Secretary of State John Kerry warned Wednesday that climate change is the biggest threat planet Earth has faced yet, and said it threatens to make the current list of human problems far worse if not stopped.
“If you think current conflicts are all-consuming, imagine what happens when we add food shortages, water shortages, stronger storms, longer droughts, steady rises in sea levels, which are already being predicted, and entire countries swallowed by the sea,” he said in a speech at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom.
He called climate change “the greatest threat that our planet has faced in modern history, in all of our history.”
.@JohnKerry on #climatechange at @Oxford Union: The future will and must be fueled by cleaner energy sources. https://t.co/l0loyUhuHm
— Department of State (@StateDept) May 11, 2016
“If we don’t make the choices available to us today, then the problems of today are going to pale in comparison to what’s coming down the road,” he warned.
But he also said it’s not too late for countries to marshal their resources and curb carbon emissions.
“The bottom line is that we don’t have to sit here and wait for this to happen,” he said.
