Friday, January 29, 2010

Osama Bin Laden Worried About Global Warming, Suggests Solution

Posted by majestic on January 29, 2010

Osama Bin LadenThe news media are loving this story and the Daily Mail makes the most of it:

Osama bin Laden has warned of the dangers of climate change.

The Al Qaeda leader spoke in a new audiotape aired in part on Al Jazeera television today.

In the tape, bin Laden warns of the threat presented by global warming – but he also offered a solution.

‘Talk about climate change is not an ideological luxury but a reality,’ he said.

‘All of the industrialised countries, especially the big ones, bear responsibility for the global warming crisis.’

He added that while wealthy nations had agreed to the Kyoto Protocol that binds them to emission targets, former U.S. President George W Bush had later rejected such limitations before Congress in deference to big business.

The United States never ratified the existing Kyoto Protocol, whose present commitments expire in 2012, and has said it will not sign up to an extended Kyoto Protocol, preferring a new agreement.

Bin Laden’s solution, then, to preventing temperatures from rising?

‘Bring the wheels of the American economy’ to a halt, he apparently said.

He said the world should ’stop consuming American products’ and ‘refrain from using the dollar’, according to a transcript on Al Jazeera’s Web site.

‘It is necessary for us to avoid doing business in the dollar, and to finish with it in the fastest possible time,’ bin Laden said on the brief tape…

[continues in the Daily Mail]