Yet we have been a member of the United Nations for 20 years. My prime minister will be here this weekend as one of the 34 elected heads. Like me, he will have the opportunity to speak for 10 minutes. The most pressing long-term issue of sustainability that concerns the Caribbean is global climate change. Unless it lessens its reliance on fossil fuels, it will demolish the most vulnerable tiny states of the hemisphere before it destroys itself like every other human civilization that came before it.
Energy is a key issue.
Each year North America dumps 15 billion tons of carbon dioxide and other particulate matter into our skies deliberately. These countries have a policies to make our skies a dumping ground, and we indulge in this reckless behaviour. American civilization is undoubtedly the most inventive and creative in the short history of the human race. But we are now poking the beast. These are all recent inventions of the 20th century and they all require tremendous amounts of energy to work.