FROM: U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT
Concluding Remarks at the Global Leadership in the Arctic: Cooperation, Innovation, Engagement, and Resilience (GLACIER) Conference
Remarks
John Kerry
Secretary of State
Anchorage, Alaska
August 31, 2015
SECRETARY KERRY: Thank you very, very much. Thank you all, Governor Walker, Lieutenant Governor Mallott, and Senator Murkowski, Senator Sullivan. We are so appreciative to all of you, to Alaska, for an absolutely spectacular welcome here. And I think it is fair to say on behalf of all of my colleagues who have been part of this daylong discussion that this has been a tremendous reception in Alaska but importantly a very constructive and substantive day. I think every delegation here would agree that we have covered an enormous amount of territory, and we reinforced here today that every nation that cares about the future of the Arctic has a responsibility to be a leader in taking action and in urging others to take bold action in order to deal with this challenge. It is immediate and it requires ambitious steps to curb the emission of greenhouse gasses and to deal with methane, coastal erosion, fisheries – a host of challenges that Alaska particularly faces.
There is no mystery, as we saw reinforced in very dramatic presentations by a number of scientists – no mystery at all about what a failure to act would mean. We can already see it. We can already measure it. And Alaskans are living it every single day.
We confirmed today that we cannot afford to wait until someone else moves to implement solutions to the challenges that confront us in the Arctic. I’m very pleased that through today’s GLACIER meeting we made progress in a host of areas – and our communique will summarize that – including addressing the issues of climate change, the impacts of it, enhancing resilience, strengthening emergency response, improving air quality, and promoting renewable energy and household innovations that will increase efficiency and community health at the same time.
Everyone in this room, those here at the circular table and those in the audience, are connected to the Arctic in some way. And so are all of the citizens that we represent. The fate of the region is not just the responsibility of the Arctic, the Arctic states even themselves. We agreed today it is everyone’s responsibility.
And it is with that purpose in mind that I turn now to the next speaker, who understands all of this, all of what is at stake. The threat posed by a changing Arctic has long been a top priority for President Barack Obama. He has repeatedly defined climate change as one of the great challenges that we face in this century. And the President has stated clearly that what’s happening in Alaska “isn’t just a preview of what will happen to the rest of us if we don’t take action. It’s our wake-up call. The alarm bells are ringing,” to quote the President.
Since 2009 President Obama has demonstrated repeatedly that he is committed to meeting this challenge before it’s too late – not with words but with actions. That’s why he put forward a National Strategy for the Arctic Region that establishes a comprehensive and long-term vision for our Arctic engagement. That’s why he created the Arctic Executive Steering Committee to prepare for a changing Arctic and to enhance coordination of national efforts here.
That’s why today, thanks the President’s Climate Action Plan, the United States is well on its way to meeting our international commitments to seriously cut our greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 and beyond while bolstering our nation’s resilience to ensure communities thrive and that economies flourish. And that’s why he has prioritized so many other things, including I might add not a small symbolic step of renaming a big, famous mountain, and I think we could say that Denali never looked better than it does today. (Cheers and applause.)
That is why also the President has prioritized working with so many partners, because he knows that all of us together have to do so much more to beat this threat. We have to do it now, and it will not be done without our concerted global commitment.
Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States, Barack Obama. (Cheers and applause.)
Showing posts with label CLIMATE CHANGE. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CLIMATE CHANGE. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 1, 2015
Monday, August 31, 2015
SECRETARY KERRY'S REMARKS AT GLACIER CONFERENCE IN ALASKA
FROM: U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT
Remarks at the Global Leadership in the Arctic: Cooperation, Innovation, Engagement, and Resilience (GLACIER) Conference Opening Plenary
Remarks
John Kerry
Secretary of State
Anchorage, Alaska
August 31, 2015
SECRETARY KERRY: Well, good morning, everybody. Thank you very, very much, Admiral Papp, for a very generous introduction. I have to tell you that I’m surprised that on an Irish ship in St. Petersburg any sailors were able to talk at all. (Laughter.) I mean, sailors are sailors, and when you get to port, you don’t talk.
But I really want to thank Admiral Papp. I have to tell you, he’s been a blessing to this enterprise. And over the last year as the U.S. Special Representative to the Arctic, he has already seized the reins and done a rather remarkable job of helping us to set, yes, an ambitious agenda, but one that is, after listening to each of the speakers thus far, I think everybody here would agree is necessary to the challenge. And the challenge is real.
Admiral Papp was literally one night away from retirement as commandant of the United States Coast Guard after a brilliant career in the Coast Guard when I telephoned him and I said – I’d met him in the course of our work, me in the Senate and work we did on fisheries and narcotics trafficking and other things. And I knew this was the man for the job, and I asked him to continue his service to our country and indeed to mankind. And believe me, without hesitancy, the next day he was in the office, we met, and he picked up this baton and he has been running with it ever since. And he has a deep, deep commitment to the Arctic, to the challenge of climate change, and I think we are all blessed to have somebody who is prepared to give up the emoluments of the private sector and of retirement to continue in this role. And I’m very grateful to you, Admiral, for being willing to do that. And maybe someday I can make up to you the thwarting of your retirement plans. (Laughter.)
I want to congratulate each of the other speakers that we heard her today. I sat there, as I think most of you I’m sure did, and when I listened to Chief Stephan talk about 10,000 years, and I think of the Industrial Revolution since the late 1800s, which is, after all, at the heart of sort of how we produce things and how we live and how we travel that is creating this challenge of climate change. You see the contrast pretty starkly. And it struck me that this is the right place to be. This was the right site to come and discuss this issue. Because just by being here, just by listening to Mayor Berkowitz, to Mayor Joule, to the Lieutenant Governor and his tunic and his tribute to his mother, we all have a better sense of the human dimension and of the history, and indeed, even the moral challenge that we face as leaders in our countries and as leaders in the world with respect to this challenge of climate change.
So I’m particularly grateful to all of them and I’m grateful to John Holdren, a resident of my state, somebody I worked with for years as a senator, who helped me early on to come to understand the science of climate change. And we very much look forward – all of you here – to participating today and building, we hope, a record, an agenda, a roadmap, if you will, for how we go out of here to lead into Paris, where we have a critical negotiation in December, but which is not, as the video said, the end of the road. It’s really the beginning of the most important part of our responsibility to meet this challenge.
I particularly want to thank my coterie of colleagues, my counterparts who have come here from each of their countries, my distinguished colleagues who work so brilliantly on this issue and on others to help us to find common ground. The foreign minister of Iceland, Gunnar Sveinsson; the foreign minister of Norway, Borge Brende, who has been a great partner in so many efforts. Margot Wallstrom, the foreign minister of Sweden. Bert Koenders, the foreign minister of The Netherlands. Timo Soini, the foreign minister of Finland. Kristian Jensen, the foreign minister of Denmark. And finally, Yun Byung-se, the foreign minister of South Korea. And we’re very grateful to each of them for having traveled so far at a time that is particularly busy leading into September and the United Nations General Assembly meeting.
I’m grateful to the other heads of delegations, all of you sitting here around this table. The European Union, the United Kingdom, Spain, Singapore, Russia, Poland, Japan, Italy, India, Germany, France, China – all of you who are part of this – Canada. Canada is part, obviously, of the Arctic Council, and the foreign minister is not here, but we’re grateful for all of your participation here and for all of the other delegations. Many of you have traveled very, very far to the largest state in our country, as you heard, and certainly one of the most beautiful states in our country, as you can see for yourselves.
The motto of Alaska is “North to the Future.” So I think it’s particularly fitting today that men and women from every corner of the globe have come north for the future. Because what we can decide here – and not just here but what we make real in Paris and beyond – will profoundly impact the future of life on this planet.
I have struggled for years, as I’m sure many of you have, with how you adequately take an issue of this magnitude, this kind of challenge, and put it in terms that average folks can really grab onto, where it isn’t so intimidating that people walk away and say, “Well, there’s no way I can deal with that.” Where people somehow feel that there are individual steps you can take even as countries, states decide to come together and stake – and take the larger steps.
But what we discuss here today is important not just for the Arctic, it is important for the rest of this planet. Everywhere I travel, leaders and average folks talk to me about the impacts of climate change and what they feel and see is happening to their lives in one particular part of the world or another. And the Arctic is so important for us to visit and understand because the Arctic is in many ways a thermostat, a computerized system, if you will, where we don’t even understand fully what the algorithm is, and yet we already see is having a profound impact on the rest of the planet. The temperature patterns, the weather patterns, what happens in the ocean in the Arctic can, in fact, we know – though we don’t completely understand the ways in which it will happen – but we know it has this profound impact on habitat everywhere, on breeding grounds everywhere, on the ecosystem itself.
And one of the beauties of what we heard today from each of the speakers who spoke a few minutes ago is this notion of balance. The balance between our activities – we, having the power of reasoning and choice over all of these other living species, what we choose has this profound downstream impact. Dr. Holdren just painted a very straightforward, purely scientific, actually absolutely factual picture. And it’s hard for people to digest that fully. Some people just want to write it off as a natural change, notwithstanding that at the end of the 19th century a Swedish scientist actually first described the impact of global heating and of the greenhouse effect itself. And we all know that were it not for the existence of the greenhouse itself, life itself would not exist on this planet because it is the greenhouse effect that has held the temperature at a steady average of about 57 degrees for life to be able to exist.
Now we know the Arctic is warming at this pace that was described today, twice as fast, four times in certain places, glaciers now melting three times faster than the rate observed in the last century, and as they melt into the seas the level of sea level rises. But in the figures that we saw regarding Greenland there is cause for greater concern, because the ice sheet on Greenland sits on rock, not in the ocean. Therefore it doesn’t displace water, it only adds to it. And as that level of ice melts, that is a magnitude greater of increase in the rate of sea level rise. And as we saw from Dr. Holdren’s presentation, in the most recent days the gigatonnage, billions of level of meltdown, is significantly greater than it has been at any time in the past, giving greater cause for concern.
We see the permafrost melting, which is releasing methane, and methane we all know is anywhere from – it’s about 30 times on average more damaging than CO2. And sometimes, in the short term it’s 86 times more damaging, but over an average of about a hundred years 30 times more damaging. But 30 times more damaging than something that we’re already having trouble getting control of is a threat to everybody.
We’ve seen 5 million acres of fires in Alaska alone, equal to the size of my state of Massachusetts, in this last year. And on top of that, we see significant challenges to life itself as it invades the communities that have been built, not just in Alaska, but in other parts of the world – low-lying nation-states in the Pacific and others that are increasingly facing this challenge.
The bottom line is that climate is not a distant threat for our children and their children to worry about. It is now. It is happening now. And I think anybody running for any high office in any nation in the word should come to Alaska or to any other place where it is happening and inform themselves about this. It is a seismic challenge that is affecting millions of people today.
Villages in Alaska are already being battered by the storms and some have had to move, or will. As the permafrost continues to thaw, the infrastructure is beginning to be challenged. Houses and other buildings are literally collapsing into rubble. Already this is happening.
There’s a village a few hours northwest of Anchorage called Galena. In 2013, Galena and a number of other villages in the state faced terrible hardships after an ice jam caused the Yukon River to flood. And because natural defenses had melted away, 90 percent of Galena’s buildings were completely destroyed.
The Arctic has never been, we know, an easy place to survive let alone to raise a family or make a living. The story of Arctic communities is inherently one of resilience, adaptation, and survival from one generation to the next. But global climate change now threatens life in this region in a way that it hasn’t been threatened for all of those 10,000 years that Chief Stephan talked about. And unless the global community comes together to address this challenge, the dramatic climate impacts that we’re seeing in this part of the world will be a harbinger for every part of the world.
And we as leaders of countries will begin to witness what we call climate refugees moving – you think migration is a challenge to Europe today because of extremism, wait until you see what happens when there’s an absence of water, an absence of food, or one tribe fighting against another for mere survival.
So over the course of this conference, we will discuss all of this. And the many opportunities that are actually staring us in the face right now to be able to respond to this challenge and, ironically, respond to it in a way that creates millions of jobs, improves our economy, improves health, improves our ability to respond to the environment, does all of the plus-ups that you search for in public policy without the long-term damage and costs that we’re witnessing by not taking those actions.
The energy market, because energy policy is the solution to climate change – and the energy market, if people make the right choices, is the largest market the world has ever seen. The market that drove the great wealth creation in the United States of the 1990s was a $1 trillion market with 1 billion users: technology, computers, personal computers, et cetera. The market that’s staring at us today is already a $6 trillion market with 4 to 5 billion users, and it will grow to 9 billion users as the population of the planet increases in the next 30, 40 years. It is the biggest market ever, and it’s waiting to be grabbed.
So we need to move to reducing carbon pollution, including emissions of short-lived climate drivers like soot and methane, and begin to factor carbon dioxide and its cost into the actual accounting of business and of our economies. We need to explore the need for greater collaboration to develop affordable and reliable renewable energy options in the Arctic communities. And let me underscore we have a number of impressive case studies from which to draw inspiration.
For instance, a small Alaskan village, Igiugig, men and women are using clean energy now, wind turbines in particular, that helps to feed their community. And through a partnership with the Ocean Renewable Energy Company they’re generating a third of their energy needs using a river-based hydrokinetic power technology.
These are the kinds of creative solutions that will enable Arctic communities to endure and to thrive in the future without having to rely on dirtier and ultimately destructive sources of power. And more broadly, today we can discuss what we can pull off in Paris, looking ahead to December when we’ll try to come up with a truly ambitious and truly global climate agreement.
Now our hope is that everyone can leave this conference today with a heightened sense of urgency and a better understanding of our collective responsibility to do everything we can to deal with the harmful impacts of climate change.
Over the course of the day we’re going to discuss efforts to expand resiliency in the region and to provide effective stewardship of wildlife and ecosystems that make the Arctic such an extraordinary place. We’re going to talk through ways that we can better prepare for the spike in human activity that is taking place in the increasingly open Arctic seas that were described earlier. Commercial fishing operations, which are not yet taking place in the central Arctic Ocean but they may begin to ramp up soon, and we’re not going to be able to manage fishing in that area effectively unless we gather more scientific information.
That’s why the United States is proposing an international agreement to prevent unregulated fishing for the time being. In addition, as more and more people begin to take advantage of the new shipping lanes and the potential of exploration of resources, there is obviously a heightened need to be able to expand open water search and rescue responsibilities and capabilities and also to define the rules of the road.
So we have a lot to cover today, and there is no question that the stakes could frankly not be much higher. And that’s why I’m so grateful for such a display of interest by so many countries coming here today to be part of this discussion. I know that when you consider the enormity of what we’re up against and the serious risks and overwhelming uncertainty that people are already experiencing, this seems like a pretty high mountain to climb. Well, I can assure you, as I have described, in fact, if you step back and look at it, it is not.
We are hardly the first generation in human history to face uncertainty about the future. Seventy-five years ago, our predecessors faced a world that was literally engulfed by strife, where seemingly all of Europe was overrun by evil, and civilization itself seemed to be in peril. We had leaders then who rose to that occasion, and we have all seen a world that is better for what came out of it with the United Nations and multilateralism and commitments to humanitarian and other missions.
The threat posed by climate change is obviously entirely different in character. But it is not different in its global reach or its potential to do harm. And the urgent need for global cooperation, for global commitment, for global choices is exactly the same as it was in the 1930s and ’40s and ’50s. If only we fully grasp that, if we commit ourselves to climbing this mountain together, then I am absolutely convinced that we will meet the obligation that we have to future generations, we will meet it here in the Arctic, and we will meet it for the rest of the world.
So I thank you very, very much for being part of this. I hope we have an extremely productive and rewarding day here at GLACIER, and I hope that GLACIER is a stepping stone to our meetings in New York around UNGA, and then afterwards in Paris, and afterwards to getting the job done. Thank you all. (Applause.)
Remarks at the Global Leadership in the Arctic: Cooperation, Innovation, Engagement, and Resilience (GLACIER) Conference Opening Plenary
Remarks
John Kerry
Secretary of State
Anchorage, Alaska
August 31, 2015
SECRETARY KERRY: Well, good morning, everybody. Thank you very, very much, Admiral Papp, for a very generous introduction. I have to tell you that I’m surprised that on an Irish ship in St. Petersburg any sailors were able to talk at all. (Laughter.) I mean, sailors are sailors, and when you get to port, you don’t talk.
But I really want to thank Admiral Papp. I have to tell you, he’s been a blessing to this enterprise. And over the last year as the U.S. Special Representative to the Arctic, he has already seized the reins and done a rather remarkable job of helping us to set, yes, an ambitious agenda, but one that is, after listening to each of the speakers thus far, I think everybody here would agree is necessary to the challenge. And the challenge is real.
Admiral Papp was literally one night away from retirement as commandant of the United States Coast Guard after a brilliant career in the Coast Guard when I telephoned him and I said – I’d met him in the course of our work, me in the Senate and work we did on fisheries and narcotics trafficking and other things. And I knew this was the man for the job, and I asked him to continue his service to our country and indeed to mankind. And believe me, without hesitancy, the next day he was in the office, we met, and he picked up this baton and he has been running with it ever since. And he has a deep, deep commitment to the Arctic, to the challenge of climate change, and I think we are all blessed to have somebody who is prepared to give up the emoluments of the private sector and of retirement to continue in this role. And I’m very grateful to you, Admiral, for being willing to do that. And maybe someday I can make up to you the thwarting of your retirement plans. (Laughter.)
I want to congratulate each of the other speakers that we heard her today. I sat there, as I think most of you I’m sure did, and when I listened to Chief Stephan talk about 10,000 years, and I think of the Industrial Revolution since the late 1800s, which is, after all, at the heart of sort of how we produce things and how we live and how we travel that is creating this challenge of climate change. You see the contrast pretty starkly. And it struck me that this is the right place to be. This was the right site to come and discuss this issue. Because just by being here, just by listening to Mayor Berkowitz, to Mayor Joule, to the Lieutenant Governor and his tunic and his tribute to his mother, we all have a better sense of the human dimension and of the history, and indeed, even the moral challenge that we face as leaders in our countries and as leaders in the world with respect to this challenge of climate change.
So I’m particularly grateful to all of them and I’m grateful to John Holdren, a resident of my state, somebody I worked with for years as a senator, who helped me early on to come to understand the science of climate change. And we very much look forward – all of you here – to participating today and building, we hope, a record, an agenda, a roadmap, if you will, for how we go out of here to lead into Paris, where we have a critical negotiation in December, but which is not, as the video said, the end of the road. It’s really the beginning of the most important part of our responsibility to meet this challenge.
I particularly want to thank my coterie of colleagues, my counterparts who have come here from each of their countries, my distinguished colleagues who work so brilliantly on this issue and on others to help us to find common ground. The foreign minister of Iceland, Gunnar Sveinsson; the foreign minister of Norway, Borge Brende, who has been a great partner in so many efforts. Margot Wallstrom, the foreign minister of Sweden. Bert Koenders, the foreign minister of The Netherlands. Timo Soini, the foreign minister of Finland. Kristian Jensen, the foreign minister of Denmark. And finally, Yun Byung-se, the foreign minister of South Korea. And we’re very grateful to each of them for having traveled so far at a time that is particularly busy leading into September and the United Nations General Assembly meeting.
