[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 174 (Monday, December 5, 2016)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6702-S6706]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
SECRETARY KERRY'S REMARKS AT COP22
Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, last year the world came together in Paris
to support a truly historic agreement on climate change. And 2015 was
also historic for another reason: It was the hottest year in an
observational record that stretches back to the 1880s. In fact, 15 of
the 16 hottest years on the planet have occurred since 2000. Recently,
July and August 2016 tied the global record for the hottest month, and
2016 is on track to be the warmest year yet. The evidence on climate
change is overwhelming. Scientists have understood the fundamental
physics for over a century. And the world agrees that we must take
action to curb dangerous carbon pollution and reduce the effects of
climate change. A majority of the United States agrees that we must
take action.
The swiftness with which the Paris Climate Accord came into force
demonstrates the global commitment to addressing the serious concerns
of climate change. It is also a testament to the leadership of
President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry. This year,
the world again came together at the United Nations Climate Change
Conference in Marrakesh, Morocco, to begin forging the path towards a
lower-emissions world and clean energy future. And while there is much
work to be done, we are heading in the right direction. We have seen
the price of solar energy reach record lows and the rate of new solar
installation reach record highs. We have seen States, regions, and
countries reduce their carbon pollution while growing their economies.
These positive steps will not only curb carbon pollution, but also
create good, well-paying clean energy jobs.
Climate change is a challenge for the entire world. Through the Paris
Climate Accord, the international community has decided to face this
challenge head on, and the United States must continue to be the global
leader.
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Under the leadership of Sectary of State John Kerry, the United States
has carried this mantle. In the speech that Secretary Kerry delivered
last month in Marrakesh, Morocco, at the 22nd meeting of the Conference
of Parties to the United Nationals Framework Convention on Climate
Change and first session of the Conference of Parties to the Paris
Agreement, Secretary Kerry shared his vision for our future: a
brighter, cleaner, healthier and more prosperous one.
He said:
Thank you so much, everybody. I apologize for being a few
moments late. There was a fire and then there was some
traffic backed up, and so here I am and here are you, and
thank you for being here.
Let me begin by thanking our terrific U.S. Special Envoy
for Climate Change Jonathan Pershing. I couldn't be luckier
than to have him in this job. He was over at the Energy
Department for a while. We stole him from Ernie Moniz, who is
a great colleague and was gracious in my theft. And he has
done a spectacular job working with all of our international
partners as we begin the hard work of implementing the Paris
Agreement. And I also want to thank Ambassador Jennifer
Haverkamp, who, along with Jonathan and a lot of the team
that I see sitting here, has done an absolutely terrific job
in leading the State Department's efforts to advance our
climate goals this year. And I have to tell you--well, let me
just divert for a minute. I also want to thank Brian Deese--I
don't know if he's here--but I'm grateful for President
Obama's senior advisor on climate issues and the entire
intrepid U.S. delegation to the COP, whom I had a chance to
meet with earlier this morning, but we've kind of traveled
this road together.
I also thank our international partners, and particularly
the executive secretary of the UNFCCC, Patricia Espinosa; the
outgoing president of the COP, Minister Segolene Royal of
France; and the incoming COP president, my friend and our
host this week, Minister Salaheddine Mezouar, the foreign
minister of Morocco. And I also want to thank our partners
from Fiji, who will serve as president for the next COP,
which I intend hopefully to attend as Citizen Kerry.
It's a great pleasure for me to be able to be here in
Marrakech. I'm reminded of one of the 20th century's most
outsized figures whose connection with this city is so
famous--Sir Winston Churchill. He loved to paint the
landscapes here and to absorb the beauty and the culture.
And in fact, at the very height of World War II, as he and
President Franklin Roosevelt and Allied leaders gathered in
Casablanca to plan the strategy for the European Theater,
Churchill was absolutely stunned to learn that Roosevelt had
never been to this part of Morocco.
