Kofi Annan Declares a "Frightening Lack of Leadership" in Global Warming

BBC has an on-line article and video discussing Global Warming at a UN climate summit in Nairobi. The video talks about how global warming is affecting 3rd world countries like Nairobi but they don't seem to have the actual speech at this time that was aired on BBC America. The article discusses Kofi Annan's speech during the climate summit. This, in conjunction with the recent report by Sir Nicholas Stern on the economic effects of climate change, make two major announcements we have in the global community regarding the global warming emergency:

1. A United Nations climate summit, composed of world leaders and bringing together humanity's best scientific data, has declared once again that the world is heading rapidly towards a state of dire emergency that we may not be able to stop unless major world powers work together in a global cooperation. The Secretary-General of the U.N., Kofi Annan, has criticised the global community (read: U.S. government in particular) for a "frightening lack of leadership" on the matter.
2. Sir Nicholas Stern, former Chief Economist and Senior Vice President of the World Bank, now a lead economist for the British government, issued "The Stern Review", a report compiled for the British government on the economic affects of global warming and what our action or inaction will likely lead to. Basically, if we act now, the cost will only be 1% of the global gross domestic product (GDP) as opposed to a cost of 5% per year losses of the GDP if we do nothing and are reactive to the increasing climate crises as they arise.

What do these two things mean? They mean that all of the scientific community has researched and confirmed that global warming and climate change exists and is a threat to human civilization as we know it. In addition, the majority of the world political community including the United Nations has also accepted global warming as fact, recognized the imminent danger and called the global community into action to begin change now. We also now see that economic models based on the projections of the effects of climate change show that the world economy will be severely stressed and show large financial losses with a continuing decline if action is not taken now. We have scientific data, we have the support of the global political and economic community, now we need the support of the U.S. government and it's people. This is a call to arms that we need to hear. We need to step up and begin recognizing the true necessity of action on global warming and begin to initiate policy and controls that will make a difference now. We need to ignore corporate demands and resistance to policy change and do what is right for our country, our people, the earth and it's people.