My fellow Americans … and my fellow citizens of Planet Earth. Today I want to address you all. We are all one people. We may live in different parts of the globe. We may speak different languages. We may worship different gods—or no god at all. We may have leaders who don’t always agree with one another. We may have voted in support of ideas that did not win out at the ballot box, or we may live in parts of the world where our voices are not heard. But despite all of this, we all share just one home. Just one planet. This planet has been the home for humanity for more than twelve thousand generations. We have no other home, and we never will have. And now, for the first time in our history, for the first time in our planet’s history, it falls to just one generation, and one generation alone, our generation, to make sure that this beautiful, bountiful, extraordinary world can remain a sustainable, hospitable home for the next thousand years and beyond.
We
know. All of us know. We know the damage we have done to our home. We are
entering an era of Fire and Flood, of Heat and Famine. We human beings have
already inflicted changes on our world that we know are irreversible. Our
planet is warmer than it has been for centuries. Ice caps are melting. The
climate is in crisis. We see the fires
in California. We see floods. We see droughts. We see the shrinking of forests
and the growth of deserts and the melting of the ice caps that keep our planet
cool. Our descendants are going to live
with the fallout from these changes perhaps for millennia to come. But we do have an opportunity, a narrow and
tantalising opportunity, to rein back some of the harm we have done, and maybe
even to reverse some of the things that are reversible.
My
fellow citizens, this will not be easy. This may be the single most difficult
challenge that has ever faced humankind. Difficult because it will demand
compromise and change for every single one of us. Difficult because it will
absolutely require every county, every state, every nation, and every leader to
put aside their differences and work together. Difficult because there will be
some who may still deny the urgent need for change. And doubly difficult
because the solutions we need are enormous in scale, unlike anything we have
ever seen before.
This
is a new beginning for America and a new beginning for the world. From today,
from this moment, we are all living in a new world order. Our lives will
change, sometimes for the better, and sometimes in ways we would not
necessarily choose. They will change whether we choose change or not. It will
be better for us to seize this opportunity to drive the changes ourselves, then
to wait to see what changes the climate might inflict upon us. I ask you now,
as thinking caring beings, to be courageous and resilient in the times ahead.
We do this, not for ourselves, not even for our children. We do this for our
grandchildren, our great grandchildren, and for the next thousand generations
of humans for whom this planet will always be their only home.
From
today we, in America, will begin to enact huge changes in the way we use our
planet. We will no longer subsidise fossil fuels in any form. We will instead
start a program of steady increase in taxes on carbon fuels. There will be no
ceiling on these taxes. Within a year these taxes will represent a 100%
increase in prices. Within two years it will be 200%. And so they will rise. We
will look to the ingenuity and enterprise of the market, of businesses and
individuals to fill the demand vacated by carbon energy and I have no doubt at
all that the demand will be satisfied by clean, cheap , plentiful energy.
My
fellow citizens, I have more to ask of you than rising prices for dirty fuels.
We will, today, start a programme to plant one trillion trees around the
planet. We will look to the leaders of every county and every state to identify
land for rewilding. And this is where we have a very tough decision to face.
Half of the world’s habitable land is used for agriculture and eight out of
every ten acres of this land is used to grow food for livestock. We need that
land for trees and for biofuels. We need it to restore the wild, and to repair
our climate. As a nation we must eat less meat, fewer eggs, less dairy. I am
not insisting that everyone becomes vegan. But I am asking you, each one of
you, to make a personal sacrifice and reduce significantly the livestock
components of your diet. We will look for ways to make this change as voluntary
as possible. We will find ways to subsidise farmers for growing trees and
biofuels on land that once grew feed for livestock. One trillion trees can remove
400 billion tonnes of carbon out of the atmosphere—equivalent to more than 10
years of carbon emissions.
This
is difficult for Americans. I know that. But Americans do not shirk our
responsibilities. That is not our nature. For too many years our nation has
been the world’s biggest polluter. We cannot allow future generations to blame
our nation for the collapse of our climate. We will not turn our backs when we
are called. We will do this. We will lead the world in new technologies for
energy production, for carbon capture, for transport—just as we have always
done. We will change our behaviour and our diets and our lifestyles not because
anyone is making us, but because these are the right things to do, and we do
the right things. That is what makes me proud to be an American, proud to lead
this great nation.
But
we are not alone. We will not be alone in this effort. I know that every leader
in the free world would like to be standing and making this speech right now.
Not one leader wants their nation to be the one that holds back this global
effort. But it is harder for a leader of most countries to make this stand
alone. We know, and you know, and they know, that there is only one country
that can and must lead this effort and it is us. The United States of America.
I cannot tell you how proud that makes me. So we will work with every nation on
earth to make this happen. We will measure and track our progress and we will
report to you how every nation steps up to the plate. Today I am calling for a
new global security council. This council for the planet will seek
representation from every country, representatives that must include climate
scientists, biologists, engineers, and entrepreneurs. We will look to this new
Council for the Planet to advise us all on the actions we must take, and we
will take the actions they advise.
We
know that every country will have different challenges. But we look to every
country to demonstrate total commitment in words and in deeds to the climate
rescue plan. I am confident, very confident, that nations around the world will
join us within the next few weeks.
And what if one country chooses denial? What
if a single nation or a group of states decides that their individual interests
are better served by ignoring the climate challenge. My fellow Americans I am
here to tell you that any nation that follows this route will be no friend of
America. I cannot imagine the United States trading, or dealing in any form at
all with rogue states who choose to thwart the climate rescue plan.
My
fellow citizens of Planet Earth. I call upon you all to make this day the first
day in the most extraordinary communal programme of work our world will ever
see. In years to come, as we each grow old, we will rejoice to have lived at
this time, to have been a part of this great project, to have bequeathed to
future generations a planet full of beauty and spectacle, to have saved
countless lives, to have restored the climate that nurtures us all. We embrace this challenge. And with every one
of us behind it, we will succeed.
God
bless the United States of America. God bless and save Planet Earth.
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