President Oscar Arias on Copenhagen

We recently received a copy of President Oscar Arias' speech to the UN Climate Change Summit. In the speech he represents the voice of middle-income countries in arguing for radical change. The world, he says, has a "savings account" in its military spending, which can be used to protect us from a very real enemy.

"We must," he says, "rethink the way we live and the way we develop our countries, and, like the conquistador Hernán Cortés, rid ourselves of the ships that brought us to this point."