I’m grateful to the other heads of delegations, all of you sitting here around this table. The European Union, the United Kingdom, Spain, Singapore, Russia, Poland, Japan, Italy, India, Germany, France, China – all of you who are part of this – Canada. Canada is part, obviously, of the Arctic Council, and the foreign minister is not here, but we’re grateful for all of your participation here and for all of the other delegations. Many of you have traveled very, very far to the largest state in our country, as you heard, and certainly one of the most beautiful states in our country, as you can see for yourselves.
The motto of Alaska is “North to the Future.” So I think it’s particularly fitting today that men and women from every corner of the globe have come north for the future. Because what we can decide here – and not just here but what we make real in Paris and beyond – will profoundly impact the future of life on this planet.
I have struggled for years, as I’m sure many of you have, with how you adequately take an issue of this magnitude, this kind of challenge, and put it in terms that average folks can really grab onto, where it isn’t so intimidating that people walk away and say, “Well, there’s no way I can deal with that.” Where people somehow feel that there are individual steps you can take even as countries, states decide to come together and stake – and take the larger steps.
But what we discuss here today is important not just for the Arctic, it is important for the rest of this planet. Everywhere I travel, leaders and average folks talk to me about the impacts of climate change and what they feel and see is happening to their lives in one particular part of the world or another. And the Arctic is so important for us to visit and understand because the Arctic is in many ways a thermostat, a computerized system, if you will, where we don’t even understand fully what the algorithm is, and yet we already see is having a profound impact on the rest of the planet. The temperature patterns, the weather patterns, what happens in the ocean in the Arctic can, in fact, we know – though we don’t completely understand the ways in which it will happen – but we know it has this profound impact on habitat everywhere, on breeding grounds everywhere, on the ecosystem itself.
And one of the beauties of what we heard today from each of the speakers who spoke a few minutes ago is this notion of balance. The balance between our activities – we, having the power of reasoning and choice over all of these other living species, what we choose has this profound downstream impact. Dr. Holdren just painted a very straightforward, purely scientific, actually absolutely factual picture. And it’s hard for people to digest that fully. Some people just want to write it off as a natural change, notwithstanding that at the end of the 19th century a Swedish scientist actually first described the impact of global heating and of the greenhouse effect itself. And we all know that were it not for the existence of the greenhouse itself, life itself would not exist on this planet because it is the greenhouse effect that has held the temperature at a steady average of about 57 degrees for life to be able to exist.
Now we know the Arctic is warming at this pace that was described today, twice as fast, four times in certain places, glaciers now melting three times faster than the rate observed in the last century, and as they melt into the seas the level of sea level rises. But in the figures that we saw regarding Greenland there is cause for greater concern, because the ice sheet on Greenland sits on rock, not in the ocean. Therefore it doesn’t displace water, it only adds to it. And as that level of ice melts, that is a magnitude greater of increase in the rate of sea level rise. And as we saw from Dr. Holdren’s presentation, in the most recent days the gigatonnage, billions of level of meltdown, is significantly greater than it has been at any time in the past, giving greater cause for concern.
We see the permafrost melting, which is releasing methane, and methane we all know is anywhere from – it’s about 30 times on average more damaging than CO2. And sometimes, in the short term it’s 86 times more damaging, but over an average of about a hundred years 30 times more damaging. But 30 times more damaging than something that we’re already having trouble getting control of is a threat to everybody.
We’ve seen 5 million acres of fires in Alaska alone, equal to the size of my state of Massachusetts, in this last year. And on top of that, we see significant challenges to life itself as it invades the communities that have been built, not just in Alaska, but in other parts of the world – low-lying nation-states in the Pacific and others that are increasingly facing this challenge.
The bottom line is that climate is not a distant threat for our children and their children to worry about. It is now. It is happening now. And I think anybody running for any high office in any nation in the word should come to Alaska or to any other place where it is happening and inform themselves about this. It is a seismic challenge that is affecting millions of people today.
Villages in Alaska are already being battered by the storms and some have had to move, or will. As the permafrost continues to thaw, the infrastructure is beginning to be challenged. Houses and other buildings are literally collapsing into rubble. Already this is happening.
There’s a village a few hours northwest of Anchorage called Galena. In 2013, Galena and a number of other villages in the state faced terrible hardships after an ice jam caused the Yukon River to flood. And because natural defenses had melted away, 90 percent of Galena’s buildings were completely destroyed.
The Arctic has never been, we know, an easy place to survive let alone to raise a family or make a living. The story of Arctic communities is inherently one of resilience, adaptation, and survival from one generation to the next. But global climate change now threatens life in this region in a way that it hasn’t been threatened for all of those 10,000 years that Chief Stephan talked about. And unless the global community comes together to address this challenge, the dramatic climate impacts that we’re seeing in this part of the world will be a harbinger for every part of the world.
And we as leaders of countries will begin to witness what we call climate refugees moving – you think migration is a challenge to Europe today because of extremism, wait until you see what happens when there’s an absence of water, an absence of food, or one tribe fighting against another for mere survival.
So over the course of this conference, we will discuss all of this. And the many opportunities that are actually staring us in the face right now to be able to respond to this challenge and, ironically, respond to it in a way that creates millions of jobs, improves our economy, improves health, improves our ability to respond to the environment, does all of the plus-ups that you search for in public policy without the long-term damage and costs that we’re witnessing by not taking those actions.
The energy market, because energy policy is the solution to climate change – and the energy market, if people make the right choices, is the largest market the world has ever seen. The market that drove the great wealth creation in the United States of the 1990s was a $1 trillion market with 1 billion users: technology, computers, personal computers, et cetera. The market that’s staring at us today is already a $6 trillion market with 4 to 5 billion users, and it will grow to 9 billion users as the population of the planet increases in the next 30, 40 years. It is the biggest market ever, and it’s waiting to be grabbed.
So we need to move to reducing carbon pollution, including emissions of short-lived climate drivers like soot and methane, and begin to factor carbon dioxide and its cost into the actual accounting of business and of our economies. We need to explore the need for greater collaboration to develop affordable and reliable renewable energy options in the Arctic communities. And let me underscore we have a number of impressive case studies from which to draw inspiration.
For instance, a small Alaskan village, Igiugig, men and women are using clean energy now, wind turbines in particular, that helps to feed their community. And through a partnership with the Ocean Renewable Energy Company they’re generating a third of their energy needs using a river-based hydrokinetic power technology.
These are the kinds of creative solutions that will enable Arctic communities to endure and to thrive in the future without having to rely on dirtier and ultimately destructive sources of power. And more broadly, today we can discuss what we can pull off in Paris, looking ahead to December when we’ll try to come up with a truly ambitious and truly global climate agreement.
Now our hope is that everyone can leave this conference today with a heightened sense of urgency and a better understanding of our collective responsibility to do everything we can to deal with the harmful impacts of climate change.
Over the course of the day we’re going to discuss efforts to expand resiliency in the region and to provide effective stewardship of wildlife and ecosystems that make the Arctic such an extraordinary place. We’re going to talk through ways that we can better prepare for the spike in human activity that is taking place in the increasingly open Arctic seas that were described earlier. Commercial fishing operations, which are not yet taking place in the central Arctic Ocean but they may begin to ramp up soon, and we’re not going to be able to manage fishing in that area effectively unless we gather more scientific information.
That’s why the United States is proposing an international agreement to prevent unregulated fishing for the time being. In addition, as more and more people begin to take advantage of the new shipping lanes and the potential of exploration of resources, there is obviously a heightened need to be able to expand open water search and rescue responsibilities and capabilities and also to define the rules of the road.
So we have a lot to cover today, and there is no question that the stakes could frankly not be much higher. And that’s why I’m so grateful for such a display of interest by so many countries coming here today to be part of this discussion. I know that when you consider the enormity of what we’re up against and the serious risks and overwhelming uncertainty that people are already experiencing, this seems like a pretty high mountain to climb. Well, I can assure you, as I have described, in fact, if you step back and look at it, it is not.
We are hardly the first generation in human history to face uncertainty about the future. Seventy-five years ago, our predecessors faced a world that was literally engulfed by strife, where seemingly all of Europe was overrun by evil, and civilization itself seemed to be in peril. We had leaders then who rose to that occasion, and we have all seen a world that is better for what came out of it with the United Nations and multilateralism and commitments to humanitarian and other missions.
The threat posed by climate change is obviously entirely different in character. But it is not different in its global reach or its potential to do harm. And the urgent need for global cooperation, for global commitment, for global choices is exactly the same as it was in the 1930s and ’40s and ’50s. If only we fully grasp that, if we commit ourselves to climbing this mountain together, then I am absolutely convinced that we will meet the obligation that we have to future generations, we will meet it here in the Arctic, and we will meet it for the rest of the world.
So I thank you very, very much for being part of this. I hope we have an extremely productive and rewarding day here at GLACIER, and I hope that GLACIER is a stepping stone to our meetings in New York around UNGA, and then afterwards in Paris, and afterwards to getting the job done. Thank you all. (Applause.)
Wednesday, July 1, 2015
WHITE HOUSE STATEMENT ON CHINA'S MOVEMENT ON CLIMATE CHANGE AGREEMENT
FROM: THE WHITE HOUSE
Statement by Senior Advisor Brian Deese on China’s Submission of its Intended Nationally Determined Contribution
The United States welcomes China's submission of its Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC) earlier today. The INDC submission follows from the target that China announced in the November 2014 Joint Announcement by President Obama and President Xi and helps to provide continued momentum toward reaching a successful climate agreement in Paris. Countries accounting for nearly 70 percent of current global energy carbon-dioxide emissions have already announced and are taking action on post-2020 climate policies. The United States encourages all major economies to submit their INDCs as soon as possible to lay the groundwork for a successful outcome at the twenty-first session of the Conference of Parties in Paris at the end of this year.
Statement by Senior Advisor Brian Deese on China’s Submission of its Intended Nationally Determined Contribution
The United States welcomes China's submission of its Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC) earlier today. The INDC submission follows from the target that China announced in the November 2014 Joint Announcement by President Obama and President Xi and helps to provide continued momentum toward reaching a successful climate agreement in Paris. Countries accounting for nearly 70 percent of current global energy carbon-dioxide emissions have already announced and are taking action on post-2020 climate policies. The United States encourages all major economies to submit their INDCs as soon as possible to lay the groundwork for a successful outcome at the twenty-first session of the Conference of Parties in Paris at the end of this year.
Friday, June 19, 2015
SECRETARY KERRY'S STATEMENT ON POPE FRANCIS' ENCYCLICAL ON THE ENVIRONMENT
FROM: U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT
Pope Francis' Encyclical on the Environment
Press Statement
John Kerry
Secretary of State
Washington, DC
June 18, 2015
The Pope’s powerful encyclical calls for a common response to the critical threat climate change poses to our common home. His plea for all religions to work together reflects the urgency of the challenge. The faith community – in the United States and abroad – has a long history of environmental stewardship and aiding the poor, and Pope Francis has thoughtfully applied those same values to the very real threat our planet is facing today.
The devastating impacts of climate change – like heat waves, damaging floods, coastal sea level rise and historic droughts – are already taking place, threatening the habitat all humans and other creatures depend on to survive. We have a responsibility to meet this challenge and prevent the worst impacts. As stewards of our planet, we can all work together to manage our resources sustainably and ensure that the poorest among us are resilient to climate change. We have the overwhelming body of peer-reviewed science to show us what is causing this problem, and we are equipped with the tools and resources to begin solving it.
Engagement on this issue from a wide range of voices is all the more important as we strive to reach a global climate agreement this December in Paris.
Pope Francis' Encyclical on the Environment
Press Statement
John Kerry
Secretary of State
Washington, DC
June 18, 2015
The Pope’s powerful encyclical calls for a common response to the critical threat climate change poses to our common home. His plea for all religions to work together reflects the urgency of the challenge. The faith community – in the United States and abroad – has a long history of environmental stewardship and aiding the poor, and Pope Francis has thoughtfully applied those same values to the very real threat our planet is facing today.
The devastating impacts of climate change – like heat waves, damaging floods, coastal sea level rise and historic droughts – are already taking place, threatening the habitat all humans and other creatures depend on to survive. We have a responsibility to meet this challenge and prevent the worst impacts. As stewards of our planet, we can all work together to manage our resources sustainably and ensure that the poorest among us are resilient to climate change. We have the overwhelming body of peer-reviewed science to show us what is causing this problem, and we are equipped with the tools and resources to begin solving it.
Engagement on this issue from a wide range of voices is all the more important as we strive to reach a global climate agreement this December in Paris.
Thursday, June 18, 2015
CO2, BIG DINOSAURS AND THE EQUATOR
FROM: NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION
Big dinosaurs steered clear of the tropics
Climate swings lasting millions of years too much for dinos
For more than 30 million years after dinosaurs first appeared, they remained inexplicably rare near the equator, where only a few small-bodied meat-eating dinosaurs made a living.
The long absence at low latitudes has been one of the great, unanswered questions about the rise of the dinosaurs.
Now the mystery has a solution, according to scientists who pieced together a detailed picture of the climate and ecology more than 200 million years ago at Ghost Ranch in northern New Mexico, a site rich with fossils.
The findings, reported today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), show that the tropical climate swung wildly with extremes of drought and intense heat.
Wildfires swept the landscape during arid regimes and reshaped the vegetation available for plant-eating animals.
"Our data suggest it was not a fun place," says scientist Randall Irmis of the University of Utah.
"It was a time of climate extremes that went back and forth unpredictably. Large, warm-blooded dinosaurian herbivores weren't able to exist close to the equator--there was not enough dependable plant food."
The study, led by geochemist Jessica Whiteside, now of the University of Southampton, is the first to provide a detailed look at climate and ecology during the emergence of the dinosaurs.
Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels then were four to six times current levels. "If we continue along our present course, similar conditions in a high-CO2 world may develop, and suppress low-latitude ecosystems," Irmis says.
"These scientists have developed a new explanation for the perplexing near-absence of dinosaurs in late Triassic [the Triassic was between 252 million and 201 million years ago] equatorial settings," says Rich Lane, program director in the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Division of Earth Sciences, which funded the research.
"That includes rapid vegetation changes related to climate fluctuations between arid and moist climates and the resulting extensive wildfires of the time."
Reconstructing the deep past
The earliest known dinosaur fossils, found in Argentina, date from around 230 million years ago.
Within 15 million years, species with different diets and body sizes had evolved and were abundant except in tropical latitudes. There the only dinosaurs were small carnivores. The pattern persisted for 30 million years after the first dinosaurs appeared.
The scientists focused on Chinle Formation rocks, which were deposited by rivers and streams between 205 and 215 million years ago at Ghost Ranch (perhaps better known as the place where artist Georgia O'Keeffe lived and painted for much of her career).
The multi-colored rocks of the Chinle Formation are a common sight on the Colorado Plateau at places such as the Painted Desert at Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona.
In ancient times, North America and other land masses were bound together in the supercontinent Pangea. The Ghost Ranch site stood close to the equator, at roughly the same latitude as present-day southern India.
The researchers reconstructed the deep past by analyzing several kinds of data: from fossils, charcoal left by ancient wildfires, stable isotopes from organic matter, and carbonate nodules that formed in ancient soils.
Fossilized bones, pollen grains and fern spores revealed the types of animals and plants living at different times, marked by layers of sediment.
Dinosaurs remained rare among the fossils, accounting for less than 15 percent of vertebrate animal remains.
They were outnumbered in diversity, abundance and body size by reptiles known as pseudosuchian archosaurs, the lineage that gave rise to crocodiles and alligators.
The sparse dinosaurs consisted mostly of small, carnivorous theropods.
Big, long-necked dinosaurs, or sauropodomorphs--already the dominant plant-eaters at higher latitudes--did not exist at the study site nor any other low-latitude site in the Pangaea of that time, as far as the fossil record shows.
Abrupt changes in climate left a record in the abundance of different types of pollen and fern spores between sediment layers.
Fossilized organic matter from decaying plants provided another window on climate shifts. Changes in the ratio of stable isotopes of carbon in the organic matter bookmarked times when plant productivity declined during extended droughts.
Drought and fire
Wildfire temperatures varied drastically, the researchers found, consistent with a fluctuating environment in which the amount of combustible plant matter rose and fell over time.
The researchers estimated the intensity of wildfires using bits of charcoal recovered in sediment layers.
The overall picture is that of a climate punctuated by extreme shifts in precipitation and in which plant die-offs fueled hotter fires. That in turn killed more plants, damaged soils and increased erosion.
Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, calculated from stable isotope analyses of soil carbonate and preserved organic matter, rose from about 1,200 parts per million (ppm) at the base of the section, to about 2,400 ppm near the top.
At these high CO2 concentrations, climate models predict more frequent and more extreme weather fluctuations consistent with the fossil and charcoal evidence.
Continuing shifts between extremes of dry and wet likely prevented the establishment of the dinosaur-dominated communities found in the fossil record at higher latitudes across South America, Europe, and southern Africa, where aridity and temperatures were less extreme and humidity was consistently higher.
Resource-limited conditions could not support a diverse community of fast-growing, warm-blooded, large dinosaurs, which require a productive and stable environment to thrive.
"The conditions would have been something similar to the arid western United States today, although there would have been trees and smaller plants near streams and rivers, and forests during humid times," says Whiteside.
"The fluctuating and harsh climate with widespread wildfires meant that only small two-legged carnivorous dinosaurs could survive."
-NSF-
Media Contacts
Cheryl Dybas, NSF
Big dinosaurs steered clear of the tropics
Climate swings lasting millions of years too much for dinos
For more than 30 million years after dinosaurs first appeared, they remained inexplicably rare near the equator, where only a few small-bodied meat-eating dinosaurs made a living.
The long absence at low latitudes has been one of the great, unanswered questions about the rise of the dinosaurs.
Now the mystery has a solution, according to scientists who pieced together a detailed picture of the climate and ecology more than 200 million years ago at Ghost Ranch in northern New Mexico, a site rich with fossils.
The findings, reported today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), show that the tropical climate swung wildly with extremes of drought and intense heat.
Wildfires swept the landscape during arid regimes and reshaped the vegetation available for plant-eating animals.
"Our data suggest it was not a fun place," says scientist Randall Irmis of the University of Utah.
"It was a time of climate extremes that went back and forth unpredictably. Large, warm-blooded dinosaurian herbivores weren't able to exist close to the equator--there was not enough dependable plant food."
The study, led by geochemist Jessica Whiteside, now of the University of Southampton, is the first to provide a detailed look at climate and ecology during the emergence of the dinosaurs.
Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels then were four to six times current levels. "If we continue along our present course, similar conditions in a high-CO2 world may develop, and suppress low-latitude ecosystems," Irmis says.
"These scientists have developed a new explanation for the perplexing near-absence of dinosaurs in late Triassic [the Triassic was between 252 million and 201 million years ago] equatorial settings," says Rich Lane, program director in the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Division of Earth Sciences, which funded the research.
"That includes rapid vegetation changes related to climate fluctuations between arid and moist climates and the resulting extensive wildfires of the time."
Reconstructing the deep past
The earliest known dinosaur fossils, found in Argentina, date from around 230 million years ago.
