Arab uprisings foreshadow climate havoc, says British diplomat

By Gerard Wynn, Reuters
Wednesday, February 23, 2011 LONDON: A string of Arab uprisings are giving a foretaste of the likely havoc that climate change will cause without greater effort to curb greenhouse gas emissions, a British Foreign Ministry official warned. Soaring food prices, stoked by Russia’s drought last year and subsequent ban on wheat exports, were an additional trigger in the popular revolts across North Africa and the Middle East mostly blamed on public frustration with autocratic rule. “Treat this as a ‘prequel,’ because if we can’t remove some of those upward pressures on resource stresses then crises that are difficult to deal with when they happen will become more likely,” said John Ashton, special representative for climate change at Britain’s Foreign Ministry. “How these things are going to rattle around the world and where they’re going to hit you is inherently unpredictable,” he said in an interview, using the example of food riots in Mozambique after the Russian wheat export ban. Tackling climate change by finding low-carbon, energy alternatives to expensive fossil fuels was key to easing energy, water and food security fears, he said in the interview Monday, pointing to crop failures in Bolivia and oil prices which have passed $100 a barrel. Ashton was speaking after giving a lecture in London where he blamed diplomats for putting international climate talks ahead of efforts to convince their own peoples of the risk posed by rising greenhouse gas emissions. “Most foreign policy elites have yet to embrace and act on this. It would not be harsh to call that a failure of diplomacy,” he said. …