Faculty of Arts,
Chulalongkorn University
2202313
Translation: English-Thai
Argumentative
Text (English-Thai) Discussion
The translations given on this page are neither
comprehensive nor definitive. They are here to give you an idea
of the range of possibilities and to spark discussion.
Suggestions and comments are welcome. |
The following is part of John Kerry’s speech at the COP22 U.N.
Climate Change Conference in Marrakech, Morocco, in November 2016.
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:
Do your own due diligence before making irrevocable choices.
Examine
closely what it is that has persuaded leaders around the world to take
on the responsibility of responding to this threat. 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. 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.
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 solely on 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.
round the world.
Translation
1: Sample for Critique
ท่านผู้มีอำนาจทั้งหลายในทุก ๆ
ประเทศในโลกรวมทั้งประเทศของผมเองด้วย
ผู้ซึ่งอาจกำลังเผชิญกับการตัดสินใจว่าจะเลือกทางไหนดีเมื่อถึงช่วงเวลามีความสำคัญ
ยิ่งยวดนี้ ผมขอร้องพวกท่านครับ
ในนามของประชากรหลายพันล้านคนทั่วโลก
จงคิดอย่างรอบคอบระมัดระวังก่อนที่จะตัดสินใจลงไป
แล้วไม่สามารถลบล้างเปลี่ยนแปลงอะไรได้อีก
จงไปพิจารณาดูให้ดีว่าอะไรทำให้บรรดาผู้นำต่าง ๆ
ทั่วโลกเข้ามาแบกรับภาระในการรับมือภัยคุกคามนี้
จงไปขอความเห็นของนักเศรษฐศาสตร์ที่เก่งที่สุดเรื่องความเสี่ยงที่เกิดจากการนิ่ง
ดูดาย ของความเสียหายที่จะเกิดขึ้นกับระบบเศรษฐกิจทั่วโลก
เมื่อเทียบกับโอกาสที่มีอยู่มากมายในตลาดพลังงานสะอาดแห่งอนาคต
จงไปพูดคุยกับเหล่าผู้นำทางทหารซึ่งมองว่าการเปลี่ยนแปลงสภาพ
ภูมิอากาศเป็นปัญหาความมั่นคงโลก
เป็นตัวการที่ทำให้ภัยคุกคามเพิ่มทวีคูณ
จงไปฟังบรรดาผู้นำทางศาสนาพูดถึงเรื่องความรับผิดชอบทางศีลธรรมซึ่งมนุษย์พึงมีที่จะ
ทำหน้าที่เป็นผู้พิทักษ์รักษาโลกซึ่งเราทุกคนอาศัยอยู่ร่วมกัน
โลกใบเดียวที่เรามี
และเหนือสิ่งอื่นใด
จงไปสอบถามข้อมูลจากนักวิทยาศาสตร์ผู้ซึ่งอุทิศทั้งชีวิตเพื่อเพิ่มพูนความรู้ความ
เข้าใจของเราเกี่ยวกับความท้าทายเรื่องนี้
ผู้ซี่งงานของเขาจะสูญเปล่าหากเราไม่ช่วยกันส่งสัญญาณเตือนภัยให้ทุกคนได้ยิน
ไม่มีผู้ใดมีสิทธิตัดสินใจเรื่องที่มีผลกระทบชีวิตผู้คนนับพัน
ๆ ล้านคนโดยอาศัยความเชื่อเพียงอย่างเดียวเป็นที่ตั้ง
หรือโดยไม่ได้รับฟังข้อมูลอย่างเพียงพอเสียก่อน
ผู้ใดก็ตามที่ได้ไปพูดคุยเช่นนั้นมาแล้ว
ที่ได้ใช้เวลาเรียนรู้จากผู้เชี่ยวชาญเหล่านี้
ที่ได้เห็นภาพรวมทั้งหมดของปัญหาที่เรากำลังเผชิญอยู่
ผมเชื่อว่าจะอย่างไรเขาก็ต้องตัดสินใจอย่างสมเหตุสมผลออกมาเหมือนกันหมด
นั้นก็คือจะต้องกล้าลงมือแก้ไขปัญหาความเปลี่ยนแปลงสภาพภูมิ
อากาศอย่างจริงจังและสนับสนุนให้คนอื่น ๆ ทำเช่นเดียวกัน
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Translation
2: Sample for Critique
สำหรับ
ผู้นำในโลกทุกหนทุกแห่ง รวมทั้งของผมเองด้วย
ที่จะต้องตัดสินใจว่าจะเลือกทางเส้นไหนในแพร่งสำคัญนี้
ผมขอร้องแทนคนหลายสิบล้านทั่วโลก
|
Source
Kerry, John. Remarks at the 22nd Conference of the Parties (COP22) to the
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. U.S. Marrakesh,
Morocco. 16 Nov. 2016. Department of State, https://2009-2017.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2016/11/264366.htm.
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 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, 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 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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Last updated December 3, 2017