Within 15 million years, species with different diets and body sizes had evolved and were abundant except in tropical latitudes. There the only dinosaurs were small carnivores. The pattern persisted for 30 million years after the first dinosaurs appeared.
The scientists focused on Chinle Formation rocks, which were deposited by rivers and streams between 205 and 215 million years ago at Ghost Ranch (perhaps better known as the place where artist Georgia O'Keeffe lived and painted for much of her career).
The multi-colored rocks of the Chinle Formation are a common sight on the Colorado Plateau at places such as the Painted Desert at Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona.
In ancient times, North America and other land masses were bound together in the supercontinent Pangea. The Ghost Ranch site stood close to the equator, at roughly the same latitude as present-day southern India.
The researchers reconstructed the deep past by analyzing several kinds of data: from fossils, charcoal left by ancient wildfires, stable isotopes from organic matter, and carbonate nodules that formed in ancient soils.
Fossilized bones, pollen grains and fern spores revealed the types of animals and plants living at different times, marked by layers of sediment.
Dinosaurs remained rare among the fossils, accounting for less than 15 percent of vertebrate animal remains.
They were outnumbered in diversity, abundance and body size by reptiles known as pseudosuchian archosaurs, the lineage that gave rise to crocodiles and alligators.
The sparse dinosaurs consisted mostly of small, carnivorous theropods.
Big, long-necked dinosaurs, or sauropodomorphs--already the dominant plant-eaters at higher latitudes--did not exist at the study site nor any other low-latitude site in the Pangaea of that time, as far as the fossil record shows.
Abrupt changes in climate left a record in the abundance of different types of pollen and fern spores between sediment layers.
Fossilized organic matter from decaying plants provided another window on climate shifts. Changes in the ratio of stable isotopes of carbon in the organic matter bookmarked times when plant productivity declined during extended droughts.
Drought and fire
Wildfire temperatures varied drastically, the researchers found, consistent with a fluctuating environment in which the amount of combustible plant matter rose and fell over time.
The researchers estimated the intensity of wildfires using bits of charcoal recovered in sediment layers.
The overall picture is that of a climate punctuated by extreme shifts in precipitation and in which plant die-offs fueled hotter fires. That in turn killed more plants, damaged soils and increased erosion.
Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, calculated from stable isotope analyses of soil carbonate and preserved organic matter, rose from about 1,200 parts per million (ppm) at the base of the section, to about 2,400 ppm near the top.
At these high CO2 concentrations, climate models predict more frequent and more extreme weather fluctuations consistent with the fossil and charcoal evidence.
Continuing shifts between extremes of dry and wet likely prevented the establishment of the dinosaur-dominated communities found in the fossil record at higher latitudes across South America, Europe, and southern Africa, where aridity and temperatures were less extreme and humidity was consistently higher.
Resource-limited conditions could not support a diverse community of fast-growing, warm-blooded, large dinosaurs, which require a productive and stable environment to thrive.
"The conditions would have been something similar to the arid western United States today, although there would have been trees and smaller plants near streams and rivers, and forests during humid times," says Whiteside.
"The fluctuating and harsh climate with widespread wildfires meant that only small two-legged carnivorous dinosaurs could survive."
-NSF-
Media Contacts
Cheryl Dybas, NSF
Friday, June 12, 2015
PRESIDENT TAKES ACTION TO SUPPORT RURAL AMERICAN JOBS WHILE FIGHTING CLIMATE CHANGE
FROM: THE WHITE HOUSE
FACT SHEET: Administration Announces Actions to Bring Jobs and Clean Energy to Rural America
Financing Hundreds Of Projects To Reduce Carbon Pollution In Rural Communities
President Obama is committed to combating climate change to protect future generations while supporting a strong rural economy. Climate change can no longer be seen as a distant threat. It is already affecting rural communities across the country and putting homes, businesses, and vital infrastructure at risk.
Farmers and ranchers face devastating impacts – from severe floods to extreme heat and drought to increased challenges due to wildfires, disease and pests. These impacts threaten the lives and livelihoods of Americans in rural communities.
That is why the President is taking action now. The sooner we act, the more we can do to protect rural America, especially the areas that are the most vulnerable. By investing in renewable energy and supporting climate-smart agricultural practices, rural communities and businesses can help slow the effects of climate change while creating jobs and growing the economy. To continue down this track, today the Administration is making these announcements:
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is announcing a new investment in nearly 550 renewable energy and energy efficiency projects across the country totaling nearly $7 million in funding through its Rural Energy for America Program (REAP). Today, Secretary Tom Vilsack will visit the Snake River Brewing Company, in Jackson, Wyoming, one of the REAP awardees that received nearly $14,000 in funding to install a solar panels on their business, which is estimated to save the brewery nearly $1,200 on their electricity bill each year. Since President Obama took office, USDA has helped thousands of rural small businesses, farmers and ranchers improve their bottom lines by investing in renewable energy systems and energy efficiency solutions, including:
Awarding $545 million through REAP for more than 8,800 projects nationwide to install renewable energy systems or make energy efficiency upgrades, which will save more than 7 billion kWh, enough energy to power 660,000 American homes annually. In fact, the number of farms using a renewable energy producing system since 2007 has more than doubled.
Financing more than $1.7 billion to help rural electricity providers reduce carbon pollution, bringing significant cost savings, and improve the quality of life for those living and working in rural America.
Companies across the U.S. understand that reducing carbon pollution and growing the economy go hand-in-hand. To highlight leadership in the agricultural sector, today the White House is hosting a roundtable discussion with businesses and organizations that are already taking action to cut emissions and strengthen the rural economy. Participants include:
Cargill
The Coca-Cola Company
Environmental Defense Fund
Field to Market
General Mills
Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy
Monsanto
National Corn Growers Association
Syngenta
The Fertilizer Institute
Kellogg Company
The Nature Conservancy
Unilever
United Soybean Board
Walmart
World Wildlife Fund
Building on their earlier progress, several businesses and organizations are also announcing new commitments to improve agricultural practices to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve water quality, and improve water efficiency:
Unilever is pledging to source 100% of its soy (approximately 1 million acres) in the U.S. sustainably by 2017, and all other raw agriculture commodities by 2020. Utilizing Field to Market, Unilever will work with farmers to gather data about their fields and farming practices and then co-solve with them to implement changes to farming practices that promote reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. For example, working with the Conservation Technology Information Center in Iowa, Unilever was recently awarded $1 million in cost share by the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship to encourage growers to utilize cover crops to improve water quality.
Field to Market: The Alliance for Sustainable Agriculture and The Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy commit to harmonizing metrics to assess the sustainability of feed production, maximize interoperability among tools used to inform sustainable practices, advance scientific research and communication, and jointly convene the supply chain to address sustainability challenges in November 2015.
Coca-Cola Company is committing to rapidly expand the application of the Field to Market program and its data-driven tool to quantify water use, fertilizer use, energy use, and greenhouse emissions. By the end of 2015, Coca-Cola will aim to engage farmers representing 250,000 acres, and up to 1 million acres by 2020s—equating to roughly 50% of the company’s global corn supply – to implement this commitment.
National Corn Growers Association is committing to actively participate in Field to Market and administer the Soil Health Partnership (SHP), , a project to make agriculture more sustainable through improved soil management, which is committed to expanding the current SHP Demonstration Farm Network from 40 to 100 by 2018. The main goal of the SHP is to demonstrate the contributions improved soil health makes to increased agricultural productivity, profitability, and environmental sustainability outcomes through the adoption of best management practices (BMPs) such as conservation tillage, cover crops and advanced nutrient management.
Walmart has committed to joint agricultural partnerships with 17 suppliers, cooperatives, and service providers on 23 million acres of land in the U.S. and Canada, with the potential to reduce 11 MMT of GHGs by 2020. Walmart is committed to working with packers, feed yards, and ranchers to ensure that 15% of their U.S. beef supply is sourced with environmental criteria by 2023. In September 2014, Walmart announced that they will work with their suppliers and other partners in the food supply chain to cut greenhouse gas emissions, better conserve water, and increase yields as part of their Climate Smart Agriculture platform. Over the next ten years, Walmart will work to gain increasing visibility into key metrics regarding yields, water usage and GHGs in food supply chains. Walmart is now working with suppliers, representing ~70% of food sales, to report their yield, water and GHG footprints all the way back to the farm.
PepsiCo, a global food and beverage company, has committed to expanding its Sustainable Farming Initiative to 500,000 acres of farmland used by North American agricultural suppliers by year-end 2016. PepsiCo’s Sustainable Farming Initiative provides a comprehensive framework to help meet the goals set out in PepsiCo’s Sustainable Agriculture Policy, providing critical support to farmers as they seek to address climate change and other key issues of sustainable farming. PepsiCo has committed to work in the U.S. and other global markets to engage growers of corn, oats, potato, and oranges to increase the utilization of sustainable farming practices, particularly in the areas of environmental, social and economic sustainability.
The Nature Conservancy commits to help reduce nutrient loading in the Mississippi Basin by 25 percent by 2025 by seeking and developing new funding resources to assist farmers and local communities, partnering with the private industry to build a new conservation force of champions and advisors to farmers, and targeting resources to the highest priority areas.
Environmental Defense Fund is committing to work with all actors in the commodity crop supply chain – from corporations to farmers - to get improved fertilizer and soil health practices adopted across the majority of U.S. commodity acreage and strategically-placed wetland filters on 2-3% of the acres in the Upper Mississippi River Basin by 2030. Combined, these changes will result in the 45% reduction in nutrient loading needed to achieve water quality restoration goals for the Gulf of Mexico, restore drinking water systems and deliver an estimated 50 million metric tons in avoided greenhouse gas emissions.
Specifically, EDF will work with food companies, retailers, and grain buyers to support development of strong sustainability goals and connect these goals to effective programming on the ground with farmers. Existing collaborations including work with Walmart, Murphy Brown, Campbell Soup, and General Mills, among others.
BUILDING ON PROGRESS
Today’s actions build on a series of steps the Administration is taking to reduce the dangerous levels of carbon pollution that are driving climate change, scale up financing for renewable energy and energy efficiency, and create jobs in rural America including:
In April 2015, USDA released a Building Blocks for Climate Smart Agriculture and Forestry framework to support farmers, ranchers and forest landowners in their response to climate change. Through this comprehensive set of voluntary programs and initiatives, USDA expects to reduce net emissions and enhance carbon sequestration by over 120 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent (MMTCO2e) per year – about 2% of economy-wide net greenhouse emissions – by 2025. That’s the equivalent of taking 25 million cars off the road, or offsetting the emissions produced by powering nearly 11 million homes last year.
USDA recently made an additional 800,000 acres of highly environmentally sensitive land eligible for enrollment in its Conservation Reserve Program. USDA will accept new offers to participate in CRP under a general signup to be held Dec. 1, 2015, through Feb. 26, 2016. For 30 years, the Conservation Reserve Program has supported farmers and ranchers as they continue to be good stewards of land and water. This initiative has helped farmers and ranchers prevent more than 8 billion tons of soil from eroding, reduce nitrogen and phosphorous runoff relative to cropland by 95 and 85 percent respectively, and sequester 43 million tons of greenhouse gases annually, equal to taking 8 million cars off the road.
USDA recently announced that it will invest up to $100 million in a Biofuels Infrastructure Partnership to support the infrastructure needed to make more renewable fuel options available to American consumers, which will help to lower greenhouse gas emissions, reduce dependence on foreign oil, give businesses and consumers more energy options and create well-paying American jobs. Specifically, USDA will administer competitive grants to match funding for state-led efforts to test and evaluate innovative and comprehensive approaches to market higher blends of renewable fuel, such as E15 and E85. States that are able to provide greater than a one-to-one ratio in funding will receive higher consideration.
In 2014, USDA established a series of regional Climate Hubs, located in California, Colorado, Iowa, Michigan, New Hampshire, New York, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Puerto Rico, to serve as a source of regional data and information for hazard and adaptation planning in the agriculture and forest sectors. The Hubs address increasing risks such as fires, invasive pests, devastating floods, and crippling droughts, and work with land managers to translate and connect relevant science and research to address on-the-ground information needs.
Through the Conservation Reserve Program, the Environmental Quality Incentive Program, and the Conservation Stewardship Program, USDA is working with farmers, ranchers and forest landowners to implement conservation practices that have reduced net greenhouse gas emissions by over 360 million metric tons since 2009, or approximately 60 million metric tons per year. That is the equivalent of taking 12.6 million cars off the road for a year; or 6.7 million gallons of gasoline consumed; or more than 5.4 million home's energy use for a year.
The great American outdoors is also an important aspect of rural communities, providing both an invaluable national treasure and a critical resource for the tourism industry. In 2014, a record 293 million National Park visitors spent $15.7 billion in communities around National Parks, providing a nearly $30 billion benefit to the U.S. economy and supporting 277,000 jobs.
Last October, USDA funded its first two loans under the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Loan Program. North Arkansas Electric Cooperative, Inc. will use a loan of $4.6 million to fund geothermal and air source installations, energy efficiency lightning, and weatherization measures, including Energy Star® windows and doors, insulation, efficient water heaters, and roofing. Financing will reduce energy costs for Arkansas consumers and improve the services within Arkansas Electric's service territory. North Carolina's Roanoke Electric Membership Corporation will use a loan of $6 million to finance improvements to HVAC Systems, appliance replacements, and building envelope improvements for an average of 200 residential energy efficiency upgrades per year over four years. These loans will help reduce energy costs and improve the services within Roanoke's service territory. Roanoke's service territory includes both poverty and out-migration counties.
USDA, in partnership with the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency, completed the Biogas Opportunities Roadmap, Voluntary Actions to Reduce Methane Emissions and Increase Energy Independence, which identifies voluntary actions that can be taken to reduce methane emissions through the use of biogas systems and outlines strategies to overcome barriers to a robust biogas industry in the United States and increase the use of biogas to help meet our renewable energy goals. Already, USDA has funded 93 anaerobic digesters to help farm operations produce electricity from captured methane. Thanks to a partnership with the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy to reduce greenhouse emissions across the supply chain, most of these projects are at dairy operations.
Through the Biomass Research and Development Initiative and the U.S. Global Change Research Program, USDA has since 2009 provided $610.9 million in funding to support climate change research by USDA scientists and partners at land-grant universities. USDA has also invested $332 million to accelerate research on clean renewable energy ranging from genomic research on bioenergy feedstock crops, to development of biofuel conversion processes and cost-benefit estimates of renewable energy production.
FACT SHEET: Administration Announces Actions to Bring Jobs and Clean Energy to Rural America
Financing Hundreds Of Projects To Reduce Carbon Pollution In Rural Communities
President Obama is committed to combating climate change to protect future generations while supporting a strong rural economy. Climate change can no longer be seen as a distant threat. It is already affecting rural communities across the country and putting homes, businesses, and vital infrastructure at risk.
Farmers and ranchers face devastating impacts – from severe floods to extreme heat and drought to increased challenges due to wildfires, disease and pests. These impacts threaten the lives and livelihoods of Americans in rural communities.
That is why the President is taking action now. The sooner we act, the more we can do to protect rural America, especially the areas that are the most vulnerable. By investing in renewable energy and supporting climate-smart agricultural practices, rural communities and businesses can help slow the effects of climate change while creating jobs and growing the economy. To continue down this track, today the Administration is making these announcements:
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is announcing a new investment in nearly 550 renewable energy and energy efficiency projects across the country totaling nearly $7 million in funding through its Rural Energy for America Program (REAP). Today, Secretary Tom Vilsack will visit the Snake River Brewing Company, in Jackson, Wyoming, one of the REAP awardees that received nearly $14,000 in funding to install a solar panels on their business, which is estimated to save the brewery nearly $1,200 on their electricity bill each year. Since President Obama took office, USDA has helped thousands of rural small businesses, farmers and ranchers improve their bottom lines by investing in renewable energy systems and energy efficiency solutions, including:
Awarding $545 million through REAP for more than 8,800 projects nationwide to install renewable energy systems or make energy efficiency upgrades, which will save more than 7 billion kWh, enough energy to power 660,000 American homes annually. In fact, the number of farms using a renewable energy producing system since 2007 has more than doubled.
Financing more than $1.7 billion to help rural electricity providers reduce carbon pollution, bringing significant cost savings, and improve the quality of life for those living and working in rural America.
Companies across the U.S. understand that reducing carbon pollution and growing the economy go hand-in-hand. To highlight leadership in the agricultural sector, today the White House is hosting a roundtable discussion with businesses and organizations that are already taking action to cut emissions and strengthen the rural economy. Participants include:
Cargill
The Coca-Cola Company
Environmental Defense Fund
Field to Market
General Mills
Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy
Monsanto
National Corn Growers Association
Syngenta
The Fertilizer Institute
Kellogg Company
The Nature Conservancy
Unilever
United Soybean Board
Walmart
World Wildlife Fund
Building on their earlier progress, several businesses and organizations are also announcing new commitments to improve agricultural practices to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve water quality, and improve water efficiency:
Unilever is pledging to source 100% of its soy (approximately 1 million acres) in the U.S. sustainably by 2017, and all other raw agriculture commodities by 2020. Utilizing Field to Market, Unilever will work with farmers to gather data about their fields and farming practices and then co-solve with them to implement changes to farming practices that promote reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. For example, working with the Conservation Technology Information Center in Iowa, Unilever was recently awarded $1 million in cost share by the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship to encourage growers to utilize cover crops to improve water quality.
Field to Market: The Alliance for Sustainable Agriculture and The Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy commit to harmonizing metrics to assess the sustainability of feed production, maximize interoperability among tools used to inform sustainable practices, advance scientific research and communication, and jointly convene the supply chain to address sustainability challenges in November 2015.
Coca-Cola Company is committing to rapidly expand the application of the Field to Market program and its data-driven tool to quantify water use, fertilizer use, energy use, and greenhouse emissions. By the end of 2015, Coca-Cola will aim to engage farmers representing 250,000 acres, and up to 1 million acres by 2020s—equating to roughly 50% of the company’s global corn supply – to implement this commitment.
National Corn Growers Association is committing to actively participate in Field to Market and administer the Soil Health Partnership (SHP), , a project to make agriculture more sustainable through improved soil management, which is committed to expanding the current SHP Demonstration Farm Network from 40 to 100 by 2018. The main goal of the SHP is to demonstrate the contributions improved soil health makes to increased agricultural productivity, profitability, and environmental sustainability outcomes through the adoption of best management practices (BMPs) such as conservation tillage, cover crops and advanced nutrient management.
Walmart has committed to joint agricultural partnerships with 17 suppliers, cooperatives, and service providers on 23 million acres of land in the U.S. and Canada, with the potential to reduce 11 MMT of GHGs by 2020. Walmart is committed to working with packers, feed yards, and ranchers to ensure that 15% of their U.S. beef supply is sourced with environmental criteria by 2023. In September 2014, Walmart announced that they will work with their suppliers and other partners in the food supply chain to cut greenhouse gas emissions, better conserve water, and increase yields as part of their Climate Smart Agriculture platform. Over the next ten years, Walmart will work to gain increasing visibility into key metrics regarding yields, water usage and GHGs in food supply chains. Walmart is now working with suppliers, representing ~70% of food sales, to report their yield, water and GHG footprints all the way back to the farm.
