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We are at a remarkable moment in time.
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We face over the next two decades
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two fundamental transformations
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that will determine whether the next hundred years
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is the best of centuries or the worst of centuries.
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Let me illustrate with an example.
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I first visited Beijing 25 years ago
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to teach at the People's University of China.
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China was getting serious about market economics
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and about university education,
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so they decided to call in the foreign experts.
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Like most other people,
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I moved around Beijing by bicycle.
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Apart from dodging the occasional vehicle,
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it was a safe and easy way to get around.
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Cycling in Beijing now
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is a completely different prospect.
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The roads are jammed by cars and trucks.
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The air is dangerously polluted
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from the burning of coal and diesel.
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When I was there last in the spring,
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there was an advisory for people of my age
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— over 65 —
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to stay indoors and not move much.
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How did this come about?
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It came from the way in which
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Beijing has grown as a city.
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It's doubled in those 25 years, more than doubled,
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from 10 million to 20 million.
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It's become a sprawling urban area
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dependent on dirty fuel, dirty energy,
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particularly coal.
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China burns half the world's coal each year,
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and that's why, it is a key reason why,
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it is the world's largest emitter
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of greenhouse gases.
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At the same time, we have to recognize
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that in that period China has grown remarkably.
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It has become the world's second largest economy.
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Hundreds of millions of people
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have been lifted out of poverty.
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That's really important.
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At the same time, the people of China
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are asking the question:
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what's the value of this growth
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if our cities are unlivable?
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They've analyzed, diagnosed
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that this is an unsustainable path of growth
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and development.
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China's planning to scale back coal.
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It's looking to build its cities in different ways.
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Now, the growth of China
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is part of a dramatic change, fundamental change,
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in the structure of the world economy.
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Just 25 years ago, the developing countries,
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the poorer countries of the world,
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were, notwithstanding being
the vast majority of the people,
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they accounted for only about a third
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of the world's output.
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Now it's more than half:
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25 years from now, it will probably be two thirds
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from the countries we saw 25 years ago
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as developing.
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That's a remarkable change.
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It means that most countries around the world,
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rich or poor, are going to be facing
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the two fundamental transformations
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that I want to talk about and highlight.
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Now, the first of these transformations
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is the basic structural change
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of the economies and societies
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that I've already begun to illustrate
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through the description of Beijing.
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Fifty percent now in urban areas.
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That's going to go to 70 percent in 2050.
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Over the next two decades, we'll see
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demand for energy rise by 40 percent,
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and the growth in the economy and in the population
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is putting increasing pressure on our land,
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on our water, and on our forests.
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This is profound structural change.
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If we manage it in a negligent
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or a shortsighted way,
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we will create waste, pollution, congestion,
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destruction of land and forests.
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If we think of those three areas that I have illustrated
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with my numbers — cities, energy, land —
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if we manage all that badly,
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then the outlook for the lives and livelihoods
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of the people around the world
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would be poor and damaged.
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And more than that,
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the emissions of greenhouse gases would rise
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with immense risks to our climate.
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Concentrations of greenhouse gases
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in the atmosphere are already
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higher than they've been for millions of years.
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If we go on increasing those concentrations,
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we risk temperatures over the next century or so
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that we have not seen on this planet
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for tens of millions of years.
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We've been around as homo sapiens
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— that's a rather generous definition, sapiens —
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for perhaps a quarter of a million
years, a quarter of a million.
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We risk temperatures we haven't seen
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for tens of millions of years over a century.
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That would transform the relationship
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between human beings and the planet.
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It would lead to changing deserts,
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changing rivers, changing patterns of hurricanes,
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changing sea levels,
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hundreds of millions of people,
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perhaps billions of people who would have to move,
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and if we've learned anything from history,
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that means severe and extended conflict.
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And we couldn't just turn it off.
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You can't make a peace treaty with the planet.
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You can't negotiate with the laws of physics.
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You're in there. You're stuck.
