‘Fight climate change and not each other’: Mahathir Mohamad to UN

NEW YORK, Sep 28, 2019, MalayMail. Countries should be preparing to combat climate change rather than preparing for war with each other, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad said at the General Debate of the 74th UN General Assembly here, reported the MalayMail.

“The world is experiencing climate change. Malaysia is hotter than ever before. It does not seem to return to previous temperatures. In fact, it seems to be getting hotter.

“Elsewhere powerful typhoons and hurricanes are destroying whole towns, killing thousands, wreaking havoc of unprecedented proportions.

“Flood waters from storms inundate huge areas of land. Sometimes there would be a dry spell and wild fires would destroy forests and towns. Hundreds would die.

“Melting snow in the Arctic and Antarctic is raising the levels of the seas and threaten to overrun islands.

“I have a feeling that these disasters are a part of the cycles of change that our planet has been going through for millions of years. Can it be that the stable salubrious climate that we have been enjoying has come to the end of its cycle?

“Could it be that the cycle is changing, as it did in prehistoric millions of years? Is it possible that the temperatures rise to a level that living conditions would become unbearable?” he asked.

Dr Mahathir said the world should be preparing to combat climate change and the accompanying natural disasters.

“I think, instead of preparing for war, we should be preparing to combat climate change, to bring back the normal environment we had been used to over the last thousands of years.

“We should be preparing ourselves for major earthquakes, typhoons and hurricanes, floods and landslides, etc. We should learn how to mitigate these natural disasters.

“We should be constructing shelters, make rain and grow food without sunlight, evacuate the sea side, and others

“We should have teams of well-equipped disaster experts ready to rush to disaster areas. Every disaster is a world disaster,” he added.

He said humanity was clever and could still manage to survive the catastrophes that may come.

“All these natural disasters may not happen of course. But we cannot rely on that.

“We are wasting our money preparing for wars, inventing ever more destructive weapons, when all of us may be wiped out by natural disasters as the planet goes through its next cycle.

“We, the human creatures are clever. We can still survive the next cycle if we set our researchers to come up with defences against catastrophes.

“If we reduce our budget for killing people, we will have the funds for research and preparation,” he added.