Clinton sees climate change biggest malaise
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2006-01-29 11:40

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton on Saturday named climate change as the biggest malaise facing the world, followed by social inequality and clashes between regions and cultures.

"First, I worry about climate change. It's the only thing that I believe has the power to fundamentally end the march of civilization as we know it, and make a lot of the other efforts that we're making irrelevant and impossible," Clinton told a panel of the World Economic Forum at Davos.

He also underscored the need to narrow inequality so that the vast majority of people do not feel they are marginalized.

"I don't think we've found the way to promote economic and political integration in a manner that benefits the vast majority of the people in all societies and makes them feel that they are benefited by it," he said at the panel called "A Conversation with Clinton."

He urged efforts to ease tension between the "apparently irreconcilable religious and cultural differences in the world."

"You really can't have a global economy or a global society or a global approach to health and other things unless there is some sense of global community, he said.