UN General Assembly
2012

climatic shifts that our region has undergone in recent decades. Moreover, it is very troubling that the largest contributors of greenhouse gases are still not taking responsibility for the increasing temperatures, rising sea levels, coastal degradation, coral reef bleaching and decimation, infrastructural damage and loss of lives that their actions have wrought. Our peoples, our maritime integrity, our soils and our infrastructure are all interrelated contributors to our overall social and economic viability. And the absence of corrective and restitutional action on the part of the industrialized nations involved is neither constructive nor understandable in this highly interdependent world. The physical, mental and financial burdens that other countries’ energy usage has inf licted on countries like mine has been enormous, plunging us deeper into debt and severely frustrating our efforts to meet our Millennium Development Goals. While a shift to renewable energy will not instantly solve the myriad problems caused by a significantly fossil fuel-based global economy, the embrace of green energy will indeed help to halt the intense downward spiral into which our fossil fuel-based economies have