Dissolving national interests will be a much more difficult task and will require more powerful instruments than "sustainability", "global warming", and "income equality".
And of course, what would be the point of saying this if it did not include first-class tickets (or a private jet, whatever the IMF uses these days..their travel budget for fiscal '12 is over 100 Million Dollars) to Rio.
The world faces triple obstacles to a green future, with the global economic crisis smothering action on global warming and feeding an expanding gap between haves and have-nots, IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde warned. She said that the three different crises on economic, environmental, and social fronts feed off each other and cannot be addressed each in isolation.
“The global economy is still rocked by turmoil, with uncertain prospects for growth and jobs. The planet is warming rapidly, with unknown and possibly dire consequences down the line. Across too many societies, the gap between the haves and have-nots is getting wider and strains are getting fiercer,” she said.
Lagarde addressed an audience of policymakers and journalists at the Center for Global Development in Washington, D.C.
With these formidable challenges facing the world, Lagarde urged efforts toward economic growth, environmental protection, and social progress at the same time. “Different economic, environmental, and social objectives can be seen as distinct aspects of a single vision, essential parts of a connected whole,” she said.
Twenty years after the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Lagarde will be taking this message back to Rio where the Rio+20, United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development is taking place next week.
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