So in a move that perhaps only Winston Churchill would get
away with in the middle of a global war--world war--Churchill
convinced Roosevelt to extend his visit and drive through
what was still, at the time, a country engulfed in active
combat.
So after several hours on the loose, and because we're
talking about Winston Churchill, plenty of Scotch--
(laughter)--the two leaders arrived in Marrakech in time to
see the sun set on the Atlas Mountains.
And Churchill said it was the loveliest view on Earth.
So I think it's fitting, therefore, that almost three-
quarters of a century later, friends and allies meet again in
Marrakech in order to undertake a very important discussion--
a discussion about the natural world that surrounds us and
the importance of preserving it for generations to come.
As Jonathan mentioned, climate change is deeply personal to
me, but it's personal to everyone in this room. I know that.
And we obviously want it to be just as personal for everyone
in every room: men, women, children, businesspeople,
consumers, parents, teachers, students, grandparents.
Wherever we live, whatever our calling, whatever our
background must be, this is an imperative.
Now, I know the danger of preaching to the choir--and,
obviously, all of us here are the proverbial choir. But I'm
actually grateful for that, because here at the 22nd COP, no
one can deny the remarkable progress that we have made--
progress that actually was pretty hard to imagine even a few
years ago. The global community is more united than ever not
just in accepting the challenge, but in confronting it with
real action, in making a difference. And no one should doubt
the overwhelming majority of the citizens of the United
States who know climate change is happening and who are
determined to keep our commitments that were made in Paris.
(Applause.)
None of us will forget the moment last December at Le
Bourget, when the former foreign minister of France, with
Segolene and a bunch of you there, led by our friend Laurent
Fabius, who gaveled in the strongest, most ambitious global
climate agreement ever negotiated. It was an accord that took
literally decades to achieve--the proud work product of
principled diplomacy, and ultimately, a deeply held, shared
understanding that we're all in this together.
And when we left Paris, no one rested on their laurels.
Instead, the world--unified--moved expeditiously to begin
the--to pull the agreement permanently into force, crossing
the thresholds of 55 countries representing 55 percent of
global emissions, and doing so far faster than even the most
optimistic among us might have predicted. In a powerful
statement of the whole world's broad commitment to this
agreement, in less than a year, 109 countries representing
nearly 75 percent of the world's emissions have now formally
committed to bold, decisive action--and we are determined to
affirm that action and to stick with it out of Marrakech.
Now, we have in place--(applause)--so we have in place a
foundation, based on national climate goals--109 nations,
each of them have come up with their own plan, each of us
setting goals that are based on our own abilities and our own
circumstances. This agreement is, in fact, the essence of
common but differentiated responsibilities. It provides
support to countries that need help meeting the targets. It
leaves no country to weather the storm of climate change
alone. It marshals an array of tools in order to help
developing nations to invest in infrastructure, technology,
and the science to get the job done. It supports the most
vulnerable countries, so they can better adapt to the climate
impacts that many of those countries are already confronting.
And finally, it enables us to ratchet up ambition over time
as technology develops and as the price of clean energy comes
down. This is critical: the agreement calls on the parties to
revisit their national pledges every five years, in order to
ensure that we keep pace with the technology and that we
accelerate the global transition to a clean energy economy.
This process--a cornerstone of our agreement--gives us a
framework that is built to last, and a degree of global
accountability that has never before existed. But I want to
share with you that the progress that we've made this year
goes well beyond Paris.
In early October, the International Civil Aviation
Organization established a sector-wide agreement for carbon-
neutral growth. Why is this so important? Because
international aviation wasn't covered by what we did in
Paris, and if that aviation was a country, it would rank
among the top dozen greenhouse gas emitters in the world.
