Blog: Climate, Energy, and Environment

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said climate change “is a humanitarian issue, a development issue, and an issue of security and stability.”

Today marks the 40th time that the world has come together to raise awareness of critically important issues on World Environment Day. This year’s theme, Think Eat Save: Reduce Your Foodprint, zeroes in on an issue that all people, from all walks of life, from all the countries in the world, can relate to and understand.

The United Nations Rio+20 Conference last year called for urgent action to put the world on a more equitable and sustainable development path.

Every Earth Day, I’m reminded of the proverb, “We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.”

“Last Stand: Ted Turner’s Quest to Save a Troubled Planet,” serves in part as Turner’s dramatic and forceful argument for why the UN matters in the 21st century — and why it is irreplaceable.

Overheard on post-Hurricane Sandy news reports, a New Jersey resident noted, “I’ve experienced three ‘once-in-a-hundred-years’ storms in the last 18 months!” Something is up.

Dirty Energy pollution is heating up our climate, and we end up with Dirty Weather. Climate disruption affects us all, and it will take all of us together to solve it.

Did you know that 1.3 billion people – one in five globally – have no access to electricity? Some 95% of them live in sub-Saharan Africa or developing Asia. The world’s poorest are already paying the most as a proportion of their household income for inadequate, dangerous and unhealthy sources of energy.

Kim Saylor, Vice President for Walmart Energy, recently traveled to Uganda and Kenya to see solar power in action improving the lives of those who have lived for too long without access to modern energy services. In the piece below, she describes her experience seeing families – and in particular children – benefiting from the educational, health and safety improvements that these lights offer to families in developing countries, and how businesses and non-profits are working together to provide these solutions to the families who need them the most.

The United Nations Foundation’s energy and public affairs team, led by UN Foundation President Timothy E. Wirth, have been in Brazil the past week for the Rio+20 summit. There has been a buzz in the halls about energy, touching two points: There’s a BIG and urgent need to enable everyone in the world to have access to electricity and modern fuels, and that creates a market opportunity.

At six years old, my son Travis surprises me fairly often. Last month, as we planned his birthday party, I got a surprise that made me really proud of him, and reminded me that our kids are sometimes way more ready to grow than we realize.