On climate change, we often don't fully appreciate that it is a problem. We think it is a problem waiting to happen.
Interpretation
Climate change is often underestimated and seen as a future issue rather than an immediate threat.
Kofi Annan's quote highlights the tendency of people to view climate change as a distant concern rather than recognizing it as a current crisis that requires immediate action. He implies that this lack of urgency can lead to disastrous consequences if we fail to acknowledge the urgency of addressing climate change now.
In practice
In a speech about climate initiatives, one could use this quote to emphasize the need for immediate action.
If you have a problem and you can't find a solution, you meet again tomorrow and you keep talking until you find a solution. You can disagree with behavior or a particular position, but you do not resort to calling an opponent worthless.
Let us remember the large numbers of citizens who, day in and day out, through acts of volunteerism large and small, bring hope to so many of the world's disadvantaged. Let us ensure that this wonderful resource, available in abundance to every nation, is recognized and supported as it works towards a more prosperous and peaceful world.
We may have different religions, different languages, different colored skin, but we all belong to one human race.
The global HIV/AIDS epidemic is an unprecedented crisis that requires an unprecedented response. In particular it requires solidarity - between the healthy and the sick, between rich and poor, and above all, between richer and poorer nations. We have 30 million orphans already. How many more do we have to get, to wake up?
People of different religions and cultures live side by side in almost every part of the world, and most of us have overlapping identities which unite us with very different groups. We can love what we are, without hating what β and who β we are not. We can thrive in our own tradition, even as we learn from others, and come to respect their teachings.
Democracy is, in essence, a form of non-violent conflict management. If war is the worst enemy of development, healthy and balanced development is the best form of conflict prevention.
Unlike earlier black-power movements that tried to fight or segregate for self-preservation, Black Lives Matter aligns with the dead, continues the mourning, and refuses the forgetting in front of all of us.
We'll organize workers in this movement as long as we're willing to sacrifice. The moment we stop sacrificing, we stop organizing.
Humanity has experienced many revolutionary changes over the course of history: revolutions in agriculture, in science, industrial production, as well as numerous political revolutions. But these have all been limited to the external aspects of our individual and collective lives.
The Nation has not yet found peace from its sins; the freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised land. Whatever of good may have come in these years of change, the shadow of a deep disappointment rests upon the Negro people,βa disappointment all the more bitter because the unattained ideal was unbounded save by the simple ignorance of a lowly people.
There is no debate about whether or not climate change is happening. We will deal with it as a challenge. But we also take it as an opportunity to invest.
Employees have been worrying about the rising tide of automation for 200 years now, and for 200 years employers have been assuring them that new jobs will naturally materialize to take their place.
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