeared singularly dumb to both of them and they might have wondered how it was possible that this country had been a power in the past even when it had to face “giants” that were Jossip Vissarionovitch and the Great Chairman …
Just a small point, when you refer to “England” I think you meant “United Kingdom”. Thanks from Scotland.