A few weeks later, I was pleased to be in Kigali, Rwanda,
when representatives from again nearly 200 countries came
together to phase down the global use and production of
hydrofluorocarbons--which has been expected to increase very
rapidly with a danger that is multiple of times more damaging
than carbon dioxide. The Kigali agreement could
singlehandedly help us to avoid an entire half a degree
centigrade of warming by the end of the century--while at the
same time opening up new opportunities for growth in a range
of industries.
All of these steps combine to move the needle in the
direction that we need to. And in large part because global
leaders have woken up to the enormity of this challenge, the
world is now beginning to move forward together towards a
clean energy future.
Over the past decade, the global renewable energy market
has expanded more than six-fold. Last year, investment in
renewable energy was at an all-time high--nearly $350
billion. But that only tells you part of the story. An
average of--that 350 billion is the first time that we've
been able to see that money outpacing what is being put into
fossil fuels. An average of half a million new solar panels
were installed every single day last year. And for the first
time since the Pre-Industrial Era, despite the fact that you
have global prices of oil and gas and coal that are lower
than ever, still more of the world's money was invested in
renewable energy technologies than in new fossil fuel plants.
And like many of you, I've seen this transformation take
hold in my own country. That's why I'm confident about the
future, regardless of what policy might be chosen, because of
the marketplace. I've met with leaders and innovators in the
energy industry all across our nation, and I am excited about
the path that they are on. America's wind generation has
tripled since 2008 and that will continue, and solar
generation has increased 30 times over. And the reason both
of those will continue is that the marketplace will dictate
that, not the government. I can tell you with confidence that
the United States is right now, today, on our way to meeting
all of the international targets that we've set, and because
of the market decisions that are being made, I do not believe
that that can or will be reversed. (Applause.)
Now, much of this is due to President Obama's leadership,
and our Congress also moving in a bipartisan fashion on
things like tax credits for renewable energy. This leadership
has helped to inspire targeted investment from the private
sector. Today our emissions are being driven down because
market-based forces are taking hold all over the world. And
that's what we said we would do in Paris. None of us
pretended that in Paris, the agreement itself was going to
achieve two degrees. What we knew is we were sending that
critical message to the marketplace, and businesses have
responded, as I just described. Most businesspeople have come
to understand: investing in clean energy simply makes good
economic sense. You can make money. You can do good and do
well at the same time.
Now, significantly, the renewable energy boom isn't limited
to industrialized countries, and that's important to note. In
fact, emerging economies like China, India, and Brazil
invested even more in renewable technologies last year than
the developed world.
China alone invested more than 100 billion dollars.
Ultimately, clean energy is expected
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to be a multitrillion dollar market--the largest market the
world has ever known. And no nation will do well if it sits
on the sidelines, handicapping its new businesses from
reaping the benefits of the clean-tech explosion.
My friends, we are in the midst of a global renewable
energy surge, and as a result, in many places, clean energy
has already reached cost parity with fossil fuels. Millions
around the world are currently employed by the renewable
energy industry. And if we make the right choices, millions
more people will be put to work.
So good things are happening. The energy curve is bending
towards sustainability. The market is clearly headed towards
clean energy, and that trend will only become more
pronounced.
Now, for those of us who have been working on this
challenge for decades, this really is a turning point. It is
a cause for optimism, notwithstanding what you see in
different countries with respect to politics and change. In
no uncertain terms, the question now is not whether we will
transition to energy economy--to a clean energy economy. That
we've already begun to do. The question now is whether or not
we are going to have the will to get this job done. That's
the question now--whether we will make the transition in time
to be able to do what we have to do to prevent catastrophic
damage.
Ladies and gentlemen, I'm not a Cassandra. You can tell
from what I've said. But I'm a realist. Time is not on our
side. The world is already changing at an increasingly
alarming rate with increasingly alarming consequences. The
last time that Morocco hosted the COP was in 2001, and the
intervening 15 years have been among the 16 hottest years in
recorded history. 2016 is going to be the warmest year of
all. Every month so far has broken a record. And this year
will contribute its record-breaking heat to the hottest
decade in recorded history, which was, by the way, preceded
by the second-hottest decade, which was preceded by the third
hottest decade. At some point, even the strongest skeptic has
to acknowledge that something disturbing is happening.
