Dinosaur is United Nations’ spokesman for ‘save your species’ fossil fuel message

The United Nations is summoning an unusual “witness” to testify to the dangers of burning fossil fuels that stoke global warming: a dinosaur.

In a video released on social media ahead of this year’s U.N. climate change summit, a computer-generated dinosaur bursts into the U.N.’s famous General Assembly hall in New York to tell world diplomats, “Going extinct is a bad thing.”

The light-hearted clip, voiced in the English version by actor Jack Black, carries a message the U.N. Development Programme hopes to drive home.

“You’re headed for a climate disaster,” the dinosaur proclaims. “And yet every year governments spend hundreds of billions of public funds on fossil fuel subsidies. Imagine if we had spent hundreds of billions per year subsidizing giant meteors.”

In an accompanying report, the U.N. agency says its research shows the world spends more than four times as much each year — about $423 billion — to subsidize fossil fuels for consumers than it does to help poor countries tackle global warming.