Actor Alec Baldwin said on Tuesday (December 7) the leaders of rich countries should take responsibility to help finance clean energy projects not only in their own countries.
“I think that the thing I’m most interested in is seeing the leaders from the most developed countries accept the responsibility that not only do they need to be spending billions upon billions of dollars over the next 10-15 years, a trillion dollars easily over the next ten years – the United States, Germany, the UK, China and the Soviet, the former Soviet Union, they need to spend money on renewable energy grids. They need to spend that money in other part of the world as well,” Emmy-winning actor Baldwin said on the sidelines of the Paris climate conference.
Baldwin is visiting the conference in his capacity as a co-host for the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) Equator Prize that honours local and indigenous community efforts to reduce poverty, protect nature, wildlife and natural resources as well as strengthening resilience in the face of climate change.
He said he did not think the indigenous people’s voices would be heard enough at the conference, but said he hoped to return to other climate conferences in the future.
“The climate conference here is unlikely to embrace the rights of indigenous people to the degree we want them to, but it’s not going to prevent us from trying to change that for the next climate conference. It seems to me that climate conferences are things that are incremental and we build on them, so I’m hoping that this is not my last climate conference,” he said.
The star of the TV show “30 Rock” said he had been involved in many environmental campaigns over the years in the United States.
Baldwin’s strong stance on protecting the environment was made even stronger after personally experiencing Hurricane Sandy that barrelled into the East Coast in October 2012, killing more than 120 people and causing an estimated 50 billion dollars in property damage and economic losses.
“It’s hard to say that the experience I had is definitely linked to climate change, but many people believe that you can’t rule it out, and that is, I was in New York City when Hurricane Sandy hit and it was really something that is almost incomprehensible to see all the power go out from 14th street south to the Staten Island ferry, to the tip of Manhattan. That is something… I was dumb struck to see that happen,” he said of the storm that ranks as one of the most destructive natural disasters to hit the U.S. Northeast.
Negotiators from almost 200 countries are currently negotiating a global deal to slow climate change. (Reuters)