PepsiCo, a global food and beverage company, has committed to expanding its Sustainable Farming Initiative to 500,000 acres of farmland used by North American agricultural suppliers by year-end 2016. PepsiCo’s Sustainable Farming Initiative provides a comprehensive framework to help meet the goals set out in PepsiCo’s Sustainable Agriculture Policy, providing critical support to farmers as they seek to address climate change and other key issues of sustainable farming. PepsiCo has committed to work in the U.S. and other global markets to engage growers of corn, oats, potato, and oranges to increase the utilization of sustainable farming practices, particularly in the areas of environmental, social and economic sustainability.
The Nature Conservancy commits to help reduce nutrient loading in the Mississippi Basin by 25 percent by 2025 by seeking and developing new funding resources to assist farmers and local communities, partnering with the private industry to build a new conservation force of champions and advisors to farmers, and targeting resources to the highest priority areas.
Environmental Defense Fund is committing to work with all actors in the commodity crop supply chain – from corporations to farmers - to get improved fertilizer and soil health practices adopted across the majority of U.S. commodity acreage and strategically-placed wetland filters on 2-3% of the acres in the Upper Mississippi River Basin by 2030. Combined, these changes will result in the 45% reduction in nutrient loading needed to achieve water quality restoration goals for the Gulf of Mexico, restore drinking water systems and deliver an estimated 50 million metric tons in avoided greenhouse gas emissions.
Specifically, EDF will work with food companies, retailers, and grain buyers to support development of strong sustainability goals and connect these goals to effective programming on the ground with farmers. Existing collaborations including work with Walmart, Murphy Brown, Campbell Soup, and General Mills, among others.
BUILDING ON PROGRESS
Today’s actions build on a series of steps the Administration is taking to reduce the dangerous levels of carbon pollution that are driving climate change, scale up financing for renewable energy and energy efficiency, and create jobs in rural America including:
In April 2015, USDA released a Building Blocks for Climate Smart Agriculture and Forestry framework to support farmers, ranchers and forest landowners in their response to climate change. Through this comprehensive set of voluntary programs and initiatives, USDA expects to reduce net emissions and enhance carbon sequestration by over 120 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent (MMTCO2e) per year – about 2% of economy-wide net greenhouse emissions – by 2025. That’s the equivalent of taking 25 million cars off the road, or offsetting the emissions produced by powering nearly 11 million homes last year.
USDA recently made an additional 800,000 acres of highly environmentally sensitive land eligible for enrollment in its Conservation Reserve Program. USDA will accept new offers to participate in CRP under a general signup to be held Dec. 1, 2015, through Feb. 26, 2016. For 30 years, the Conservation Reserve Program has supported farmers and ranchers as they continue to be good stewards of land and water. This initiative has helped farmers and ranchers prevent more than 8 billion tons of soil from eroding, reduce nitrogen and phosphorous runoff relative to cropland by 95 and 85 percent respectively, and sequester 43 million tons of greenhouse gases annually, equal to taking 8 million cars off the road.
USDA recently announced that it will invest up to $100 million in a Biofuels Infrastructure Partnership to support the infrastructure needed to make more renewable fuel options available to American consumers, which will help to lower greenhouse gas emissions, reduce dependence on foreign oil, give businesses and consumers more energy options and create well-paying American jobs. Specifically, USDA will administer competitive grants to match funding for state-led efforts to test and evaluate innovative and comprehensive approaches to market higher blends of renewable fuel, such as E15 and E85. States that are able to provide greater than a one-to-one ratio in funding will receive higher consideration.
In 2014, USDA established a series of regional Climate Hubs, located in California, Colorado, Iowa, Michigan, New Hampshire, New York, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Puerto Rico, to serve as a source of regional data and information for hazard and adaptation planning in the agriculture and forest sectors. The Hubs address increasing risks such as fires, invasive pests, devastating floods, and crippling droughts, and work with land managers to translate and connect relevant science and research to address on-the-ground information needs.
Through the Conservation Reserve Program, the Environmental Quality Incentive Program, and the Conservation Stewardship Program, USDA is working with farmers, ranchers and forest landowners to implement conservation practices that have reduced net greenhouse gas emissions by over 360 million metric tons since 2009, or approximately 60 million metric tons per year. That is the equivalent of taking 12.6 million cars off the road for a year; or 6.7 million gallons of gasoline consumed; or more than 5.4 million home's energy use for a year.
The great American outdoors is also an important aspect of rural communities, providing both an invaluable national treasure and a critical resource for the tourism industry. In 2014, a record 293 million National Park visitors spent $15.7 billion in communities around National Parks, providing a nearly $30 billion benefit to the U.S. economy and supporting 277,000 jobs.
Last October, USDA funded its first two loans under the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Loan Program. North Arkansas Electric Cooperative, Inc. will use a loan of $4.6 million to fund geothermal and air source installations, energy efficiency lightning, and weatherization measures, including Energy Star® windows and doors, insulation, efficient water heaters, and roofing. Financing will reduce energy costs for Arkansas consumers and improve the services within Arkansas Electric's service territory. North Carolina's Roanoke Electric Membership Corporation will use a loan of $6 million to finance improvements to HVAC Systems, appliance replacements, and building envelope improvements for an average of 200 residential energy efficiency upgrades per year over four years. These loans will help reduce energy costs and improve the services within Roanoke's service territory. Roanoke's service territory includes both poverty and out-migration counties.
USDA, in partnership with the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency, completed the Biogas Opportunities Roadmap, Voluntary Actions to Reduce Methane Emissions and Increase Energy Independence, which identifies voluntary actions that can be taken to reduce methane emissions through the use of biogas systems and outlines strategies to overcome barriers to a robust biogas industry in the United States and increase the use of biogas to help meet our renewable energy goals. Already, USDA has funded 93 anaerobic digesters to help farm operations produce electricity from captured methane. Thanks to a partnership with the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy to reduce greenhouse emissions across the supply chain, most of these projects are at dairy operations.
Through the Biomass Research and Development Initiative and the U.S. Global Change Research Program, USDA has since 2009 provided $610.9 million in funding to support climate change research by USDA scientists and partners at land-grant universities. USDA has also invested $332 million to accelerate research on clean renewable energy ranging from genomic research on bioenergy feedstock crops, to development of biofuel conversion processes and cost-benefit estimates of renewable energy production.
Wednesday, June 10, 2015
SECRETARY KERRY'S STATEMENT ON 'CLIMATE CHANGE ADAPTATION AND RESILIENCE'
FROM: U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT
Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience
Press Statement
John Kerry
Secretary of State
Washington, DC
June 9, 2015
Climate change poses a threat to every country on Earth, and we all need to do what we can to take advantage of the small window of opportunity we still have to stave off its worst, most disastrous impacts. But even as we take unprecedented steps to mitigate the climate threat, we also have to ensure our communities are prepared for the impacts we know are headed our way – and the impacts we are already seeing all over the world in the form of heat waves, floods, historic droughts, ocean acidification and more.
Thanks to President Obama’s Climate Action Plan, we’ve taken a number of important steps to increase the resilience of American communities. But as the President has always said, this is a global challenge, and we’re not going to get very far if we keep our efforts contained within our borders. That’s why the United States is deeply committed to helping the rest of the world – especially the poorest and most vulnerable nations – adapt to the changing climate as well.
As part of that commitment, last fall, President Obama announced his intention to create a private-public partnership to provide climate data and information to help promote resilient development worldwide. Today we formally launched the Climate Services for Resilient Development partnership, along with the government of the United Kingdom and our partners at the American Red Cross, the Asian Development Bank, Esri, Google, the Inter-American Development and the Skoll Global Threats Fund. In addition to the $34 million we and our partners are putting toward that new partnership, we also announced a series of individual steps we’re taking to make adapting to climate change easier around the globe – including, for example, the volunteer “climate resilience corps” that the Peace Corps and AmeriCorps will be launching in developing countries, and NASA’s release of the first-ever climate modeling system that breaks data down to the country level, which will enable countries to better target their individual adaptation planning efforts.
In the United States, we’ve developed some of the most advanced technologies and scientific expertise on climate change, and we want to make sure these tools are reaching those who need it the most. Each of the commitments announced today will make it easier for people to take control of their own futures and play an active role in helping to prepare their communities, their countries, and ultimately their planet for the changes ahead.
When it comes to confronting climate change, no country should be forced to go it alone – because no country can possibly address this threat alone. It will require all of us – every country, around the world, doing what it can to contribute to the solution. That understanding is at the core of the initiatives we are unveiling today, it’s what is driving our work toward an ambitious global agreement in Paris later this year, and it’s what will continue to guide our leadership in the fight against climate change in the months and years to come.
Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience
Press Statement
John Kerry
Secretary of State
Washington, DC
June 9, 2015
Climate change poses a threat to every country on Earth, and we all need to do what we can to take advantage of the small window of opportunity we still have to stave off its worst, most disastrous impacts. But even as we take unprecedented steps to mitigate the climate threat, we also have to ensure our communities are prepared for the impacts we know are headed our way – and the impacts we are already seeing all over the world in the form of heat waves, floods, historic droughts, ocean acidification and more.
Thanks to President Obama’s Climate Action Plan, we’ve taken a number of important steps to increase the resilience of American communities. But as the President has always said, this is a global challenge, and we’re not going to get very far if we keep our efforts contained within our borders. That’s why the United States is deeply committed to helping the rest of the world – especially the poorest and most vulnerable nations – adapt to the changing climate as well.
As part of that commitment, last fall, President Obama announced his intention to create a private-public partnership to provide climate data and information to help promote resilient development worldwide. Today we formally launched the Climate Services for Resilient Development partnership, along with the government of the United Kingdom and our partners at the American Red Cross, the Asian Development Bank, Esri, Google, the Inter-American Development and the Skoll Global Threats Fund. In addition to the $34 million we and our partners are putting toward that new partnership, we also announced a series of individual steps we’re taking to make adapting to climate change easier around the globe – including, for example, the volunteer “climate resilience corps” that the Peace Corps and AmeriCorps will be launching in developing countries, and NASA’s release of the first-ever climate modeling system that breaks data down to the country level, which will enable countries to better target their individual adaptation planning efforts.
In the United States, we’ve developed some of the most advanced technologies and scientific expertise on climate change, and we want to make sure these tools are reaching those who need it the most. Each of the commitments announced today will make it easier for people to take control of their own futures and play an active role in helping to prepare their communities, their countries, and ultimately their planet for the changes ahead.
When it comes to confronting climate change, no country should be forced to go it alone – because no country can possibly address this threat alone. It will require all of us – every country, around the world, doing what it can to contribute to the solution. That understanding is at the core of the initiatives we are unveiling today, it’s what is driving our work toward an ambitious global agreement in Paris later this year, and it’s what will continue to guide our leadership in the fight against climate change in the months and years to come.
Thursday, May 21, 2015
WHITE HOUSE REPORT ON NATIONAL SECURITY AND CLIMATE CHANGE
FROM: THE WHITE HOUSE
May 20, 2015
White House Report: The National Security Implications of a Changing Climate
The full report can be found HERE.
Today, President Obama will travel to New London, Connecticut to deliver the commencement address at the United States Coast Guard Academy. During his speech, the President will speak to the importance of acting on climate change and the risks to national security this global threat poses. The White House also released a new report on the national security implications of climate change and how the Federal government is rising to the challenge.
As the President has made very clear, no challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change, as we are already seeing these threats in communities across the country. We know that climate change is contributing to extreme weather, wildfires, and drought, and that rising temperatures can lead to more smog and more allergens in the air we breathe, meaning more kids are exposed to the triggers that can cause asthma attacks.
But as the President will stress, climate change does not respect national borders and no one country can tackle climate change on its own. Climate change poses immediate risks to our national security, contributing to increased natural disasters and resulting in humanitarian crises, and potentially increasing refugee flows and exacerbating conflicts over basic resources like food and water. It also aggravates issues at home and abroad including poverty, political instability and social tensions – conditions that can fuel instability and enable terrorist activity and other forms of violence.
The Department of Defense (DOD) is assessing the vulnerability of the military’s more than 7,000 bases, installations and other facilities to climate change, and studying the implications of increased demand for our National Guard in the aftermath of extreme weather events. Two years ago, DOD and DHS released Arctic Strategies, which addresses the potential security implications of increased human activity in the Arctic, a consequence of rapidly melting sea ice.
But we also need to decrease the harmful carbon pollution that causes climate change. That is why, this summer, the EPA will put in place commonsense standards to reduce carbon pollution from power plants, the largest source in the United States. Today, the U.S. harnesses three times as much electricity from the wind and twenty times as much from the sun as we did since President Obama took office. We are working with industry and have taken action to phase down HFCs and address methane emissions in the oil and gas sector. By the middle of the next decade, our cars will go twice as far on a gallon of gas, and we have made unprecedented investments to cut energy waste in our homes and buildings. And as the single largest user of energy in the United States, DOD is making progress to deploy 3 gigawatts of renewable energy on military installations by 2025.
May 20, 2015
White House Report: The National Security Implications of a Changing Climate
The full report can be found HERE.
Today, President Obama will travel to New London, Connecticut to deliver the commencement address at the United States Coast Guard Academy. During his speech, the President will speak to the importance of acting on climate change and the risks to national security this global threat poses. The White House also released a new report on the national security implications of climate change and how the Federal government is rising to the challenge.
As the President has made very clear, no challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change, as we are already seeing these threats in communities across the country. We know that climate change is contributing to extreme weather, wildfires, and drought, and that rising temperatures can lead to more smog and more allergens in the air we breathe, meaning more kids are exposed to the triggers that can cause asthma attacks.
But as the President will stress, climate change does not respect national borders and no one country can tackle climate change on its own. Climate change poses immediate risks to our national security, contributing to increased natural disasters and resulting in humanitarian crises, and potentially increasing refugee flows and exacerbating conflicts over basic resources like food and water. It also aggravates issues at home and abroad including poverty, political instability and social tensions – conditions that can fuel instability and enable terrorist activity and other forms of violence.
The Department of Defense (DOD) is assessing the vulnerability of the military’s more than 7,000 bases, installations and other facilities to climate change, and studying the implications of increased demand for our National Guard in the aftermath of extreme weather events. Two years ago, DOD and DHS released Arctic Strategies, which addresses the potential security implications of increased human activity in the Arctic, a consequence of rapidly melting sea ice.
But we also need to decrease the harmful carbon pollution that causes climate change. That is why, this summer, the EPA will put in place commonsense standards to reduce carbon pollution from power plants, the largest source in the United States. Today, the U.S. harnesses three times as much electricity from the wind and twenty times as much from the sun as we did since President Obama took office. We are working with industry and have taken action to phase down HFCs and address methane emissions in the oil and gas sector. By the middle of the next decade, our cars will go twice as far on a gallon of gas, and we have made unprecedented investments to cut energy waste in our homes and buildings. And as the single largest user of energy in the United States, DOD is making progress to deploy 3 gigawatts of renewable energy on military installations by 2025.
SCIENTISTS CITE POSSIBLE POWER SHORTAGES DUE TO CLIMATE CHANGE
FROM: NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION
Drought, heat likely to affect U.S. West's power grid
Scientists recommend looking at power plants' capacities in view of expected changes
Electricity generation and distribution infrastructure in the U.S. West should be “climate-proofed” to decrease the risk of future power shortages, according to new research results.
Expected increases in extreme heat and drought will bring changes in precipitation, air and water temperatures, air density and humidity, write scientists Matthew Bartos and Mikhail Chester of Arizona State University in a paper published in the current issue of the journal Nature Climate Change.
The research was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Water, Sustainability and Climate (WSC) Program.
"Society depends on agriculture, energy and water availability to prosper," said Tom Torgersen, NSF WSC program director. "Security in these areas requires an understanding of the complex links between humans and nature."
Changing conditions could limit energy production
The authors say that changing conditions could significantly constrain the energy generation capacity of power plants--unless steps are taken to upgrade systems and technologies to withstand the effects of a generally hotter and drier climate.
The scientists report that power stations are particularly vulnerable to the climate conditions predicted to occur within the next half-century.
“In their development plans, power providers are not taking into account climate change effects,” Bartos said. “They are likely overestimating their ability to meet future electricity needs.”
U.S. West will see higher demand in years to come
The U.S. West in particular is expected to see greater energy demand due to population growth and higher temperatures.
Bartos and Chester say that power plants should strengthen their transmission capacities and conservation strategies if they are to remain capable of reliably supplying power as conditions change.
Scientists recommend that power providers consider climate constraints
Power providers also should invest in more resilient renewable energy sources and consider local climate constraints when selecting sites for new generation facilities, the researchers said.
“Diverse arrays of energy-generation technologies are used by the U.S. West’s power grid," said Chester.
The scientists looked at five power-generating technologies: hydroelectric facilities; steam, wind and combustion turbines; as well as photovoltaics.
“We’re finding that some power generation technologies may be more climate-resilient than others," Chester said.
"Renewable energy sources are generally less susceptible to climate change effects. More use of renewable sources may contribute to a better climate-proofed power infrastructure."
-NSF-
Media Contacts
Cheryl Dybas, NSF
Joe Kullman, ASU,
Drought, heat likely to affect U.S. West's power grid
Scientists recommend looking at power plants' capacities in view of expected changes
Electricity generation and distribution infrastructure in the U.S. West should be “climate-proofed” to decrease the risk of future power shortages, according to new research results.
Expected increases in extreme heat and drought will bring changes in precipitation, air and water temperatures, air density and humidity, write scientists Matthew Bartos and Mikhail Chester of Arizona State University in a paper published in the current issue of the journal Nature Climate Change.
The research was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Water, Sustainability and Climate (WSC) Program.
"Society depends on agriculture, energy and water availability to prosper," said Tom Torgersen, NSF WSC program director. "Security in these areas requires an understanding of the complex links between humans and nature."
Changing conditions could limit energy production
The authors say that changing conditions could significantly constrain the energy generation capacity of power plants--unless steps are taken to upgrade systems and technologies to withstand the effects of a generally hotter and drier climate.
The scientists report that power stations are particularly vulnerable to the climate conditions predicted to occur within the next half-century.
“In their development plans, power providers are not taking into account climate change effects,” Bartos said. “They are likely overestimating their ability to meet future electricity needs.”
U.S. West will see higher demand in years to come
The U.S. West in particular is expected to see greater energy demand due to population growth and higher temperatures.
Bartos and Chester say that power plants should strengthen their transmission capacities and conservation strategies if they are to remain capable of reliably supplying power as conditions change.
Scientists recommend that power providers consider climate constraints
Power providers also should invest in more resilient renewable energy sources and consider local climate constraints when selecting sites for new generation facilities, the researchers said.
“Diverse arrays of energy-generation technologies are used by the U.S. West’s power grid," said Chester.
The scientists looked at five power-generating technologies: hydroelectric facilities; steam, wind and combustion turbines; as well as photovoltaics.
“We’re finding that some power generation technologies may be more climate-resilient than others," Chester said.
"Renewable energy sources are generally less susceptible to climate change effects. More use of renewable sources may contribute to a better climate-proofed power infrastructure."
