President Donald Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris climate accord now makes the U.S. the “main threat to Mother Earth,” Bolivian President Evo Morales charged Monday at the start of the United Nations’ first ocean conference.
Morales called the U.S. one of the world’s “main polluters.” In opting to exit the Paris Agreement, he said, it is “denying science, turning your backs on multilateralism and attempting to deny a future to upcoming generations.” That “has made it the main threat to Mother Earth and to life itself.”
While Morales pointedly attacked the U.S. in his speech at U.N. headquarters in New York City, other leaders expressed strong support of the Paris accord — and sounded the alarm on the deteriorating health of the world’s oceans.
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres told representatives of about 200 countries in the General Assembly that oceans are the “lifeblood of the world” and “under threat as never before.”
“Conserving our oceans and using them sustainably is preserving life itself,” he added. The seas are in crisis due to pollution, global warming and overfishing, Guterres warned, noting that plastics threaten to outweigh fish in the oceans by 2050.
“We must put aside short-term national gain to prevent long-term global catastrophe,” he cautioned, and…
