Climate Change Called Security Issue

Here is a way to get America interested in climate change: wrap it in a flag and call it a security issue. That is what British climate change ambassador John Ashton wants to do; he said global warming should be recast as a security issue, such as war or terrorism, to help mobilize support for tougher global action to cut emissions of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels.

"The Cold War was the last big problem the world faced on so many fronts -- economic, political, industrial," he said. According to Alister Doyle of Yahoo News, other experts at the talks, among 40 scientists from 13 nations at an Arctic scientific research base in Alesund, Norway, also said there was too much focus on costs of cutting emissions of greenhouse gases, rather than on risks of rising seas, droughts or floods projected by U.N. studies.

Global warming "should be looked at as a totally different type of challenge instead of asking 'what does it cost?'," said Joergen Randers, a leading Norwegian economist. Casting global warming as a security issue could make it easier to confront. ::Yahoo News