-NSF-
Media Contacts
Cheryl Dybas, NSF
Joe Kullman, ASU,
Monday, May 18, 2015
SHRINKING ECOSYSTEM CAUSES MORE "HOTSPOTS"
FROM: NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION
As Massachusetts ecosystems shrink, hard-working "hotspots" emerge
Researchers call hotspots valuable, but say their growing numbers might be cause for concern
All land is not created equal. Some ecosystems do triple-duty in the benefits they provide society.
Massachusetts forests, for example, filter public drinking water, provide habitat for threatened species and store carbon to combat climate change.
Hotspots: hardest-working ecosystems
Ecologists single out the hardest-working ecosystems--called "hotspots"--for their exceptional value.
Results of a study published this week in the Journal of Applied Ecology show that the number of hotspots has increased in Massachusetts over the past decade, with more and more popping up in metro Boston.
But, the authors of the paper say, more hotspots may not be a good thing.
Jonathan Thompson, an ecologist at the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Harvard Forest Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) site and co-author of the paper, says that the increasing number of hotspots signals a degradation of other ecosystems across the state.
"Over the past 10 years, urban development has increased by more than 6 percent, at the expense of forests and agricultural lands," Thompson says.
"When we lose intact forests, we lose stable flows of clean water, climate regulation, recreational opportunities and wildlife habitat. The remaining forest is left to pick up the slack."
The result is more hotspots that do the work of larger forests.
Emerging ecosystems
Meghan Blumstein of Harvard University, lead author of the paper, notes that hotspots are valuable and worth saving.
But, she adds, "an increase in their number reflects an ongoing division of the natural landscape into smaller units, which are expected to produce the same number of services with less."
Saran Twombly, lead program director for the NSF LTER program--which funded the research through NSF's Division of Environmental Biology--says that the study takes a broad view to show that exploitation of land affects a wide range of services we expect the natural environment to provide.
"Humans have used the land for millennia to satisfy particular needs," Twombly says.
Satellite mapping
Using satellite maps, the team tracked changes in land cover, such as forest clearing for agriculture or development, across Massachusetts from 2001 to 2011.
In each 30-meter square on the map grid (about the size of two basketball courts), the scientists used computer models to assess which benefits each ecosystem could provide and how those benefits changed over time.
The researchers found that some benefits, such as providing habitats for wildlife, declined state-wide over the study period.
But other benefits, including carbon sequestration and outdoor recreation, increased. Intact forests are growing rapidly and more land is being conserved.
Study scale important
For some benefits, the scale of the analysis made a big difference, Blumstein says.
When analyzed at a local scale, an area of forest in the state's Quabbin Reservoir may look less like a hotspot than it does a local park.
But when examined at a regional scale, the continuous forest area around the Quabbin Reservoir provides clean drinking water for millions of Massachusetts residents.
"The sustained delivery of benefits from nature requires an approach that considers conservation at multiple scales," Blumstein says.
In other words, the researchers say, we need to be able to see the forest, not just the trees.
-- Cheryl Dybas, NSF
-- Clarisse Hart, NSF Harvard Forest
Investigators
David Foster
Related Institutions/Organizations
Harvard University
As Massachusetts ecosystems shrink, hard-working "hotspots" emerge
Researchers call hotspots valuable, but say their growing numbers might be cause for concern
All land is not created equal. Some ecosystems do triple-duty in the benefits they provide society.
Massachusetts forests, for example, filter public drinking water, provide habitat for threatened species and store carbon to combat climate change.
Hotspots: hardest-working ecosystems
Ecologists single out the hardest-working ecosystems--called "hotspots"--for their exceptional value.
Results of a study published this week in the Journal of Applied Ecology show that the number of hotspots has increased in Massachusetts over the past decade, with more and more popping up in metro Boston.
But, the authors of the paper say, more hotspots may not be a good thing.
Jonathan Thompson, an ecologist at the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Harvard Forest Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) site and co-author of the paper, says that the increasing number of hotspots signals a degradation of other ecosystems across the state.
"Over the past 10 years, urban development has increased by more than 6 percent, at the expense of forests and agricultural lands," Thompson says.
"When we lose intact forests, we lose stable flows of clean water, climate regulation, recreational opportunities and wildlife habitat. The remaining forest is left to pick up the slack."
The result is more hotspots that do the work of larger forests.
Emerging ecosystems
Meghan Blumstein of Harvard University, lead author of the paper, notes that hotspots are valuable and worth saving.
But, she adds, "an increase in their number reflects an ongoing division of the natural landscape into smaller units, which are expected to produce the same number of services with less."
Saran Twombly, lead program director for the NSF LTER program--which funded the research through NSF's Division of Environmental Biology--says that the study takes a broad view to show that exploitation of land affects a wide range of services we expect the natural environment to provide.
"Humans have used the land for millennia to satisfy particular needs," Twombly says.
Satellite mapping
Using satellite maps, the team tracked changes in land cover, such as forest clearing for agriculture or development, across Massachusetts from 2001 to 2011.
In each 30-meter square on the map grid (about the size of two basketball courts), the scientists used computer models to assess which benefits each ecosystem could provide and how those benefits changed over time.
The researchers found that some benefits, such as providing habitats for wildlife, declined state-wide over the study period.
But other benefits, including carbon sequestration and outdoor recreation, increased. Intact forests are growing rapidly and more land is being conserved.
Study scale important
For some benefits, the scale of the analysis made a big difference, Blumstein says.
When analyzed at a local scale, an area of forest in the state's Quabbin Reservoir may look less like a hotspot than it does a local park.
But when examined at a regional scale, the continuous forest area around the Quabbin Reservoir provides clean drinking water for millions of Massachusetts residents.
"The sustained delivery of benefits from nature requires an approach that considers conservation at multiple scales," Blumstein says.
In other words, the researchers say, we need to be able to see the forest, not just the trees.
-- Cheryl Dybas, NSF
-- Clarisse Hart, NSF Harvard Forest
Investigators
David Foster
Related Institutions/Organizations
Harvard University
Tuesday, May 12, 2015
KEYNOTE REMARKS: BIOEONOMY AND CLIMATE CHANGE FORUM
FROM: U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT
Economic, Energy, Agricultural and Trade Issues: Keynote Remarks at the Bioeconomy and Climate Change Forum
05/06/2015 01:10 PM EDT
Keynote Remarks at the Bioeconomy and Climate Change Forum
Remarks
Charles H. Rivkin
Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs
Washington, DC
May 6, 2015
As prepared
Thank you, Eric, for that introduction.
Good morning everyone, and a special welcome to our ambassadors and others from the foreign diplomatic corps here today.
Before I continue, I’d like to thank the many people responsible for today’s event, including our partner, the Biotechnology Industry Organization, or BIO. I look forward to hearing from Jim Greenwood, President and CEO, in just a few minutes.
I also want to thank all the people in the State Department who worked on this event for their outstanding support and participation in making this event happen. That includes, in particular, the Foreign Service Institute, as well as the Office of Global Food Security, the Office of the Science and Technology Advisor, the Bureau of Oceans, Environment, and Scientific Affairs, and of course our own Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs.
With that, I am delighted to kick off today’s event which will explore some of the innovative and exciting things this extended community is doing to address climate change. This is really one of the most challenging issues of our time but it is truly bringing out the best and brightest among us to respond.
As I thought about climate change and how far we have come, I thought about Homer’s Iliad, the ancient story of Helen of Troy – whose face launched a thousand ships to bring her back to Greece.
But before those ships could launch, they needed a favorable wind. So they consulted a prophet named Calchas, a man who examined animal entrails and observed the flight of birds to make his prognostications. He told the Greeks they would get their wind if their leader sacrificed his only daughter to the gods.
Back then, that’s what passed for climate science. Today, every Greek warrior would simply pull out a smartphone and check his weather app!
Of course, the Iliad’s a myth, set more than 3,000 years ago. But I use it to show just how far science has come and how technology is literally in our hands, letting us do things previous generations would have considered beyond the power of mere mortals. Most importantly, we are using the great discoveries of biotechnology to address climate change in more effective, sustainable and widely applicable ways.
Last fall, I went to Des Moines, Iowa, to attend the World Food Prize, and to speak about biotechnology as a tool for hunger alleviation and job creation. While there, I had the opportunity to join a farmer in central Iowa, sit in the buddy seat of his John Deere S670 combine harvester, and watch him work.
As we moved through the cornfields, his combine gathered, husked and shelled 12 rows of corn at a time, turning them into bushels of instant grain. He checked his progress with onboard computers and GPS technology. These helped him deposit seed and fertilizer precisely, and even showed if he had missed a single ear of corn!
While he was doing this, he spoke about the importance of international markets for American agriculture, and how he had once hosted President Xi Jinping of China at his farm.
In just one ride on a combine, I saw a farmer using technology to enhance his livelihood and engage fully within the global economy. I also saw how biotechnology was helping farmers to use sustainable techniques that reduce our carbon footprint and address climate change.
Of course, climate change cuts across all sectors of the bioeconomy, which not only include agriculture but health, industry and energy. It is one of the biggest threats of our time with a decisive role in everything from pandemic diseases to crop damage, and from famine to widespread destruction of homes and habitats.
One question for our time is this: Can we direct the kind of innovation that has already built the bioeconomy towards addressing these enormous challenges?
The answer is “yes,” if we continue to build on the incredible innovative progress we have made so far – and are making right now – in the biosciences.
It’s “yes,” as long as we share the same consensus mission: to provide for humanity’s ever growing needs while reducing our carbon footprint.
Finally, it’s “yes,” if we ensure that our breakthroughs not only create benefits for society but are sustainable in the global market.
Right now, in the United States, the bioeconomy is worth more than $300 billion dollars and already supports 1.6 million jobs. It can, and it should, grow more because, quite simply, we have no choice: We have to invent our way to solutions or face the consequences.
The good news is, innovation is central to our DNA. That’s clearly evident in the bioeconomy. We are finding ways to transform our waste into valuable resources. We are making our production processes more efficient and sustainable. Instead of addressing disease with chemically derived medicines that respond to symptoms, we are using biologically derived vaccines that work on the causes. And we are creating sustainable biofuels to drive our cars, warm our homes, and light up our workplaces.
But innovation needs support from many corners, from the funding of research to the protection of intellectual property rights; from a free and open internet to the imaginative partnerships that government and the private sector can create so that more people are free to make those powerful discoveries that benefit us all.
From the government corner, we need to address macro policies that respond to climate change. We need to agree on global commitments that count, metrics that matter, and standards that improve conditions.
The Obama administration has already shown its ongoing commitment in this space. It recently announced a target of reducing our greenhouse gas emissions by 26 to 28 percent in 2025 compared with 2005.
Last November, President Obama and President Xi Jinping of China made an historic Joint Announcement of our intended targets, with China agreeing for the first time to a peak year for its CO2 emissions of around 2030 and to an ambitious target of 20 percent clean energy in its energy mix by 2030.
This December in Paris, we are looking to establish, for the first time, an ambitious, durable climate regime that applies to all countries, is fair, and focuses on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and building resilience.
Our commitment to address climate change is as widespread as it is focused.
We launched the Global Alliance for Climate Smart Agriculture, which works to produce more food, adapt to a changing climate, and reduce greenhouse gases.
We support the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change’s Climate Technology Center and Network, and the Green Climate Fund, both of which support the efforts of developing countries in different ways to adapt to climate change.
That includes work to protect forests, support resilient agricultural sectors, and reduce greenhouse gases, while generating economic opportunities for their citizens.
We also invest billions in research and development of low carbon technologies and energy efficiency.
On other fronts, my Bureau has a leading role in making sure investors, entrepreneurs, researchers and the entire bio-economic extended community can be more connected, integrated, efficient and profitable.
For example, we advocate in world forums for a free internet to keep open channels of information, commerce and trade. We are integral to the negotiations in two ongoing multilateral trade deals that will not only break down barriers to trade and investment but set new environmental standards for member nations.
We also foster innovation by establishing legal frameworks that protect intellectual property rights, minimize corruption, and reward entrepreneurship.
The government has unique assets in at least two other ways. First of all, we have convening authority: We can assemble political leaders, scientists, economists, university leaders, business leaders and multilateral bodies to pursue mutually agreed upon goals.
Secondly, we have 270 embassies and posts around the world – our shoes on the ground, you might say – to extend our messages and outreach with citizens, political leaders and civil society organizations everywhere.
While the U.S. Government works to play its part, there are roles for a wide array of other actors in the bioeconomy, including other governments, multilateral bodies, businesses, universities, entrepreneurs, and scientists.
As I glance around this room, I can see a good representation of that global community. I look forward to hearing more about the stories you have to tell.
We have so much to build on; so many success stories in biotechnology, as we work to combat the effects of climate change. As I mentioned, one of the consequences of climate change is the increased risk of insect-borne disease exposure, such as dengue and malaria, in places such as Florida and Texas. The National Science Foundation has supported research that reengineers microorganisms to produce an anti-malarial drug. It’s called artemisinin and new companies are already putting it on the market.
That’s a perfect illustration of the bioeconomy at its best: Funded innovative research addresses a serious problem, using cross-disciplinary biosciences. The private sector brings it to market and makes it available globally. The problem is addressed.
As I learned on my trip to Iowa, the agricultural sector continues to benefit from innovation. We are making more sustainable use of land and water. We are developing drought tolerant varieties of corn, nutritionally enhanced rice, and disease resistant oranges. These are crucial breakthroughs as we also try to feed a global population that will reach an estimated 9 billion by the year 2050.
These and other stories prove to me that, despite the size and scale of our challenges, we are rising to meet them head on. I believe it’s because, throughout human history, we have made productive use of innovation since we first learned to rub two sticks together.
Back then it was sticks. Now we’re creating genetically modified mosquitos that don’t carry malaria. We are turning algae into jet fuel. We are making apples that don’t brown and potatoes that produce fewer carcinogens when fried.
Of course, with innovation comes change – and inevitably resistance. Charles Kettering, an American inventor and former head of research at General Motors, who owned 186 patents, once said: “The world hates change, yet it is the only thing that has brought progress.”
The bioeconomy is all about progress, from the cellular level to the macro-economic level, as we work to grow an ecosystem of invention and reinvention that creates the products and processes for a more sustainable future. We may not seem as powerful and impressive as those ancient Greek warriors, waiting for their favorable wind. But if you compare the stakes we face, we can make the case that we’re more modern heroes. By creating a viable, sustainable bioeconomy, we are not only enhancing and sustaining society; we are contributing to a more ecologically balanced planet. For my money, that beats getting Helen back from Troy any time!
Thank you.
Economic, Energy, Agricultural and Trade Issues: Keynote Remarks at the Bioeconomy and Climate Change Forum
05/06/2015 01:10 PM EDT
Keynote Remarks at the Bioeconomy and Climate Change Forum
Remarks
Charles H. Rivkin
Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs
Washington, DC
May 6, 2015
As prepared
Thank you, Eric, for that introduction.
Good morning everyone, and a special welcome to our ambassadors and others from the foreign diplomatic corps here today.
Before I continue, I’d like to thank the many people responsible for today’s event, including our partner, the Biotechnology Industry Organization, or BIO. I look forward to hearing from Jim Greenwood, President and CEO, in just a few minutes.
I also want to thank all the people in the State Department who worked on this event for their outstanding support and participation in making this event happen. That includes, in particular, the Foreign Service Institute, as well as the Office of Global Food Security, the Office of the Science and Technology Advisor, the Bureau of Oceans, Environment, and Scientific Affairs, and of course our own Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs.
With that, I am delighted to kick off today’s event which will explore some of the innovative and exciting things this extended community is doing to address climate change. This is really one of the most challenging issues of our time but it is truly bringing out the best and brightest among us to respond.
As I thought about climate change and how far we have come, I thought about Homer’s Iliad, the ancient story of Helen of Troy – whose face launched a thousand ships to bring her back to Greece.
But before those ships could launch, they needed a favorable wind. So they consulted a prophet named Calchas, a man who examined animal entrails and observed the flight of birds to make his prognostications. He told the Greeks they would get their wind if their leader sacrificed his only daughter to the gods.
Back then, that’s what passed for climate science. Today, every Greek warrior would simply pull out a smartphone and check his weather app!
Of course, the Iliad’s a myth, set more than 3,000 years ago. But I use it to show just how far science has come and how technology is literally in our hands, letting us do things previous generations would have considered beyond the power of mere mortals. Most importantly, we are using the great discoveries of biotechnology to address climate change in more effective, sustainable and widely applicable ways.
Last fall, I went to Des Moines, Iowa, to attend the World Food Prize, and to speak about biotechnology as a tool for hunger alleviation and job creation. While there, I had the opportunity to join a farmer in central Iowa, sit in the buddy seat of his John Deere S670 combine harvester, and watch him work.
As we moved through the cornfields, his combine gathered, husked and shelled 12 rows of corn at a time, turning them into bushels of instant grain. He checked his progress with onboard computers and GPS technology. These helped him deposit seed and fertilizer precisely, and even showed if he had missed a single ear of corn!
While he was doing this, he spoke about the importance of international markets for American agriculture, and how he had once hosted President Xi Jinping of China at his farm.
In just one ride on a combine, I saw a farmer using technology to enhance his livelihood and engage fully within the global economy. I also saw how biotechnology was helping farmers to use sustainable techniques that reduce our carbon footprint and address climate change.
Of course, climate change cuts across all sectors of the bioeconomy, which not only include agriculture but health, industry and energy. It is one of the biggest threats of our time with a decisive role in everything from pandemic diseases to crop damage, and from famine to widespread destruction of homes and habitats.
One question for our time is this: Can we direct the kind of innovation that has already built the bioeconomy towards addressing these enormous challenges?
The answer is “yes,” if we continue to build on the incredible innovative progress we have made so far – and are making right now – in the biosciences.
It’s “yes,” as long as we share the same consensus mission: to provide for humanity’s ever growing needs while reducing our carbon footprint.
Finally, it’s “yes,” if we ensure that our breakthroughs not only create benefits for society but are sustainable in the global market.
Right now, in the United States, the bioeconomy is worth more than $300 billion dollars and already supports 1.6 million jobs. It can, and it should, grow more because, quite simply, we have no choice: We have to invent our way to solutions or face the consequences.
The good news is, innovation is central to our DNA. That’s clearly evident in the bioeconomy. We are finding ways to transform our waste into valuable resources. We are making our production processes more efficient and sustainable. Instead of addressing disease with chemically derived medicines that respond to symptoms, we are using biologically derived vaccines that work on the causes. And we are creating sustainable biofuels to drive our cars, warm our homes, and light up our workplaces.
But innovation needs support from many corners, from the funding of research to the protection of intellectual property rights; from a free and open internet to the imaginative partnerships that government and the private sector can create so that more people are free to make those powerful discoveries that benefit us all.
From the government corner, we need to address macro policies that respond to climate change. We need to agree on global commitments that count, metrics that matter, and standards that improve conditions.
The Obama administration has already shown its ongoing commitment in this space. It recently announced a target of reducing our greenhouse gas emissions by 26 to 28 percent in 2025 compared with 2005.
