NAIROBI — UN chief Kofi Annan demanded that world leaders give climate change the same priority as they did to wars and to curbing the spread of weapons of mass destruction. Annan made the appeal as he launched a three-day gathering of environment chiefs, tasked with stepping up action against global warming. In his valedictory speech to the annual meeting, the UN secretary-general painted a sombre tableau about the effects of climate change, especially on impoverished countries that were least to blame for it. And he lacerated the fast-shrinking minority of politicians or scientists who still denied there was any threat as ‘out of step, out of arguments and out of time.’ Climate change imperils agriculture through drought and coastal cities through rising sea levels, poses a health threat by spreading mosquito-born disease and could lead to billion-dollar weather calamities, said Annan. ‘Climate change is also a threat to peace and security,’ he warned. ‘Changing patterns of rainfall, for example, can heighten competition for resources, setting in motion potentially destabilising tensions and migrations, especially in fragile states or volatile regions. ‘There is evidence that some of this already occurring; more could well be in […]