Secretary-General, in statement with chile’s president, sounds new climate change

 

warning as he describes vanishing glaciers, melting WESTERN ice shelf

Following is the text of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s statement in Santiago with Michelle Bachelet Jeria, President of Chile, as delivered on 10 November:

Good evening everyone.  I have been travelling widely in your beautiful country.  As you know, it has been one of the most vivid experiences of my life.  An eye-opener on many levels.

My purpose in coming was threefold:  to deepen the already rich partnership between the United Nations and Chile.   Chile has sent peacekeepers to Lebanon, to Cyprus and, most important, to Haiti, 514 to be exact.  Our mission cannot succeed without you.  You are also a model for how to realize our ambitious Millennium Development Goals.  You are on schedule –- or far ahead –- on virtually every measure.  My most heartfelt congratulations.

Congratulations, too, Madam President on your leadership of the Ibero-American Summit.  Thanks to you, Chile is a real force for social cohesion across the region.

Most important, thirdly, I am here as a messenger of early warning.  I came to see for myself the effects of climate change on Chile.  I have always considered global warming to be a matter of utmost urgency.  Yet I have discovered, on this trip, that I have not fully appreciated just how urgent this problem is.  I now believe, more than ever before, that a global calamity awaits us if we do not act.

This is no exaggeration.  Yesterday I was in Antarctica.  It frightened me a bit to talk to the scientists there.  You have heard how the famous Larsen ice shelf collapsed and disappeared several years ago, a slab of ice –- 87 kilometres long, disappeared completely, within weeks.  It was the size of some small nations.

What alarms me is the possibility that “Larsen phenomenon” could repeat itself on a vastly greater scale.  Scientists told me that the entire Western Antarctic Ice Shelf is at risk.

Like Larsen, it is all floating ice, comprising one fifth of the entire continent. If it broke up, sea levels could rise by 6 metres, or 18 feet.  Think of that. Think of the effect on Chile´s coastline.  It may not happen for 100 years or it may be 10.  But when it happens, it could happen quickly, almost overnight in geological terms.

This is not scaremongering.  I am not trying to frighten you but we are at a tipping point.  This is a sign, a harbinger of our future.

Chile does not produce much of the greenhouse gases blamed for global warming but it is paying the price.  I spent today in your truly magnificent national park, Torres del Paine.  It was exhilarating.  So beautiful, so pristine and majestic but it was deeply disturbing as well.  We can see this world ending.  The snow and ice of the Andes is melting far faster than we think.  Just as in Antarctica.

The Grey glacier is thinning five times faster than it was a few years ago.  It has retreated 3 kilometres since 1985.  And this rate is accelerating.

We see this elsewhere in Chile, as well.  Your researchers tell me that roughly half of the 120 glaciers they monitor are shrinking twice as fast as they were a decade or two ago.  These include the glaciers in the mountains outside Santiago that provide fresh water for 6 million residents.  What will happen if, or when, these glaciers vanish?

Further north, Chile is experiencing increasing drought and decreasing rainfall.  Your country’s mining industry is threatened by lack of water.  This is a mainstay of the economy, both in terms of exports and jobs.  Agriculture, too, is at risk.  So is your hydroelectric power.

That is why it is so important that we work together.  We must save this precious earth, lest it become, as President Bachelet warned in New York in September, a kind of huge “ Easter Island” empty of people with only mysterious sculptures left to mark their disappearance.

Global warming can be fought only by joint coordinated international effort.  As we go forward, beginning with this fact-finding trip and the climate change summit in Bali next month, I count on Chile´s support.

I count on your leadership, Madam President, you and your Government have been very generous in your support in organizing this trip.  Without your special attention it could not have been successful. 

I will discuss all that I saw and learnt here in Chile, as well as in Antarctica in a few days when I visit Valencia to release the latest Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change report.  It will be a sobering report and I will reinforce its findings with world leaders in Bali early next month.

Madam President, you and the Government of Chile are key allies in the global fight against climate change.  Knowing you, I’m sure that together we can go far in galvanizing the political will for change.

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For information media • not an official record