Last November, President Obama and President Xi Jinping of China made an historic Joint Announcement of our intended targets, with China agreeing for the first time to a peak year for its CO2 emissions of around 2030 and to an ambitious target of 20 percent clean energy in its energy mix by 2030.
This December in Paris, we are looking to establish, for the first time, an ambitious, durable climate regime that applies to all countries, is fair, and focuses on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and building resilience.
Our commitment to address climate change is as widespread as it is focused.
We launched the Global Alliance for Climate Smart Agriculture, which works to produce more food, adapt to a changing climate, and reduce greenhouse gases.
We support the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change’s Climate Technology Center and Network, and the Green Climate Fund, both of which support the efforts of developing countries in different ways to adapt to climate change.
That includes work to protect forests, support resilient agricultural sectors, and reduce greenhouse gases, while generating economic opportunities for their citizens.
We also invest billions in research and development of low carbon technologies and energy efficiency.
On other fronts, my Bureau has a leading role in making sure investors, entrepreneurs, researchers and the entire bio-economic extended community can be more connected, integrated, efficient and profitable.
For example, we advocate in world forums for a free internet to keep open channels of information, commerce and trade. We are integral to the negotiations in two ongoing multilateral trade deals that will not only break down barriers to trade and investment but set new environmental standards for member nations.
We also foster innovation by establishing legal frameworks that protect intellectual property rights, minimize corruption, and reward entrepreneurship.
The government has unique assets in at least two other ways. First of all, we have convening authority: We can assemble political leaders, scientists, economists, university leaders, business leaders and multilateral bodies to pursue mutually agreed upon goals.
Secondly, we have 270 embassies and posts around the world – our shoes on the ground, you might say – to extend our messages and outreach with citizens, political leaders and civil society organizations everywhere.
While the U.S. Government works to play its part, there are roles for a wide array of other actors in the bioeconomy, including other governments, multilateral bodies, businesses, universities, entrepreneurs, and scientists.
As I glance around this room, I can see a good representation of that global community. I look forward to hearing more about the stories you have to tell.
We have so much to build on; so many success stories in biotechnology, as we work to combat the effects of climate change. As I mentioned, one of the consequences of climate change is the increased risk of insect-borne disease exposure, such as dengue and malaria, in places such as Florida and Texas. The National Science Foundation has supported research that reengineers microorganisms to produce an anti-malarial drug. It’s called artemisinin and new companies are already putting it on the market.
That’s a perfect illustration of the bioeconomy at its best: Funded innovative research addresses a serious problem, using cross-disciplinary biosciences. The private sector brings it to market and makes it available globally. The problem is addressed.
As I learned on my trip to Iowa, the agricultural sector continues to benefit from innovation. We are making more sustainable use of land and water. We are developing drought tolerant varieties of corn, nutritionally enhanced rice, and disease resistant oranges. These are crucial breakthroughs as we also try to feed a global population that will reach an estimated 9 billion by the year 2050.
These and other stories prove to me that, despite the size and scale of our challenges, we are rising to meet them head on. I believe it’s because, throughout human history, we have made productive use of innovation since we first learned to rub two sticks together.
Back then it was sticks. Now we’re creating genetically modified mosquitos that don’t carry malaria. We are turning algae into jet fuel. We are making apples that don’t brown and potatoes that produce fewer carcinogens when fried.
Of course, with innovation comes change – and inevitably resistance. Charles Kettering, an American inventor and former head of research at General Motors, who owned 186 patents, once said: “The world hates change, yet it is the only thing that has brought progress.”
The bioeconomy is all about progress, from the cellular level to the macro-economic level, as we work to grow an ecosystem of invention and reinvention that creates the products and processes for a more sustainable future. We may not seem as powerful and impressive as those ancient Greek warriors, waiting for their favorable wind. But if you compare the stakes we face, we can make the case that we’re more modern heroes. By creating a viable, sustainable bioeconomy, we are not only enhancing and sustaining society; we are contributing to a more ecologically balanced planet. For my money, that beats getting Helen back from Troy any time!
Thank you.
Friday, May 1, 2015
PRESIDENT OBAMA'S REMARKS BEFORE SIGNING ENERGY EFFICIENCY IMPROVEMENT ACT
FROM: THE WHITE HOUSE
April 30, 2015
Remarks by the President Before Signing The Energy Efficiency Improvement Act of 2015
Oval Office
3:06 P.M. EDT
THE PRESIDENT: It is a great pleasure to welcome some outstanding legislators and advocates on behalf of an issue that should always be bipartisan, and that is making sure that we have the most energy-efficient economy in the world.
We’ve made great strides since the beginning of my administration on everything from doubling fuel-efficiency standards on cars to incentivizing smarter policies when we build buildings so that they’re not wasting as much energy. And thanks to the leadership of folks like Senators Shaheen and Portman and Bennet, and Representative Welch, and other folks who are here, what we’ve seen is a coming together of Republicans and Democrats who are going to facilitate us being much smarter in terms of building buildings, how we use energy and, as a consequence, we’re going to save money for consumers, we’re going to save money for businesses, and we’re going to deal with issues like climate change that have an enormous economic and health impact on Americans as a whole.
So I very much appreciate the efforts of all the organizations involved here. Senator Franken, I should have mentioned him. He stands out. (Laughter.) And I just want to say how much I appreciate the outstanding efforts that have been made in both chambers and by both parties. I hope that we can use this to build even more progress in the future, because we’ve got a lot more work to do. There’s a lot of low-hanging fruit -- this is the area where we can have the greatest environmental impact while making sure that we’re creating good jobs and saving businesses and consumers money. So it’s a win-win, and I very much appreciate the strong efforts that were made by everybody behind me here today.
With that, I’m going to sign this legislation.
END
April 30, 2015
Remarks by the President Before Signing The Energy Efficiency Improvement Act of 2015
Oval Office
3:06 P.M. EDT
THE PRESIDENT: It is a great pleasure to welcome some outstanding legislators and advocates on behalf of an issue that should always be bipartisan, and that is making sure that we have the most energy-efficient economy in the world.
We’ve made great strides since the beginning of my administration on everything from doubling fuel-efficiency standards on cars to incentivizing smarter policies when we build buildings so that they’re not wasting as much energy. And thanks to the leadership of folks like Senators Shaheen and Portman and Bennet, and Representative Welch, and other folks who are here, what we’ve seen is a coming together of Republicans and Democrats who are going to facilitate us being much smarter in terms of building buildings, how we use energy and, as a consequence, we’re going to save money for consumers, we’re going to save money for businesses, and we’re going to deal with issues like climate change that have an enormous economic and health impact on Americans as a whole.
So I very much appreciate the efforts of all the organizations involved here. Senator Franken, I should have mentioned him. He stands out. (Laughter.) And I just want to say how much I appreciate the outstanding efforts that have been made in both chambers and by both parties. I hope that we can use this to build even more progress in the future, because we’ve got a lot more work to do. There’s a lot of low-hanging fruit -- this is the area where we can have the greatest environmental impact while making sure that we’re creating good jobs and saving businesses and consumers money. So it’s a win-win, and I very much appreciate the strong efforts that were made by everybody behind me here today.
With that, I’m going to sign this legislation.
END
Wednesday, April 22, 2015
WHITE HOUSE FACT SHEET: EARTH DAY
FROM: THE WHITE HOUSE
April 22, 2015
FACT SHEET: Celebrating Earth Day with New Steps to Protect People, Places and Local Economies from Climate Change
Today, in celebration of Earth Day, President Obama will visit the Florida Everglades, where rising seas and other climate change impacts are endangering one of the nation’s most iconic landscapes – and increasing risks to the State’s $82 billion tourism economy. To coincide with the President’s trip, the Administration is highlighting the value of special and vulnerable places like the Everglades and announcing new steps to protect the people and places climate change puts at risk.
The President has made clear that no challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change. The effects of climate change can no longer be denied or ignored – last year was the planet’s warmest year recorded, and 14 of the 15 hottest years on record have happened this century. All over the country, Americans are already facing devastating impacts – from severe floods to extreme heat to increased risk of asthma attacks. These impacts pose major economic, public health, and national security threats. Climate change is also affecting some of the most iconic places in our country, from disappearing glaciers in Glacier National Park to dying Joshua Trees in Joshua Tree National Park. These kinds of losses affect the tourism economies of towns and cities across the country that depend on sharing America’s natural splendor with the world.
That’s why President Obama has taken historic action to cut the carbon pollution that drives climate change and protect American communities from the impacts, including setting the first-ever national limits on carbon pollution from the power sector, making a landmark joint announcement with China to curb greenhouse gas emissions, and supporting smart investments in resilient infrastructure. Under the President’s leadership, the Federal Government has also made significant investments to protect and restore the special places that Americans depend on but that are threatened by pollution and climate change, including the Great Lakes, the Gulf Coast, the Chesapeake Bay, and the Everglades.
In the Everglades alone, the Administration has invested $2.2 billion in restoration efforts, with the President’s 2016 Budget proposing nearly $240 million more. In addition to protecting the primary source of drinking water for more than a third of Florida’s population, these efforts are helping ensure that the Florida Everglades – a major driver of the local economy – are resilient to effects of climate change like saltwater intrusion and invasive species.
Highlighting special places and protecting communities from climate change
From diminishing snowpacks to more severe wildfires, climate change is impacting natural landscapes across the country and threatening an outdoor recreation economy that each year generates $646 billion in consumer spending and 6.1 million direct jobs. In Florida, impacts like sea level rise are threatening some of the State’s top tourist attractions, including the Everglades and Florida Keys, with estimated revenue losses of $9 billion by 2025 and $40 billion by the 2050s.
Recognized worldwide as a unique and treasured landscape, the Everglades is a perfect example of the threat we face from climate change, including rising sea levels that result in shoreline erosion and increased flooding. As the seas rise, salty ocean water travels inland, threatening the aquifers that supply fresh drinking water to Floridians, destroying natural habitats, and starving Everglades National Park of freshwater that also serves as the primary source of drinking water for more than a third of Florida’s population. Already, the park’s characteristic mangrove trees – the largest protected mangrove forest in the northern hemisphere – are retreating inland. The changing conditions in the ecosystem are also displacing native animals and plants like tropical orchids, some of which are only found in south Florida.
In addition to their cultural, recreational and historic value, our national parks play a significant role in our economy. And even as climate change threatens their landscapes, national parks play an important role in preventing the worst impacts of climate change. In celebration of Earth Day, this week the Administration is announcing new steps to recognize the value of these special places, as well as actions to protect the people and places climate change puts at risk, including:
Calculating the Value of National Parks Tourism to the U.S. Economy. Today, the National Park Service (NPS) is releasing a new report that shows that every $1 invested by American taxpayers in the National Park Service returns $10 to the U.S. economy. In 2014, a record 293 million National Park visitors spent $15.7 billion in communities around National Parks, providing a $29.7 billion benefit to the U.S. economy and supporting 277,000 jobs.
Calculating the Value of National Parks for Storing Carbon. Today, the NPS and the U.S. Geological Survey are releasing a new report that for the first time calculates the value of National Parks for storing carbon and mitigating climate change. The report concludes that national park lands in the lower 48 states store 14.8 million metric tons of carbon dioxide each year, and that providing this service is valued at more than $580 million each year.
Investing in National Parks. Today, NPS is announcing $26 million for restoration projects at national parks around the country, including $16 million from non-governmental partners. These Centennial Challenge Grants are part of a multi-year effort to prepare for the National Park Service Centennial next year, including a Find Your Park Campaign to connect a broader audience to public lands and President Obama’s Every Kid in a Park initiative that will give every fourth grader and their families free access to national parks and all federal lands and waters for a full year, beginning this Fall.
Designating a New National Historic Landmark Near the Everglades. Today, the Department of the Interior and NPS are designating the Marjory Stoneman Douglas House in Miami, Florida as the Nation’s newest National Historic Landmark. Marjory Stoneman Douglas’s seminal book, The Everglades: River of Grass (1947), marked a significant turning point in the environmental movement, and the Friends of the Everglades organization she founded had a central role in the conservation and restoration of the Everglades. National historic landmarks provide opportunities for Americans to make personal connections with our Nation’s cultural and historical heritage and can help drive tourism and boost local economies.
Designating National Park Week. On Monday, President Obama signed a Proclamation designating this week National Park Week and encouraging all Americans to use and enjoy the unparalleled public lands that belong to all of us.
Providing a Flood Mapping Tool to Help Communities Prepare for Storms. On Tuesday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that a flood exposure risk mapping tool, originally developed for New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania, has been expanded to cover coastal areas along the entire U.S. East Coast and Gulf of Mexico. This Coastal Flood Exposure Mapper allows users to select their location and view how local populations, infrastructure and natural areas would be affected under a variety of flood scenarios, with the goal of helping communities reduce their vulnerability to current flood risks. This expanded tool is included in the U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit called for in the President’s Climate Action Plan.
Making Key Landscapes Resilient to Climate Change. On Tuesday, the Interior Department, U.S. EPA and NOAA announced four landscapes – in southwest Florida, Hawaii, Puget Sound and the Great Lakes—where agencies will focus their efforts with partners to conserve and restore important lands and waters and make them more resilient to a changing climate. These Resilient Lands and Waters projects will build climate resilience in vulnerable regions and enhance carbon storage capacity, focusing on increasing coastal resilience, developing coastal wetlands and marine conservation areas, protecting drinking water for urban areas, providing wildlife habitats, and preventing threats like flooding and invasive species.
Partnering with farmers, ranchers and forest land owners to reduce GHG emissions. On Thursday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture will announce new voluntary actions it will take in partnership with farmers, ranchers and forest land owners to reduce net greenhouse gas emissions and support President Obama’s goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions 26-28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025.
April 22, 2015
FACT SHEET: Celebrating Earth Day with New Steps to Protect People, Places and Local Economies from Climate Change
Today, in celebration of Earth Day, President Obama will visit the Florida Everglades, where rising seas and other climate change impacts are endangering one of the nation’s most iconic landscapes – and increasing risks to the State’s $82 billion tourism economy. To coincide with the President’s trip, the Administration is highlighting the value of special and vulnerable places like the Everglades and announcing new steps to protect the people and places climate change puts at risk.
The President has made clear that no challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change. The effects of climate change can no longer be denied or ignored – last year was the planet’s warmest year recorded, and 14 of the 15 hottest years on record have happened this century. All over the country, Americans are already facing devastating impacts – from severe floods to extreme heat to increased risk of asthma attacks. These impacts pose major economic, public health, and national security threats. Climate change is also affecting some of the most iconic places in our country, from disappearing glaciers in Glacier National Park to dying Joshua Trees in Joshua Tree National Park. These kinds of losses affect the tourism economies of towns and cities across the country that depend on sharing America’s natural splendor with the world.
That’s why President Obama has taken historic action to cut the carbon pollution that drives climate change and protect American communities from the impacts, including setting the first-ever national limits on carbon pollution from the power sector, making a landmark joint announcement with China to curb greenhouse gas emissions, and supporting smart investments in resilient infrastructure. Under the President’s leadership, the Federal Government has also made significant investments to protect and restore the special places that Americans depend on but that are threatened by pollution and climate change, including the Great Lakes, the Gulf Coast, the Chesapeake Bay, and the Everglades.
In the Everglades alone, the Administration has invested $2.2 billion in restoration efforts, with the President’s 2016 Budget proposing nearly $240 million more. In addition to protecting the primary source of drinking water for more than a third of Florida’s population, these efforts are helping ensure that the Florida Everglades – a major driver of the local economy – are resilient to effects of climate change like saltwater intrusion and invasive species.
Highlighting special places and protecting communities from climate change
From diminishing snowpacks to more severe wildfires, climate change is impacting natural landscapes across the country and threatening an outdoor recreation economy that each year generates $646 billion in consumer spending and 6.1 million direct jobs. In Florida, impacts like sea level rise are threatening some of the State’s top tourist attractions, including the Everglades and Florida Keys, with estimated revenue losses of $9 billion by 2025 and $40 billion by the 2050s.
Recognized worldwide as a unique and treasured landscape, the Everglades is a perfect example of the threat we face from climate change, including rising sea levels that result in shoreline erosion and increased flooding. As the seas rise, salty ocean water travels inland, threatening the aquifers that supply fresh drinking water to Floridians, destroying natural habitats, and starving Everglades National Park of freshwater that also serves as the primary source of drinking water for more than a third of Florida’s population. Already, the park’s characteristic mangrove trees – the largest protected mangrove forest in the northern hemisphere – are retreating inland. The changing conditions in the ecosystem are also displacing native animals and plants like tropical orchids, some of which are only found in south Florida.
In addition to their cultural, recreational and historic value, our national parks play a significant role in our economy. And even as climate change threatens their landscapes, national parks play an important role in preventing the worst impacts of climate change. In celebration of Earth Day, this week the Administration is announcing new steps to recognize the value of these special places, as well as actions to protect the people and places climate change puts at risk, including:
Calculating the Value of National Parks Tourism to the U.S. Economy. Today, the National Park Service (NPS) is releasing a new report that shows that every $1 invested by American taxpayers in the National Park Service returns $10 to the U.S. economy. In 2014, a record 293 million National Park visitors spent $15.7 billion in communities around National Parks, providing a $29.7 billion benefit to the U.S. economy and supporting 277,000 jobs.
Calculating the Value of National Parks for Storing Carbon. Today, the NPS and the U.S. Geological Survey are releasing a new report that for the first time calculates the value of National Parks for storing carbon and mitigating climate change. The report concludes that national park lands in the lower 48 states store 14.8 million metric tons of carbon dioxide each year, and that providing this service is valued at more than $580 million each year.
Investing in National Parks. Today, NPS is announcing $26 million for restoration projects at national parks around the country, including $16 million from non-governmental partners. These Centennial Challenge Grants are part of a multi-year effort to prepare for the National Park Service Centennial next year, including a Find Your Park Campaign to connect a broader audience to public lands and President Obama’s Every Kid in a Park initiative that will give every fourth grader and their families free access to national parks and all federal lands and waters for a full year, beginning this Fall.
Designating a New National Historic Landmark Near the Everglades. Today, the Department of the Interior and NPS are designating the Marjory Stoneman Douglas House in Miami, Florida as the Nation’s newest National Historic Landmark. Marjory Stoneman Douglas’s seminal book, The Everglades: River of Grass (1947), marked a significant turning point in the environmental movement, and the Friends of the Everglades organization she founded had a central role in the conservation and restoration of the Everglades. National historic landmarks provide opportunities for Americans to make personal connections with our Nation’s cultural and historical heritage and can help drive tourism and boost local economies.
Designating National Park Week. On Monday, President Obama signed a Proclamation designating this week National Park Week and encouraging all Americans to use and enjoy the unparalleled public lands that belong to all of us.
Providing a Flood Mapping Tool to Help Communities Prepare for Storms. On Tuesday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that a flood exposure risk mapping tool, originally developed for New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania, has been expanded to cover coastal areas along the entire U.S. East Coast and Gulf of Mexico. This Coastal Flood Exposure Mapper allows users to select their location and view how local populations, infrastructure and natural areas would be affected under a variety of flood scenarios, with the goal of helping communities reduce their vulnerability to current flood risks. This expanded tool is included in the U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit called for in the President’s Climate Action Plan.