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Those are the stakes we're playing for,
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and that's why we have to make
this second transformation,
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the climate transformation,
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and move to a low-carbon economy.
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Now, the first of these transformations
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is going to happen anyway.
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We have to decide whether to do it well or badly,
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the economic, or structural, transformation.
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But the second of the transformations,
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the climate transformations, we have to decide to do.
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Those two transformations face us
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in the next two decades.
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The next two decades are decisive
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for what we have to do.
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Now, the more I've thought about this,
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the two transformations coming together,
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the more I've come to realize
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that this is an enormous opportunity.
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It's an opportunity which we can use
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or it's an opportunity which we can lose.
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And let me explain through those three key areas
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that I've identified: cities, energy, and land.
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And let me start with cities.
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I've already described the problems of Beijing:
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the pollution, congestion, waste, and so on.
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Surely we recognize that in many of our cities
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around the world.
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Now, with cities, like life but particularly cities,
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you have to think ahead.
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The cities that are going to be built,
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and there are many, and many big ones,
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we have to think of how to design them
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in a compact way
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so we can save travel time and we can save energy.
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The cities that already are there, well-established,
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we have to think about renewal
and investment in them
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so that we can connect ourselves much better
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within those cities, and make it easier,
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encourage more people, to live closer to the center.
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We've got examples building around the world
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of the kinds of ways in which we can do that.
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The bus rapid transport system in Bogotá in Colombia
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is a very important case of how to move around
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safely and quickly in a non-polluting way
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in a city: very frequent buses,
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strongly protected routes, the same service, really,
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as an underground railway system,
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but much, much cheaper
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and could be done much more quickly,
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a brilliant idea in many more cities
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around the world that's developing.
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Now, some things in cities do take time.
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Some things in cities can happen much more quickly.
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Take my hometown, London.
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In 1952, smoke in London killed 4,000 people
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and badly damaged the lives of many, many more.
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And it happened all the time.
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For those of you live outside London in the U.K.
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will remember it used to be called the smoke.
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That's the way London was.
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By regulating coal, within a few years
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the problems of smog were rapidly reduced.
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I remember the smogs well.
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When the visibility dropped to more than
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a few meters,
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they stopped the buses and I had to walk.
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— this was the 1950s —
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I had to walk home three miles from school.
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Again, breathing was a hazardous activity.
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But it was changed. It was changed by a decision.
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Good decisions can bring good results,
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striking results quickly.
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We've seen more: in London, we've
introduced the congestion charge,
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actually quite quickly and effectively,
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and we've seen great improvements
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in the bus system and clean up the bus system.
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You can see that the two
transformations I've described,
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the structural and the climate,
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come very much together.
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But we have to invest. We have to invest in our cities,
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and we have to invest wisely, and if we do,
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we'll see cleaner cities, quieter cities, safer cites,
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more attractive cities, more productive cities,
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and stronger community in those cities:
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public transport, recycling, reusing,
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all sorts of things that bring communities together.
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We can do that, but we have to think,
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we have to invest, we have to plan.
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Let me turn to energy.
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Now, energy over the last 25 years
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has increased by about 50 percent.
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Eighty percent of that comes from fossil fuels.
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Over the next 20 years,
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perhaps it will increase by another 40 percent or so.
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We have to invest strongly in energy,
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we have to use it much more efficiently,
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and we have to make it clean.
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We can see how to do that.
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Take the example of California.
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It would be in the top 10 countries in the world
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if it was independent.
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I don't want to start any —
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(Laughter)
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California's a big place.
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(Laughter)
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In the next five or six years,
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they will likely move from
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around 20 percent in renewables
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— wind, solar, and so on —
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to over 33 percent,
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and that would bring California back
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to greenhouse gas emissions in 2020
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to where they were in 1990,
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a period when the economy in California
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would more or less have doubled.
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That's a striking achievement.
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It shows what can be done.
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Not just California: the incoming government of India
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is planning to get solar technology
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to light up the homes
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of 400 million people
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who don't have electricity in India.
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They've set themselves a target of five years.
