Speech at Athens Summit on Climate Change and Energy Security
ADDRESS of Minister dr. Žiga Turk at the Athens Summit on Climate Change and Energy Security Athens, 5. – 7. May 2008 Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, In the beginning allow me to thank the organizers for bringing this summit together and congratulate for such excellent organization. There is mounting evidence, that humanity has been affecting the climate not for the last 100 but for the last 6000 years. We are here in Athens, Greece, which is the cradle of western civilization. But to build the ships that ruled the Mediterranean and to smelter the iron and copper, the forests on the coasts of the Mediterranean had to fall. The last oaks in the Slovenian Cars fell to build the fleet of the Venetian Republic. Two industrial revolutions have been fueled by fossil fuels, releasing into the atmosphere the carbon that has been captured by biological processes below the surface of the earth in millions of years. The effects of climate change are being felt now: temperatures are rising, ic...