Making Key Landscapes Resilient to Climate Change. On Tuesday, the Interior Department, U.S. EPA and NOAA announced four landscapes – in southwest Florida, Hawaii, Puget Sound and the Great Lakes—where agencies will focus their efforts with partners to conserve and restore important lands and waters and make them more resilient to a changing climate. These Resilient Lands and Waters projects will build climate resilience in vulnerable regions and enhance carbon storage capacity, focusing on increasing coastal resilience, developing coastal wetlands and marine conservation areas, protecting drinking water for urban areas, providing wildlife habitats, and preventing threats like flooding and invasive species.
Partnering with farmers, ranchers and forest land owners to reduce GHG emissions. On Thursday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture will announce new voluntary actions it will take in partnership with farmers, ranchers and forest land owners to reduce net greenhouse gas emissions and support President Obama’s goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions 26-28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025.
Wednesday, April 15, 2015
SECRETARY KERRY'S REMARKS WITH GERMAN FOREIGN MINISTER FRANK-WALTER STEINMETER
FROM: U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT
Remarks With German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier
Remarks
John Kerry
Secretary of State
Lubeck, Germany
April 15, 2015
FOREIGN MINISTER STEINMEIER: A very special welcome to our friend, John Kerry, who came a long way after his hearings in the Congress yesterday evening. It’s sunny weather in Lubeck, but that shouldn’t irritate us because the weather in international politics is quite stormy. The conflict in the eastern Ukraine is only two hours away from here, and we are discussing the situation in Ukraine, the Ukrainian conflict later on. And we are starting today with the stand on our negotiations with Iran. We have to discuss the situation in the Middle East with ISIS, about Iraq and Syria, and new reporting nearly every day about the changing situation in Yemen. We are quite satisfied that the United Nations Security Council yesterday decided about the resolution against arms delivery to the Houthis in Yemen. This is a little bit progress, but we are far away from a situation in which we are able to calm the situation to de-escalate or to find a political solution. We will discuss about the consequences of climate change for foreign policy and the stability of states and international relations, and we will discuss about maritime security here in a city in which we have a great tradition in which the Hanseatic League was founded and in which there is a (inaudible) experience on a regular base international order, and how to deal with situation in which this order is broken by somebody.
So I think it’s a splendid environment for our discussions today. And again, not only a good morning, but welcome here in Lubeck.
Some words?
SECRETARY KERRY: Well, we’re – first of all, let me say what a tremendous pleasure it is to be here in this world heritage city of Lubeck, which, as Frank Steinmeier just said, was the heart of the Hanseatic League and an important precursor to the rule of law. And we’re very, very privileged to be here with the G7, which has a critical voice right now on the major challenges that we face – ISIS, Yemen, the Middle East, Syria, Ukraine, Libya. The voices of every single country here are critical to the resolution of each of these conflicts. And I’m particularly grateful – and I think the other ministers join me in saying a profound thank you to Germany – for Germany’s great leadership. And Germany, together with France, have been absolutely critical to working through the challenge of Ukraine. We look to their leadership, and they’ve provided it.
So we have a lot to talk about today. And of course, looming large is the challenge of finishing the negotiation with Iran over the course of the next two and a half months. Yesterday, there was a compromise reached in Washington regarding congressional input. We are confident about our ability for the President to negotiate an agreement, and to do so with the ability to make the world safer. And again, every partner here has been absolutely critical to our ability to be able to get where we are today. So I’m grateful to be here to be part of this discussion for the period of time I can be, and I’m really grateful to each and every colleague here for the incredible partnership that is represented by the G7 at this point in time. And it’s wonderful particularly to be here in this historic city. Thank you.
Remarks With German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier
Remarks
John Kerry
Secretary of State
Lubeck, Germany
April 15, 2015
FOREIGN MINISTER STEINMEIER: A very special welcome to our friend, John Kerry, who came a long way after his hearings in the Congress yesterday evening. It’s sunny weather in Lubeck, but that shouldn’t irritate us because the weather in international politics is quite stormy. The conflict in the eastern Ukraine is only two hours away from here, and we are discussing the situation in Ukraine, the Ukrainian conflict later on. And we are starting today with the stand on our negotiations with Iran. We have to discuss the situation in the Middle East with ISIS, about Iraq and Syria, and new reporting nearly every day about the changing situation in Yemen. We are quite satisfied that the United Nations Security Council yesterday decided about the resolution against arms delivery to the Houthis in Yemen. This is a little bit progress, but we are far away from a situation in which we are able to calm the situation to de-escalate or to find a political solution. We will discuss about the consequences of climate change for foreign policy and the stability of states and international relations, and we will discuss about maritime security here in a city in which we have a great tradition in which the Hanseatic League was founded and in which there is a (inaudible) experience on a regular base international order, and how to deal with situation in which this order is broken by somebody.
So I think it’s a splendid environment for our discussions today. And again, not only a good morning, but welcome here in Lubeck.
Some words?
SECRETARY KERRY: Well, we’re – first of all, let me say what a tremendous pleasure it is to be here in this world heritage city of Lubeck, which, as Frank Steinmeier just said, was the heart of the Hanseatic League and an important precursor to the rule of law. And we’re very, very privileged to be here with the G7, which has a critical voice right now on the major challenges that we face – ISIS, Yemen, the Middle East, Syria, Ukraine, Libya. The voices of every single country here are critical to the resolution of each of these conflicts. And I’m particularly grateful – and I think the other ministers join me in saying a profound thank you to Germany – for Germany’s great leadership. And Germany, together with France, have been absolutely critical to working through the challenge of Ukraine. We look to their leadership, and they’ve provided it.
So we have a lot to talk about today. And of course, looming large is the challenge of finishing the negotiation with Iran over the course of the next two and a half months. Yesterday, there was a compromise reached in Washington regarding congressional input. We are confident about our ability for the President to negotiate an agreement, and to do so with the ability to make the world safer. And again, every partner here has been absolutely critical to our ability to be able to get where we are today. So I’m grateful to be here to be part of this discussion for the period of time I can be, and I’m really grateful to each and every colleague here for the incredible partnership that is represented by the G7 at this point in time. And it’s wonderful particularly to be here in this historic city. Thank you.
Monday, April 6, 2015
SECRETARY KERRY'S REMARKS IN PANAMA CITY
FROM: THE STATE DEPARTMENT
Remarks at "Foro de Rectores de Las Americas"
Remarks
John Kerry
Secretary of State
Panama City, Panama
April 9, 2015
Thank you so much. Thank you. Muchas gracias and buenos tardes. I’m very honored to be here. University rectors and the Ministry of Education representatives and students, distinguished guests: It’s really a pleasure for me to be here at this historic Summit, and I deeply appreciate the chance to share a few thoughts with you here this afternoon.
Let me begin by thanking Education Minister Marcela Paredes not just for her generous introduction, which I could have listened to all night – (laughter) – but for her remarkable commitment to educational opportunities throughout the hemisphere. She is a great leader and a great spokesperson for what we’ve come here to talk about today.
And I met Minister Paredes when I came here – it was my first meeting with her during President Varela’s inauguration. And I brought with me at that time as a guest the now former governor of Massachusetts – he was then the governor – Deval Patrick, and he’s a huge education passionate advocate. And I want you to know that when the two of them got together and started talking about what they were able to do to promote education, it took over the whole meeting; it was finished.
Minister Varela summed up the challenge that we face when she said that we must “reflect on our starting points on where we stand, on where we want to go, and how to better invest our resources in order to adapt them to the needs of children’s education.”
Now, I think everyone in this room shares that conviction. In a world that is changing faster and becoming more interconnected than ever before, education more so than ever before, is the ladder of opportunity for people all across the planet. And that is why the expansion of educational opportunity has, from the beginning, been a central focus of the Summit of the Americas. It is why President Obama launched 100,000 Strong in the Americas to increase the number of young people from the region who are studying in the United States and the number of students from the United States attending universities in the region. It is why, here in Panama, President Varela began the Panama Bilingue program, which sends more than a thousand school teachers each year to universities in the United States and the United Kingdom for professional training. And I hope we will all say thank you to Eneida Lopez and Marta Lewis de Cardoze of the Galindo Foundation for their leadership of Panama Bilingue. We are grateful for what they do. (Applause.)
In 1994, when President Clinton invited 33 democratically elected leaders to Miami for the first Summit of the Americas, those leaders had a shared understanding of the mission. Together, they pledged to open new markets, create free trade zones, strengthen democratic institutions, respect human rights, and invest in the building blocks of social progress – including health care and education at all levels. President Clinton said simply: “If we’re successful, the summit will lead to more jobs, opportunity and prosperity for our children and for generations to come.”
Today, as we gather in Panama City for the Seventh Summit, we find ourselves encouraged by the progress that has been made. We also find ourselves determined to close the gaps that still exist, and more aware than ever that we will go forward together or we’ll fall back together.
Now, the progress has not always been steady. It hasn’t always been fast. But progress has been hard won. I think about the first trip that I made to Central America as a United States Senator. This was almost 30 years ago now, a time when much of the hemisphere seemed to wind up in the headlines for only for the wrong reasons – for wars, military governments, narcotics cartels – you name it. Few people back then were certain of a brighter future. Fewer probably thought we could turn the tide.
Well, today, the tide has turned and it has been turning for some time, thanks to the efforts of everybody in the region itself.
In country after country, the people of the Americas have strengthened their democracies and taken steps to ensure the fundamental freedoms of their citizens. And in many places, democracy has brought not only freedom from fear, but freedom from want. In the last decade, the economies of Latin America and the Caribbean grew at a rate of 4 percent a year. Incomes are rising. The middle class is growing. And the gap, the gap between the rich and poor – though still far too wide – is narrowing faster than in any other region.
We’ve also learned an important lesson since 1994 – and that is the extent to which progress depends not only on what governments do on their own, but on how willing they are to listen, to experiment, and to act in partnership with the private sector, civil society, educators, leaders from the scientific community. In our era, in this day and age, each day we wake up to a new world. We have to move forward constantly just to keep pace. And our democracies, frankly – ours too in the United States – need to be more agile; they need to be more responsive to citizens’ demands for greater opportunity and for greater accountability. And to get ahead, it is imperative that we set ambitious goals. We have to pursue them relentlessly. We have to hold people in public office like myself accountable. And we have to mean -- sometimes we have to actually upset some people and take a few risks. None of us should be willing to settle for the status quo. It’s unacceptable.
And that is why this first-ever Rectors’ Forum at the Summit of the Americas is so important. And the question we have to ask ourselves is: How do we together best work to create jobs, to create opportunity, to build prosperity for our children and for generations to come?
Well, let me offer an answer to the questions I just asked. There’s really a three-word answer to that question: Education, innovation, conservation.
Now make no mistake: These three words articulate not separate, but rather interlocking challenges. Without learning, our citizens will lack the knowledge and the skills that they have to have to compete in the 21st century in this new, fast-moving information age, information management economy. And without innovation, many of those who graduate from top universities will still be unable to find good jobs. And without clean energy, our economies will be held hostage to costly, unpredictable, nonrenewable resources of power, and that will lead to uneven growth and ultimately, I promise you, it will threaten the very future of all of us. What this means is that we have to tackle these three challenges simultaneously, and believe me, that’s what we intend to do.
Start with education.
We all know that education is a lifelong process. But it has to begin in the earliest days. It has to begin correctly – the earliest days. The brain of a child grows mostly in the first three years, certainly the first three to seven to eight years are the most important in terms of ability to learn for a lifetime. In the United States, we have seen a big push in recent years in order to try to move towards expanding access to kindergarten, so that children start learning as soon as they are able to. Globally, one of the Millennium Development Goals has been to ensure that every child – girls and boys – are able to attend primary school. Enormous progress has been made in that direction, and in our hemisphere, primary school attendance is now very near universal. That’s the good news.
Other areas are more troublesome, and this is true in my country as well as many of yours.
For example, we have to be sure that between the time that our children enter school each morning and the time that they leave in the afternoon, they actually learn something. Sitting in a classroom and getting an education are not the same things. There is no shortcut to investing in good teachers, providing quality professional development, and compensating people fairly for the work that they do.
We also have to find better ways to incorporate new curriculum methods and technology into the learning process; just giving a child a tablet or a laptop is not enough. You have to instill the desire in that child to want to learn more, to think critically, and the belief that success in school will actually translate into success in life. And if and only if we are able to do those things will we reduce the alarming number of students who enter the system but then they drop out before graduating from college, from secondary school or – in too many cases – even the seventh or eighth grade.
Another major task that we face in education today is to strengthen the connection between report cards that we give to kids and the paychecks that they’re able to earn afterwards. As this remarkable gathering reflects, there are fine colleges and universities in every part of our hemisphere, from the University of Sao Paulo to the Monterrey Institute of Technology to the Catholic University of Chile. But there is a troubling gap between the skills that schools teach and the expertise that the job market demands. Many of the region’s young people graduate with degrees that leave them ill-suited for available positions. And this gap is as frustrating to our students as it is to potential employers – and we’re working to bridge it and we all need to work to bridge it together.
Given the number of young people in the region, this basically ought to be a fixable problem. In the United States, we have developed a very strong community college system, and it is empowered by direct involvement in the curriculum design and hands-on career counseling from the private sector. And that’s how we try to bridge the gap, by getting the private sector involved in the curriculum. And that’s why President Obama has proposed to Congress the enactment of legislation that would guarantee access to community college for every student who applies for it, regardless of their ability to pay. It’s why, in Jamaica earlier today, President Obama announced $68 million in new funding for programs that will expand education, training, and employment programs for youth throughout Central America and the Caribbean.
And I am especially pleased that we are joined this evening by the Secretary of State of Puerto Rico. The Secretary is here with a number of Puerto Rican rectors whose universities are ready to welcome Latin American and Caribbean students to an American educational experience on the Isla del Encanto.
So we’re approaching this issue with the urgency that it deserves. At the 2009 Summit of the Americas, the United States launched our Scholarships for Economic Growth program, which provided $50 million for 1,300 students from Latin America and the Caribbean to be able to get vocational training in the United States. President Obama’s 100,000 Strong in the Americas builds on that effort, and the results speak for themselves: Already, more than 72,000 students are coming to the United States each year from Latin America and the Caribbean. And nearly 47,000 U.S. students benefit from studying abroad in the region. Students like Natascha Moscoa from Costa Rica and Day Moore from Connecticut, who started a joint venture to empower women entrepreneurs. Students like Luis Santiago from the Dominican Republic, who studied in Chicago and then returned home to promote innovation and expand information in his community.
Their success reflects a very important truth. Students who are able to spend a portion of their time learning in other countries have a significant advantage: They return home equipped with greater confidence, new skills, the ability to speak a foreign language and they work the ability to also work in a foreign culture. And guess what – they come back with friends and contacts that will last a lifetime. I cannot tell you how many foreign ministers I have met in the course of serving as Secretary of State who say to me: I so enjoyed my time learning at Columbia or California or wherever it was, and vice versa; I meet people who tell me how much they learned when they went to study in another country. It makes all the difference in the world.
That’s why the United States isn’t just continuing the 100,000 Strong in the Americas Initiative. Guess what – we’re doubling down on that initiative. We’ve already raised millions of dollars from the private sector for the Innovation Fund, which awards grants to universities to promote study abroad and programs between the United States and other countries in the Western Hemisphere. We’ve awarded 47 grants to more than 100 higher education institutions across the region in order to expand their capacity to send and to host exchange students. We believe in this program. And today, I am pleased to congratulate the most recent Innovation Fund grant winners in the United States, Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba, El Salvador, Mexico, and Paraguay. These university partnerships will create new exchange programs for students that can have a transformative impact, which is exactly why they are such a high priority for me as Secretary of State.
Now, all of this leads to the second big challenge that I want to just say a word about today – and that concerns the jobs of the future. Nothing will be meaningful, no expectations will be met, without jobs – good jobs that genuinely open the doors of opportunity and improve the quality of life. What are these jobs? Where are they going to come from? How are they going to be developed? Who is going to benefit from them the most?
I’m willing to bet that at the heart of any story that you have heard about someone lifting themselves out of poverty, there’s a new job, a new opportunity to make a better living that came to them. Well, in Latin America and in the Caribbean, as in the United States and Canada, more than half of the new jobs are created by small and medium-size businesses. So if our goal is to reduce poverty, expand the middle class, help families create a better life for their children, the answer’s pretty simple – we need to innovate. And that means doing more to help small businesses create jobs and tap into global markets.
Now, you think I’m making this up, that this is not a reality? Believe me, we are – I’m able to say this to you because we’re doing it.
America is fortunate – the United States is fortunate to possess one of the world’s most extensive small business support networks. I saw this firsthand when I served as Chairman of the Small Business Committee in the United States Senate. The Small Business Administration, led by my colleague Maria Contreras-Sweet, provides training and counseling services to a million small businesses every year at more than 1,000 small business development centers that we have created across our country. And I’m proud that the agency has become a model for the region.
Just run the list: Brazil’s SEBRAE centers support more than a million small businesses across Brazil. Mexico has created a new National Entrepreneurship Institute, which is working to integrate hundreds of incubators and small business development centers. In Chile, President Bachelet has undertaken a new initiative to create 50 small business development centers. And El Salvador has shown great leadership in Central America by dedicating scarce resources to support 12 centers.
So we really have a great foundation to build on. But the fact is, you can never do too much to promote innovation and entrepreneurship. You just can’t. And that is exactly why President Obama launched the Small Business Network of the Americas to connect thousands of centers across the hemisphere and help entrepreneurs get the training and the counseling and the support that they need in order to enter new markets. One of the things that I learned when I was chairman of the committee was a lot of people have no idea how actually easy it is to access a global marketplace. And with a little bit of help, a mom or a pop enterprise of two or three people can become 12, and 15, and 20, and grow into a larger business. Many of these connection points that I’m talking about are located on university campuses. And I encourage all of you to speak to your counterparts in El Salvador, Mexico, Panama, Chile, and the United States, and other countries that are embracing this kind of concept and that are getting the benefits of it as a result.
Now, without doubt, I’m sure you’ll all agree, one of the smartest investments that we can make is on the promise of women and girls. In too many parts of the world still, there’s a discrimination and they’re left behind. No country – no country can make it in today’s world leaving half of its population on the bench. No economy can thrive when women are not given a seat at the table. And that’s why President Obama launched the Women’s Entrepreneurship in the Americas Initiative: To give women and girls the training and the tools that they need to become the next presidents, CEOs, and entrepreneurs in their communities. And one thing that we know for certain: Empowering women is an investment that is guaranteed to show enormous returns, not just in terms of the balance sheet but in terms of the social structure, and often in terms of peace and stability.
So education and innovation are critical. But we also need to think ahead and realize that the strongest economies will be built on the power sources of the future, not the past. Many of the clean energy technologies that will help ignite whole new industries are far cheaper, more readily available, and better performing than they were just 10 years ago – and we can use them, we must use them, to curb climate change even as we know they have all the benefits on the upside of creating new jobs. The solution to climate change, my friends, which is real and coming at us fast, is energy policy – good energy policy makes good climate solutions. It’s that simple.