We have seen record-breaking droughts everywhere--from
India to Brazil to the west coast of the United States.
Storms that used to happen once every 500 years are becoming
relatively normal. In recent years, an average of 22.5
million people have been displaced by extreme weather events
annually. We never saw that in the 20th Century.
Communities in island states like Fiji have already been
forced to take steps to relocate permanently, because the
places they have called home for generations are now
uninhabitable. And there are many, many more who know it's
only a matter of time before rising oceans begin to inundate
their cities.
I know this is a lot for anyone to process--hard to
process. That's why I have found that whenever possible, the
best way to try to understand and to see whether people are
pushing the envelope of thinking on this or not is to see for
oneself what is happening. That's why this summer I went to
Greenland to visit the incredible Jakobshavn glacier.
Scientists pointed out to me the lines many meters above the
water today that mark the glacier's retreat which it has done
more in the past 15 years than it did in the entire previous
century. And while I was there, I boarded a Danish naval
vessel and I traveled through the ice fjord. I saw the
massive ice chunks that had just broken off from the glacier
to melt inexorably into the sea. And because they come off
Greenland, which is on rock, every bit of that ice
contributes to the rise of the ocean.
Since the 1990s, the painful pace of that melting has
nearly tripled. Every day, 86 million metric tons of ice
makes its way down that fjord into the ocean. And the total
flow that comes off that glacier in a single year is enough
water to meet the needs of New York City for two decades.
But experts in Greenland and elsewhere have always warned
me, and they warned me on this trip this summer, if you
really want to understand what's happening and what the
threat is, go to Antarctica. Nowhere on the planet are the
stakes as high as they are on the opposite end of the globe.
For half a century, climate scientists have believed the West
Antarctic Ice Sheet is a sword of Damocles hanging over our
entire way of life. Should it break apart and melt into the
sea, it alone could raise global sea levels by four to five
meters. And the scientists down there described to me how the
pressure of the ice and the weight of the ice pushes the
entire continent down so that it's grounded on the base of
Earth's crust and rock. But that allows warmer sea water to
creep in under the glacier and speed up the process of the
melting and destabilize the glacier.
Antarctica contains ice sheets that are, in some places, on
the East Antarctic Ice Sheet three miles deep. And if all
that ice were somehow able to melt away completely because we
are irresponsible about climate change, in the coming
centuries, sea level would rise somewhere over 100 to 200
feet.
That's why I flew last week to McMurdo Station in
Antarctica to meet with our scientists and to understand
better what is taking place. I flew by helicopter over the
West Antarctic Ice Sheet. I walked out onto the Ross Sea ice
shelf. And I talked with the scientists who are on the front
lines, not people involved in day to day politics, but people
who are making scientific judgment and doing extensive
research. And they were crystal clear: The more they learn,
the more alarmed they become about the speed with which these
changes are happening. A scientist from New Zealand named
Gavin Dunbar described what they're seeing there as the
quote, ``canary in the coal mine'' and warned that some
thresholds, if we cross them, cannot be reversed.
In other words, we can't wait too long to translate the
science that we have today into the policies that are
necessary to address this challenge. These scientists urged
me to remind my own government and governments around the
world and everyone here that what we do right now--today--
matters, because if we don't go far enough and if we don't go
fast enough, the damage we inflict could take centuries to
undo--if it can be undone at all.
I underscore today: We don't get a second chance. The
consequences of failure would in most cases be irreversible.
And if we lose this moment for action, there's no speech
decades from now that will put these massive ice sheets back
together. There's no magic wand in any capital in the world
that you can wave to refill all of the lakes and rivers that
will dry up, or make farm--arid farm land fertile again. And
we certainly won't have the power to hold back rising tides
as they encroach on our shores. So we have to get this right,
and we have to get it right now.