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I think they've got a good chance of doing that.
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We'll see, but what you're seeing now
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is people moving much more quickly.
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Four hundred million, more than the population
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of the United States.
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Those are the kinds of ambitions now
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people are setting themselves
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in terms of rapidity of change.
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Again, you can see
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good decisions can bring quick results,
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and those two transformations,
the economy and the structure
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and the climate and the low-carbon,
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are intimately intertwined.
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Do the first one well, the structural,
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the second one on the climate
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becomes much easier.
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Look at land,
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land and particularly forests.
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Forests are the hosts to valuable
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plant and animal species.
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They hold water in the soil
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and they take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere,
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fundamental to the tackling of climate change.
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But we're losing our forests:
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in the last decade, we've lost a forest area
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the size of Portugal,
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and much more has been degraded.
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But we're already seeing
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that we can do so much about that.
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We can recognize the problem, but we can also
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understand how to tackle it.
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In Brazil, the rates of deforestation
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has been reduced by 70 percent
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over the last 10 years.
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How? By involving local communities,
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investing in their agriculture and their economies,
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by monitoring more carefully,
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by enforcing the law more strictly.
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And it's not just stopping deforestation.
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That's of course of first and fundamental importance,
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but it's also regrading degraded land,
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regenerating, rehabilitating degraded land.
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I first went to Ethiopia in 1967.
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It was desperately poor. In the following years,
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it suffered devastating famines
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and profoundly destructive social conflict.
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Over the last few years, actually more than a few,
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Ethiopia has been growing much more rapidly.
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It has ambitions to be a middle income country
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15 years from now
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and to be carbon neutral.
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Again, I think it's a strong ambition
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but it is a plausible one.
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You're seeing that commitment there.
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You're seeing what can be done.
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Ethiopia is investing in clean energy.
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It's working in the rehabilitation of land.
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In Humbo, in southwest Ethiopia,
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a wonderful project
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to plant trees on degraded land
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and work with local communities
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on sustainable forest management
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has led to big increases in living standards.
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So we can see, from Beijing to London,
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from California to India,
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from Brazil to Ethiopia,
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we do understand
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how to manage those two transformations,
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the structural and the climate.
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We do understand how to manage those well.
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And technology is changing very rapidly.
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I don't have to list all those things
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to an audience like this,
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but you can see the electric cars,
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you can see the batteries using new materials.
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You can see that we can manage remotely now
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our household appliances on our
mobile phones when we're away.
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You can see better insulation.
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And there's much more coming.
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But, and it's a big but,
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the world as a whole
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is moving far too slowly.
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We're not cutting emissions in the way we should.
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We're not managing those structural transformations
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as we can.
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The depth of understanding of the
immense risks of climate change
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are not there yet.
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The depth of understanding
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of the attractiveness of what we can do
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is not there yet.
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We need political pressure to build.
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We need leaders to step up.
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We can have better growth,
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better climate, a better world.
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We can make,
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by managing those two transformations well,
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the next hundred years the best of centuries.
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If we make a mess of it,
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we, you and me, if we make a mess of it,
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if we don't manage those transformations properly,
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it will be, the next hundred years
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will be the worst of centuries.
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That's the major conclusion
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of the report on the economy and climate
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chaired by ex-President Felipe Calderón of Mexico,
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and I co-chaired that with him,
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and we handed that report yesterday
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here in New York, in the United Nations Building
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to the Secretary-General of the U.N.,
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Ban Ki-moon.
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We know that we can do this.
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Now, two weeks ago,
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I became a grandfather for the fourth time.
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Our daughter
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— (Baby cries) (Laughter) (Applause) —
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our daughter gave birth to Rosa here in New York
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two weeks ago. Here are Helen and Rosa.
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(Applause)
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Two weeks old.
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Are we going to look our grandchildren in the eye
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and tell them that we understood the issues,
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that we recognized the dangers and the opportunities,
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and still we failed to act?
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Surely not. Let's make the next hundred years
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the best of centuries.
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(Applause)