Outgoing UN climate chief Yvo de Boer said Thursday he was "appalled" at the international community's response to climate change, after the failure of last year's Copenhagen summit on global warming.
"The one thing that has appalled me most is to witness the degree to which the international community is cutting off its nose to spite its face," he told a Hong Kong business conference sponsored by The Economist magazine. "(The world) is behaving as though climate change is somebody else's problem... This is in the collective interest and it's a collective challenge," the Dutch national said.
"Unless we deal with that challenge ... we really are in big trouble."
De Boer's blunt assessment came a week before steps down from the UN post to take a climate advisory job at international consulting firm KPMG.
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