The scientists in Antarctica told me that they are still
trying to figure out how quickly this is all happening. But
they know for certain that it's happening, and it's happening
faster than we previously thought possible. The alarm bells
ought to be going off everywhere. As an American glacial
geologist told me down there, a fellow by the name of John
Stone, he said, ``The catastrophic period could already be
underway.'' That's why wise public policy demands that we
take precautionary measures now.
Still, despite the real-life changes that are being done
and the threat of more to come, it's important to remind
ourselves that we are not on a pre-ordained path to disaster.
This is not pre-ordained. It's not written in the stars. This
is about choices--choices that we still have. This is a test
of willpower, not capacity. It's within our power to put the
planet back on a better track. But doing that requires
holding ourselves accountable to the hard truth. It requires
holding ourselves accountable to facts, not opinion; to
science, not theories that haven't been proven and can't be
proven; and certainly not to political bromides and slogans.
For all the progress that we are making, at the current
pace we will not meet our goal. I said that earlier. We knew
in Paris that what we were doing was trying to start down a
road. But we also knew it doesn't get us to the end of the
journey. Yes, renewables make up more than half of all the
new electricity installation last year. That's progress. But
the reality is because of the existing energy infrastructure
already in place, that new energy only generated a little
more than 10 percent of the world's total energy. That is
nowhere near what we need in order to achieve our goals.
If we're going to have the ability to stave off the worst
impacts of climate change, we have to dramatically accelerate
the transition that is already starting. We need to get to a
point where clean sources are generating most of the world's
energy, and we need to get there fast. Certainly experts tell
us by the middle of this century we have to get there.
Now, I've said many times, and I'll say it again today: It
is not going to be governments alone, or even principally,
that solve the climate challenge. The private sector is the
most important player. And already we are seeing real
solutions coming from entrepreneurs and academia. It's going
to be innovators, workers, and business leaders, many of whom
have been hammering away at this challenge for years who are
going to continue to create the technological advances that
forever revolutionize the way that we power our world.
But make no mistake, government leadership is absolutely
essential. And because today is the last opportunity I will
have to address the COP as Secretary of State, I just want to
take a moment to underscore the work that government leaders
can do and should do, especially the 200--almost 200 nations
represented here.
Now, we know that we have not come to Marrakech to bask in
the glow of Paris. We've come here to move forward. In doing
so, we cannot forget that the contributions we've each made
thus far were never meant to be the ceiling. They're a
foundation on which we expect to build. And unless our
nations voluntarily ratchet up our ambition, and unless we
continue to put sustained pressure on one another to act
wisely, we will have difficulty meeting the current
mitigation needs, let alone holding temperature increases at
2 degrees warming, which science tells us is a tipping point.
And if we fall short, it will be the single greatest
instance in modern history of a generation in a time of
crisis abdicating responsibility for the future. And it won't
just be a policy failure; because of the nature of this
challenge, it will be a moral failure, a betrayal of
devastating consequence.
Now, I know not--that's not what any of us here signed up
for. As Pope Francis said, ``We receive this world as an
inheritance from past generations, but also as a loan for
future generations, to whom we will have to return it.''
Now, I fully recognize the challenges that a number of
countries face because they have a big population, they have
a growing economy, they have a lot of people in poverty,
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they're determined to maintain stability and pull those
people into the economy. And of course, they're concerned
about stability--we all are. Access to affordable energy is a
key part of providing that stability. And the dirtiest
sources of energy are, unfortunately, some of the cheapest.
But I emphasize this: Only in the short term. In the long
term, it's an entirely different story, folks. In the long
term, carbon-intensive energy is actually today, right now,
one of the costliest and most foolhardy investments any
nation can possibly make. And that is because the final
invoice for carbon-based energy includes a lot more than just
the price of the oil or the coal, or the natural gas; it--or
the price of building the power plant. The real cost
accounting needs to fully consider all of the downstream
consequences, which, in the case of dirty fuels, are enough
to at least double or triple the initial expenses.
