August 8, 2005

Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson completed the last leg of a 6,000-mile journey July 19 to deliver a message to Torino Mayor Sergio Chiamparion on the need for greater worldwide environmental and human rights protections as Torino prepares to host the 2006 Winter Games.

Lillehammer, Norway started the tradition of delivering a message from one Winter Games host city to another. A team from Lillehammer delivered a message to the mayor of Nagano, Japan, 1998 Winter Games host, and in turn, the mayor of Nagano delivered a message to Anderson in 2001, before Salt Lake City hosted the 2002 Winter Games.

The message from each city has been delivered without the use of fossil fuels. A bike team delivered Salt Lake City’s message to New York City, at which point it was placed on a sailboat and taken to Belgium. Another bike team carried the message to Lyon, France, where Anderson joined the team to transport it via bicycle to Torino.

Excerpts from Anderson’s message follow. More information is available at www.slc2torrino.com.

To the citizens of Torino, we send you hearty greetings and best wishes, as you are about to welcome the world for the 2006 Winter Olympic and Paralympics Games. May the Games provide a means for people from throughout the world to come together in peace, celebration, and goodwill.

Similar heroism is called for to save our Earth, which is suffering from a wanton misunderstanding of ecological principles of sustainability, with tragic consequences. Already, millions of people have suffered devastation as a result of our shortsighted reliance upon fossil fuels for most of our transportation needs and energy production. The devastation will become far worse if we do not act boldly to stop the destruction now.

In 1994 Lillehammer began the tradition for each Olympic host city to deliver a message to the next host city by means that do not entail the burning of any fossil fuels. Since that time, severe climate-related disasters have occurred and scientists have discovered that climate change and its consequences are far worse than previously believed. The need to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and the demand for effective action, has never been more compelling.

Our planet is rapidly warming. Over the last century, the average temperature climbed about one degree Fahrenheit, and the increase in temperature is accelerating. Mean temperatures in Alaska have increased five degrees in summer and ten degrees in winter since the 1970s. Seventeen of the eighteen hottest years on record occurred since 1980. The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has projected that the Earth’s average temperature will rise an additional 2.2 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of this century and that droughts, floods, and violent storms across the world will intensify because emissions from the burning of coal and oil are driving up temperatures far more quickly than earlier believed.

Seasons are changing. Worldwide, the oceans are becoming acidified due to the absorption of carbon dioxide, threatening entire ecosystems. A heat wave in Europe during the summer of 2003 killed 35,000 people. The World Meteorological Organization has projected a doubling of heat-related deaths in the world’s cities within twenty years. The Arctic Ward Hunt Ice Shelf, 150 feet thick in 1980, thinned to less than half that depth by 2003. Coastal regions, with about half the world’s population, are at enormous risk of massive flooding, as glaciers are melting. As warming speeds up the breeding rates and the range of insects, there are far more insect-borne diseases. The World Health Organization has projected that millions of people will die from climate-related diseases and other consequences of global warming in the next few decades.

Many people, and many nations, are working hard to combat devastating climate change. Important leadership has been found in parts of the business community and in national and local governments that have committed to make necessary changes to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases. This challenge can be met if all governments, all businesses, and all individuals, working together, do their part to conserve energy and to utilize clean, renewable sources of energy.

Similar challenges face the nations of the world in connection with access to decent and affordable health care. Although an inexpensive cure for tuberculosis has been available for 50 years, more people will die of the disease worldwide this year than at any other time. Tuberculosis has been killing people at a rate of about 2 million people every year, although the drugs to treat a standard case of drug'susceptible tuberculosis cost about $10 per person. The AIDS pandemic in Africa has infected approximately 25 million people. In South Africa, 5.3 million out of 45 million people now are infected with HIV, with 600 to 1,000 people dying every day from AIDS-related diseases. Unless wealthy nations step up their efforts to fight AIDS, the United Nations estimates the disease will kill 70 million people over the next 20 years.

These human rights, environmental, and health challenges call for greater compassion, for greater wisdom, and for urgent action.

We have only one option if we are to be part of a truly civilized world. That option is to do all we can, as individuals, as nations, and as an international community, to achieve and sustain peace, to protect our world and the future from climatic disaster, and to provide for the essential health care needs and the protection of our brothers and sisters around the world.

The father of the modern Olympic movement, Pierre de Coubertin, foresaw the Olympic Games contributing toward world peace. In that spirit, we send the people of Torino, and people throughout the world, our best wishes for tremendous success during the Torino Winter Olympic and Paralympics Games – and for a more peaceful, just, and healthy world.