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Even Osama bin Laden, it appears, may be dissatisfied by the lack of progress at climate change negotiations in Copenhagen. In an audiotape broadcast by Al-Jazeera television Friday, the elusive Al Qaeda leader blamed the United States and other wealthy na
Even Osama bin Laden, it appears, may be dissatisfied by the lack of progress at climate change negotiations in Copenhagen.
In an audiotape broadcast by Al-Jazeera television Friday, the elusive Al Qaeda leader blamed the United States and other wealthy nations for emitting climate changing emissions that are causing growing hunger and problems from worsened drought to increased flooding in poorer parts of the world.
He insisted that limited solutions that only "partially reduce" the effects of climate change are inadequate and called for "drastic" answers to the problem.
"Climate change is not a matter of intellectual luxury. The phenomenon is an actual fact," he said.
Bin Laden urged followers to slow the "the wheels of the American economy" in response, by boycotting U.S. products, and demanded a switch away from use of the U.S. dollar as a dominant international currency.
"We should stop dealings with the dollar and get rid of it as soon as possible," he said, calling such a move, "the only means to liberate humanity from slavery and dependence on America."
He called for economic action against the U.S., and not other industrialised nations, because the U.S. had not signed the Kyoto Protocol, he said.
Bin Laden's growing interest in climate change, analysts speculate, likely arises from an interest in exploiting frustrations by poorer nations increasingly hard-hit by the problem.
But the Al Qaeda leader is also believed to be hiding near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, and both of those nations are suffering currently from increasingly worrisome drought conditions that threaten the staple wheat crop.
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