That's the kind of accounting that we need to do today.
Just think about the price of environmental and agricultural
degradation. Think about the loss of an ability of farmers in
one area because of the lack of water or too much heat to be
able to grow their crops today. Think of the hospital bills
for asthma and emphysema patients, and the millions of deaths
that are linked to air pollution caused by the use of fossil
fuels.
In 2014, a study found that up to six million people in
China have black lung because they lived and worked so close
to coal-fired power plants. There are nearly 20 million new
asthma cases a year in India linked to coal-related air
pollution, and in the United States, asthma costs taxpayers
more than $55 billion annually. The greatest cause of
children being hospitalized in the summer in the United
States is environmentally induced asthma. These are real
costs, and they need to be added to the tally.
We also have to include the price tag of rebuilding after
devastating storms and flooding. Just in the first three
quarters of this year alone, extreme weather events have cost
the United States--have cost American taxpayers $27 billion
in damage. In August alone, Louisiana experienced flooding
that resulted in roughly $10 billion worth of damage.
So none of us can afford to be oblivious to these expenses,
and these initial costs are in reality just a glimpse of what
the future could hold in store for us if we fail to respond.
Just imagine: Sea barriers that have to be built. Go down to
Miami--in south Miami, they're building--they're raising
streets to deal with flooding that's already occurring,
building new storm drains and assessing people additional tax
in order to do it. Massive increases in cost of maintaining
infrastructure to control flooding, withstand storms. Power
outages. All of this and more has to be added to any honest
assessment of high-carbon energy sources. And in an age of
increasing transparency and public demand for accountability,
citizens in the long run will not accept phony accounting or
an obfuscation of the consequences of the decisions.
So everyone needs to make smarter choices--with the long
game, not the short game, in mind.
Coal, unfortunately, is the single biggest contributor to
global carbon pollution. It provides about 30 percent of the
world's energy, but it produces nearly 50 percent of the
world's greenhouse gases. The unprecedented investments that
we are now seeing in clean energy will mean very, very little
if, at the same time, new coal fire plants without carbon
capture are coming online and at a rate dumping into the
atmosphere more and more of the very pollution that we're all
working so hard to reduce.
Some of these projections, I have to tell you, are deeply
troubling. For example, between now and 2040, the demand for
electricity in Southeast Asia is likely to triple--and the
bulk of that demand is currently expected to be met by
growth--where? In the coal-fired power sector, rather than
clean energy. That threatens everything we're trying to
achieve here.
We literally cannot use one hand to pat ourselves on the
back for what we've done to take steps to address climate
change, and then turn around and use the other hand to write
a big fat check enabling the widespread development of the
dirtiest source of fuel in an outdated way. It just doesn't
make sense. That's suicide. And that's how we all lose this
fight.
Make no mistake: People all over the world are working for
victory in this. And this issue is increasingly capturing the
attention of citizens everywhere, and certainly the private
sector. The private sector welcomed the signals that we sent
in Paris, but they are demanding even stronger signals now--
the private sector--so that they can invest clean energy
solutions with even greater confidence.
One of the strongest signals that government can send, one
of the most powerful ways to reduce emissions at the lowest
possible course--cost--is to move toward carbon pricing that
puts basic, free-market economics to work in addressing this
challenge.
Now obviously, this is not a new idea. Many have come to
this conclusion already. The share of global emissions that
are covered by a carbon price has tripled over the last
decade. Last year, more than 1,000 businesses and investors--
including sectors that might be surprising to some of you--
all came together to voice their support for carbon pricing.
The long list of supporters includes energy companies like
BP, Royal Dutch Shell, utilities like PG&E, transportation
companies like British Airways, construction firms like
Cemex, financial institutions like Deutsche Bank, like Swiss
Re, and consumer goods corporations like Unilever and Nokia.
These companies all believe that carbon pricing will
establish the necessary certainty in the marketplace that
helps the private sector to move the capital that helps to
solve the problem.
Carbon pricing allows citizens, innovators, and companies--
it allows the market to make independent decisions free from
the government to be able to best drive their emission
reductions. And this is also, by the way, the chief reason
that carbon pricing has received support from leaders and
economists on both sides of the aisle in the United States of
America. A price on carbon, coupled with government support
for innovation in key sectors, is easily one of the most
compelling tools for the world to accelerate the clean energy
transformation that we are working to achieve. Now, while it
may be some time before we see this ideal outcome, the effort
to improve carbon markets ought to be a priority going
forward.
The bottom line is that there are many tools at the world's
disposal. The COP itself is an important tool, in a sense. It
has become much more of a--much more than just a gathering of
government officials. It's really a yearly summit, 25,000
people strong this year from all over the world, for all
sectors to showcase their commitment to climate action and to
discuss ways to expand shared efforts. It's a regular
reminder of exactly how much this movement has grown--and how
many people, in how many countries, are committed to action.
Walking around the conference here before I was coming in
here and seeing this site in Marrakech, and seeing the
delegations and the business leaders, the entrepreneurs and
the activists who have traveled from near and far to be here,
it's abundantly clear we have the ability to prevent the
worst impacts of climate change.
But again, we're forced to ask: Do we have the collective
will? Because our success is not going to happen by accident.
It won't happen without sustained commitment, without
cooperation and creative thinking. And it won't happen
without confident investors and innovative entrepreneurs. And
it certainly won't happen without leadership.
For those in power in all parts of the world, including my
own, who may be confronted with decisions about which road to
take at this critical juncture, I ask you, on behalf of
billions of people around the world: Don't take my word for
it. Don't take just the existence of this COP as the stamp of
approval for it. I ask you to see for yourselves. Do your own
due diligence before making irrevocable choices.
Examine closely what it is that has persuaded the Pope,
presidents, and prime ministers all over the world, leaders
around the world, to take on the responsibility of responding
to this threat. Talk to the business leaders of Fortune 500
companies and smaller innovative companies, all of whom are
eager to invest in the energy markets of the future. Get the
best economists' judgment on the risk of inaction, of what
the cost would be to global economies, versus the
opportunities that are to be found in the clean energy market
of the future. Speak with the military leaders who view
climate change as a global security concern, as a threat
multiplier. Ask farmers about--and fisherman about the impact
of dramatic changes in weather patterns on their current
ability to make a living and to support their families or on
what they see for the future. Listen to faith leaders talk
about the moral responsibility that human beings have to act
as stewards of the planet that we have to share, the only
planet we have. Bring in the activists and civil society,
groups who have worked for years with communities all over
the world to raise awareness and to respond to this threat.
Ask young people about their legitimate concerns for the
planet that their children will inherit in reducing emissions
worldwide.
And above all, consult with the scientists who have
dedicated their entire lives to expanding our understanding
of this challenge, and whose work will be in vain unless we
sound the alarm loud enough for everyone to hear. No one has
a right to make decisions that affect billions of people
based on solely ideology or without proper input.
Anyone who has these conversations, who takes the time to
learn from these experts, who gets the full picture of what
we're facing--I believe they can only come to one legitimate
decision, and that is to act boldly on climate change and
encourage others to do the same.
Now, I want to acknowledge that since this COP started,
obviously, an election took place in my country. And I know
it has left some here and elsewhere feeling uncertain about
the future. I obviously understand that uncertainty. And
while I can't stand here and speculate about what policies
our president-elect will pursue, I will tell you this: In the
time that I have spent in public life, one of the things I
have learned is that some issues look a little bit different
when you're actually in office compared to when you're on the
campaign trail.
And the truth is that climate change shouldn't be a
partisan issue in the first place. It isn't a partisan issue
for our military leaders at the Pentagon who call climate
change a threat multiplier. (Applause.) It isn't a partisan
issue for those military leaders because of the way that
climate change exacerbates conflicts all over the world and
who view it as a threat to military
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readiness at their bases and could suffer the consequences of
rising seas and stronger storms. It isn't a partisan issue
for our intelligence community, who just this year released a
report detailing the implications of climate change for U.S.
national security: threats to the stability of fragile
nations, heightened social and political tensions, rising
food prices, increased risks to human health, and more.
It isn't a partisan issue for mayors from New Orleans to
Miami, who are already working hard to manage sunny-day
floods and stronger storm surges caused by climate change. It
isn't partisan for liberal and conservative business leaders
alike who are investing unprecedented amounts of money into
renewables, voluntarily committing to reduce their own
emissions, and even holding their supply chains accountable
to their overall carbon footprint.
And there's nothing partisan about climate change for the
world scientists who are near unanimous in their conclusion
that climate change is real, it is happening, human beings
for the most part are causing it, and we will have increasing
catastrophic impacts on our way of life if we don't take the
dramatic steps necessary to reduce the carbon footprint of
our civilization.
Now, whether we are able to meet this moment is a big
test--probably as big a test of courage and vision as you'll
ever find. Every nation has a responsibility to do its part
if we are going to pass that test--and only those nations who
step up and respond to this threat can legitimately lay claim
to a mantle of global leadership. That's a fact.
More than his love of Marrakech, Winston Churchill was
known for his hard-nosed insight and the way that he
expressed it. He once argued, tellingly: ``It's not always
enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what is
required.''
We know today what is required. And with all of the real-
world evidence, with all of the peer-reviewed science, with
all of the plain just old common sense, there isn't anyone
who can credibly argue otherwise. So we have to continue this
fight, my friends. We have to continue to defy expectations.
We have to continue to accelerate the global transition to a
clean energy economy. And we have to continue to hold one
another accountable for the choices that our nations makes.
Earlier this year, on Earth Day, I had the great privilege
of signing the Paris Agreement on behalf of President Obama
and the United States. It was a special day. And because my
daughter lives in New York, I invited her to join me at the
UN. She surprised me by bringing my 2-year-old granddaughter,
Isabelle, along as well.
And that morning, I had been thinking about the history
that had brought us to that day. I thought about the first
Earth Day in 1970 that I mentioned earlier, when I joined
with millions of Americans in teach-ins to educate the public
about the environmental challenges we faced. I thought about
the first UN climate conference in Rio, which is actually
where I met my wife Teresa, and I thought of the urgency that
we all felt way back then in 1992. And of course, I thought
about that December night at Le Bourget, when it seemed--for
the first time--that the world had finally found the path
forward.
But as I sat and I played with my granddaughter, waiting
for my turn to go out and sign the Agreement, I thought, not
of the past, but I thought of the future. Her future. The
world her children would one day inherit.
And when it was time for me to go up on that stage, I
scooped her up and I brought her out with me. I wanted to
share that moment with her. And I'll never forget it.
But to my surprise, people responded to her presence that
day, and since then so many people have said to me, they've
conveyed to me how that moment conveyed something special and
moved them. They told me they thought of their own children,
their own grandchildren. They thought of the future. They
were reminded of the stakes.
Ladies and gentlemen, here in Marrakech, in the next hours,
let us make clear to the world that we will always remember
the stakes. Let us stand firm in support of the goals that we
set in Paris and recommit ourselves to double our efforts to
meet them. Let us say that when it comes to climate change,
we will commit not just to doing our best, but as Winston
Churchill admonished, we will do what is required.
I look forward to working with you in this important work
for whatever number of years ahead I have a chance to. Thank
you.
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