Just imagine the possibilities. We were blessed in America to see more growth in the 1990s than at any recent time in American history – in recent history, since the 1920s, the great age of wealth creation when there was no income tax, and the early part of the Industrial Revolution. But the market of the 1990s, which saw every single income level in America go up, was a 1 trillion dollar market, with 1 billion users. The global energy market we are looking at today is a 6 trillion dollar market already with 4 to 5 billion users, and it’s going to go up to 9 billion users as the population of the planet grows in the next 30, 40 years. Think of that: 9 billion users in the next decades. By 2040, investment in the power sector is expected to reach nearly $20 trillion. That is an enormous amount of investment. And we want to see clean, accessible energy be the biggest slice of that pie.
So how do realize the full potential of this opportunity?
To begin, we need leaders with the political courage to set us on the right path. And I am proud to serve with a President who has accepted that challenge. Today, thanks to President Obama’s Climate Action Plan, the United States is well on its way to meeting our international commitments to cut greenhouse gases emissions by 2020. And that’s because we’re going straight to the largest sources of pollution. We’re targeting emissions from cars, trucks, utilities, which account for about 60 percent of greenhouse gases that we release. And we’re also tackling more modest opportunities so that we cover every sector of the economy and every variety of greenhouse gas.
We’re also investing in cleaner alternatives. Since President Obama took office, the United States has upped its wind energy production by three times. We’ve increased our solar energy generation more than ten times. We’ve also become smarter about the way we use energy in our homes and in our businesses. And all of these are big steps.
But I can’t emphasize this fact enough: No single country – not China, not the United States, not India – no single country can solve this problem or foot this bill alone. Climate change is not an abstract future concern. Its effects are already on us right now. I think we had something like $110 billion of costs last year to make up for the fires and the floods and the extraordinary storms and all of the damage that was done by increased tides and so forth.
Here in Panama, extreme weather events are creating cycles of flood and drought and they’re threatening the water supplies that enable the Panama Canal to operate effectively and supply electricity. Just a few years ago, due to a record storm, the canal had to close for only the third time in its 100-year history, disrupting one of the world’s most important economic lifelines. In Peru, where I attended the climate change conference in December, tropical glaciers and fisheries are under threat. We’ve seen sea level rise contribute to the erosion of Puerto Rico’s coastline around Rincon. And coral reefs are at risk from warming waters and ocean acidification. The number of major hurricanes in the Atlantic basin has increased and then it increased some more, and that hurts tourism. Some of your nations, especially those in this region and in the Caribbean, climate change may well be the single gravest danger to security and prosperity. So when I say we need a global solution, I mean it. Anything less won’t work.
But still in our hemisphere, there are several steps that we can take without waiting for the rest of the world. You don’t have to wait for the rest of the world, and we can’t afford to wait for the rest of the world.
Governments can follow the United States and Mexico and commit to strong post-2020 plans that mitigate the impacts of climate, and that will increase the chances that we can have a successful outcome at the Paris negotiations that will take place this December. All the countries of the world will be coming together in Paris to try to deal with climate change, and we all need to live up to our responsibility to set the targets now so this can be successful.
Second, we can encourage governments, businesses, and consumers to rely less on costly fossil fuels. That means investing more in mass transit, in renewable energy sources like solar, wind, geothermal, sustainable hydro. It’s why, in Jamaica earlier today, President Obama launched a new Clean Energy Finance Facility for Central America and the Caribbean and a task force to do everything that we can do in order to promote clean energy development and energy security.
Third, we can push for the world’s highest standards in the environmental chapters of the trade agreements that some of us are pursuing, and that includes the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the TPP, which will build prosperity throughout our hemisphere, and it will do so based on shared principles and shared values. It’s not just a technical trade agreement. It’s a strategic opportunity for all of us, and we need to seize it.
Finally, we can bring the private and public sectors together with our leading academic institutions – with all of you – to make the most of the innovative clean energy technology that entrepreneurs are developing today, including technology that increases the efficiency of appliances, vehicles, and machines.
So there we have it, ladies and gentlemen: Education, innovation, conservation. Three words. One big challenge. And I have absolute confidence in our ability to succeed. But it is going to take all of us, working together, getting rid of the ideology, getting rid of the politics, looking at each other and talking common sense and coming together to make our shared vision a reality for this hemisphere. And in the doing of it, there are millions of jobs to be created. Life will be better. Health will be better. The environment will be better. The economy will be better. And security will be better.
More than a century ago, one of my predecessors visited Panama at a time of great challenge and opportunity in the region. On his tour through the entire region, he spoke at a meeting of the American Republics in Rio de Janeiro. And he said simply this, I quote: “Not in a single conference, nor by a single effort, can very much be done. You labor more for the future than for the present; but if the right impulse be given, if the right tendency be established, the work you do here will go on among all the millions of people in the American continents long after your final adjournment, long after your lives, with incalculable benefit to all of our beloved countries.” That’s the challenge.
The seventh Summit of the Americas may be just a single conference, but it reflects an energy and a determination and a set of hopes and aspirations that connects the present to the future in a way that could not be more uplifting or real. Because when we join together to expand the boundaries of education, to unleash the spirit of innovation that is so widely present in our young, and to harness clean and renewable sources of power – when we change what tomorrow will look like for hundreds of millions of people from the Chilean foothills to the furthest reaches of Alaska’s North Slopes – when we do that, we’re meeting our obligations as citizens, not just of our countries but of the world.
Obviously, we are looking at a time of great challenge, with particular parts of the world witnessing upheaval and violence. Governance is more demanding as it deals with greater cultural, religious, ideological complexity in a world of instant communications. But the same thing that brings us the complexity actually brings us greater opportunity, and we have, all of us, learned lessons from the past.
So here at the dawn of the 21st century, here at the seventh Summit of the Americas, I hope we will overcome the stereotypes and not fall victim to the cynicism, but rather make the most of this extraordinary period of innovation, entrepreneurial activity, and individual opportunity. And I have great faith in the Americas’ ability to lead the world in doing that. Thank you all very, very much.
Remarks at "Foro de Rectores de Las Americas"
Remarks
John Kerry
Secretary of State
Panama City, Panama
April 9, 2015
Thank you so much. Thank you. Muchas gracias and buenos tardes. I’m very honored to be here. University rectors and the Ministry of Education representatives and students, distinguished guests: It’s really a pleasure for me to be here at this historic Summit, and I deeply appreciate the chance to share a few thoughts with you here this afternoon.
Let me begin by thanking Education Minister Marcela Paredes not just for her generous introduction, which I could have listened to all night – (laughter) – but for her remarkable commitment to educational opportunities throughout the hemisphere. She is a great leader and a great spokesperson for what we’ve come here to talk about today.
And I met Minister Paredes when I came here – it was my first meeting with her during President Varela’s inauguration. And I brought with me at that time as a guest the now former governor of Massachusetts – he was then the governor – Deval Patrick, and he’s a huge education passionate advocate. And I want you to know that when the two of them got together and started talking about what they were able to do to promote education, it took over the whole meeting; it was finished.
Minister Varela summed up the challenge that we face when she said that we must “reflect on our starting points on where we stand, on where we want to go, and how to better invest our resources in order to adapt them to the needs of children’s education.”
Now, I think everyone in this room shares that conviction. In a world that is changing faster and becoming more interconnected than ever before, education more so than ever before, is the ladder of opportunity for people all across the planet. And that is why the expansion of educational opportunity has, from the beginning, been a central focus of the Summit of the Americas. It is why President Obama launched 100,000 Strong in the Americas to increase the number of young people from the region who are studying in the United States and the number of students from the United States attending universities in the region. It is why, here in Panama, President Varela began the Panama Bilingue program, which sends more than a thousand school teachers each year to universities in the United States and the United Kingdom for professional training. And I hope we will all say thank you to Eneida Lopez and Marta Lewis de Cardoze of the Galindo Foundation for their leadership of Panama Bilingue. We are grateful for what they do. (Applause.)
In 1994, when President Clinton invited 33 democratically elected leaders to Miami for the first Summit of the Americas, those leaders had a shared understanding of the mission. Together, they pledged to open new markets, create free trade zones, strengthen democratic institutions, respect human rights, and invest in the building blocks of social progress – including health care and education at all levels. President Clinton said simply: “If we’re successful, the summit will lead to more jobs, opportunity and prosperity for our children and for generations to come.”
Today, as we gather in Panama City for the Seventh Summit, we find ourselves encouraged by the progress that has been made. We also find ourselves determined to close the gaps that still exist, and more aware than ever that we will go forward together or we’ll fall back together.
Now, the progress has not always been steady. It hasn’t always been fast. But progress has been hard won. I think about the first trip that I made to Central America as a United States Senator. This was almost 30 years ago now, a time when much of the hemisphere seemed to wind up in the headlines for only for the wrong reasons – for wars, military governments, narcotics cartels – you name it. Few people back then were certain of a brighter future. Fewer probably thought we could turn the tide.
Well, today, the tide has turned and it has been turning for some time, thanks to the efforts of everybody in the region itself.
In country after country, the people of the Americas have strengthened their democracies and taken steps to ensure the fundamental freedoms of their citizens. And in many places, democracy has brought not only freedom from fear, but freedom from want. In the last decade, the economies of Latin America and the Caribbean grew at a rate of 4 percent a year. Incomes are rising. The middle class is growing. And the gap, the gap between the rich and poor – though still far too wide – is narrowing faster than in any other region.
We’ve also learned an important lesson since 1994 – and that is the extent to which progress depends not only on what governments do on their own, but on how willing they are to listen, to experiment, and to act in partnership with the private sector, civil society, educators, leaders from the scientific community. In our era, in this day and age, each day we wake up to a new world. We have to move forward constantly just to keep pace. And our democracies, frankly – ours too in the United States – need to be more agile; they need to be more responsive to citizens’ demands for greater opportunity and for greater accountability. And to get ahead, it is imperative that we set ambitious goals. We have to pursue them relentlessly. We have to hold people in public office like myself accountable. And we have to mean -- sometimes we have to actually upset some people and take a few risks. None of us should be willing to settle for the status quo. It’s unacceptable.
And that is why this first-ever Rectors’ Forum at the Summit of the Americas is so important. And the question we have to ask ourselves is: How do we together best work to create jobs, to create opportunity, to build prosperity for our children and for generations to come?
Well, let me offer an answer to the questions I just asked. There’s really a three-word answer to that question: Education, innovation, conservation.
Now make no mistake: These three words articulate not separate, but rather interlocking challenges. Without learning, our citizens will lack the knowledge and the skills that they have to have to compete in the 21st century in this new, fast-moving information age, information management economy. And without innovation, many of those who graduate from top universities will still be unable to find good jobs. And without clean energy, our economies will be held hostage to costly, unpredictable, nonrenewable resources of power, and that will lead to uneven growth and ultimately, I promise you, it will threaten the very future of all of us. What this means is that we have to tackle these three challenges simultaneously, and believe me, that’s what we intend to do.
Start with education.
We all know that education is a lifelong process. But it has to begin in the earliest days. It has to begin correctly – the earliest days. The brain of a child grows mostly in the first three years, certainly the first three to seven to eight years are the most important in terms of ability to learn for a lifetime. In the United States, we have seen a big push in recent years in order to try to move towards expanding access to kindergarten, so that children start learning as soon as they are able to. Globally, one of the Millennium Development Goals has been to ensure that every child – girls and boys – are able to attend primary school. Enormous progress has been made in that direction, and in our hemisphere, primary school attendance is now very near universal. That’s the good news.
Other areas are more troublesome, and this is true in my country as well as many of yours.
For example, we have to be sure that between the time that our children enter school each morning and the time that they leave in the afternoon, they actually learn something. Sitting in a classroom and getting an education are not the same things. There is no shortcut to investing in good teachers, providing quality professional development, and compensating people fairly for the work that they do.
We also have to find better ways to incorporate new curriculum methods and technology into the learning process; just giving a child a tablet or a laptop is not enough. You have to instill the desire in that child to want to learn more, to think critically, and the belief that success in school will actually translate into success in life. And if and only if we are able to do those things will we reduce the alarming number of students who enter the system but then they drop out before graduating from college, from secondary school or – in too many cases – even the seventh or eighth grade.
Another major task that we face in education today is to strengthen the connection between report cards that we give to kids and the paychecks that they’re able to earn afterwards. As this remarkable gathering reflects, there are fine colleges and universities in every part of our hemisphere, from the University of Sao Paulo to the Monterrey Institute of Technology to the Catholic University of Chile. But there is a troubling gap between the skills that schools teach and the expertise that the job market demands. Many of the region’s young people graduate with degrees that leave them ill-suited for available positions. And this gap is as frustrating to our students as it is to potential employers – and we’re working to bridge it and we all need to work to bridge it together.
Given the number of young people in the region, this basically ought to be a fixable problem. In the United States, we have developed a very strong community college system, and it is empowered by direct involvement in the curriculum design and hands-on career counseling from the private sector. And that’s how we try to bridge the gap, by getting the private sector involved in the curriculum. And that’s why President Obama has proposed to Congress the enactment of legislation that would guarantee access to community college for every student who applies for it, regardless of their ability to pay. It’s why, in Jamaica earlier today, President Obama announced $68 million in new funding for programs that will expand education, training, and employment programs for youth throughout Central America and the Caribbean.
And I am especially pleased that we are joined this evening by the Secretary of State of Puerto Rico. The Secretary is here with a number of Puerto Rican rectors whose universities are ready to welcome Latin American and Caribbean students to an American educational experience on the Isla del Encanto.
So we’re approaching this issue with the urgency that it deserves. At the 2009 Summit of the Americas, the United States launched our Scholarships for Economic Growth program, which provided $50 million for 1,300 students from Latin America and the Caribbean to be able to get vocational training in the United States. President Obama’s 100,000 Strong in the Americas builds on that effort, and the results speak for themselves: Already, more than 72,000 students are coming to the United States each year from Latin America and the Caribbean. And nearly 47,000 U.S. students benefit from studying abroad in the region. Students like Natascha Moscoa from Costa Rica and Day Moore from Connecticut, who started a joint venture to empower women entrepreneurs. Students like Luis Santiago from the Dominican Republic, who studied in Chicago and then returned home to promote innovation and expand information in his community.
Their success reflects a very important truth. Students who are able to spend a portion of their time learning in other countries have a significant advantage: They return home equipped with greater confidence, new skills, the ability to speak a foreign language and they work the ability to also work in a foreign culture. And guess what – they come back with friends and contacts that will last a lifetime. I cannot tell you how many foreign ministers I have met in the course of serving as Secretary of State who say to me: I so enjoyed my time learning at Columbia or California or wherever it was, and vice versa; I meet people who tell me how much they learned when they went to study in another country. It makes all the difference in the world.
That’s why the United States isn’t just continuing the 100,000 Strong in the Americas Initiative. Guess what – we’re doubling down on that initiative. We’ve already raised millions of dollars from the private sector for the Innovation Fund, which awards grants to universities to promote study abroad and programs between the United States and other countries in the Western Hemisphere. We’ve awarded 47 grants to more than 100 higher education institutions across the region in order to expand their capacity to send and to host exchange students. We believe in this program. And today, I am pleased to congratulate the most recent Innovation Fund grant winners in the United States, Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba, El Salvador, Mexico, and Paraguay. These university partnerships will create new exchange programs for students that can have a transformative impact, which is exactly why they are such a high priority for me as Secretary of State.
Now, all of this leads to the second big challenge that I want to just say a word about today – and that concerns the jobs of the future. Nothing will be meaningful, no expectations will be met, without jobs – good jobs that genuinely open the doors of opportunity and improve the quality of life. What are these jobs? Where are they going to come from? How are they going to be developed? Who is going to benefit from them the most?
I’m willing to bet that at the heart of any story that you have heard about someone lifting themselves out of poverty, there’s a new job, a new opportunity to make a better living that came to them. Well, in Latin America and in the Caribbean, as in the United States and Canada, more than half of the new jobs are created by small and medium-size businesses. So if our goal is to reduce poverty, expand the middle class, help families create a better life for their children, the answer’s pretty simple – we need to innovate. And that means doing more to help small businesses create jobs and tap into global markets.
Now, you think I’m making this up, that this is not a reality? Believe me, we are – I’m able to say this to you because we’re doing it.
America is fortunate – the United States is fortunate to possess one of the world’s most extensive small business support networks. I saw this firsthand when I served as Chairman of the Small Business Committee in the United States Senate. The Small Business Administration, led by my colleague Maria Contreras-Sweet, provides training and counseling services to a million small businesses every year at more than 1,000 small business development centers that we have created across our country. And I’m proud that the agency has become a model for the region.
Just run the list: Brazil’s SEBRAE centers support more than a million small businesses across Brazil. Mexico has created a new National Entrepreneurship Institute, which is working to integrate hundreds of incubators and small business development centers. In Chile, President Bachelet has undertaken a new initiative to create 50 small business development centers. And El Salvador has shown great leadership in Central America by dedicating scarce resources to support 12 centers.
So we really have a great foundation to build on. But the fact is, you can never do too much to promote innovation and entrepreneurship. You just can’t. And that is exactly why President Obama launched the Small Business Network of the Americas to connect thousands of centers across the hemisphere and help entrepreneurs get the training and the counseling and the support that they need in order to enter new markets. One of the things that I learned when I was chairman of the committee was a lot of people have no idea how actually easy it is to access a global marketplace. And with a little bit of help, a mom or a pop enterprise of two or three people can become 12, and 15, and 20, and grow into a larger business. Many of these connection points that I’m talking about are located on university campuses. And I encourage all of you to speak to your counterparts in El Salvador, Mexico, Panama, Chile, and the United States, and other countries that are embracing this kind of concept and that are getting the benefits of it as a result.
Now, without doubt, I’m sure you’ll all agree, one of the smartest investments that we can make is on the promise of women and girls. In too many parts of the world still, there’s a discrimination and they’re left behind. No country – no country can make it in today’s world leaving half of its population on the bench. No economy can thrive when women are not given a seat at the table. And that’s why President Obama launched the Women’s Entrepreneurship in the Americas Initiative: To give women and girls the training and the tools that they need to become the next presidents, CEOs, and entrepreneurs in their communities. And one thing that we know for certain: Empowering women is an investment that is guaranteed to show enormous returns, not just in terms of the balance sheet but in terms of the social structure, and often in terms of peace and stability.
So education and innovation are critical. But we also need to think ahead and realize that the strongest economies will be built on the power sources of the future, not the past. Many of the clean energy technologies that will help ignite whole new industries are far cheaper, more readily available, and better performing than they were just 10 years ago – and we can use them, we must use them, to curb climate change even as we know they have all the benefits on the upside of creating new jobs. The solution to climate change, my friends, which is real and coming at us fast, is energy policy – good energy policy makes good climate solutions. It’s that simple.
Just imagine the possibilities. We were blessed in America to see more growth in the 1990s than at any recent time in American history – in recent history, since the 1920s, the great age of wealth creation when there was no income tax, and the early part of the Industrial Revolution. But the market of the 1990s, which saw every single income level in America go up, was a 1 trillion dollar market, with 1 billion users. The global energy market we are looking at today is a 6 trillion dollar market already with 4 to 5 billion users, and it’s going to go up to 9 billion users as the population of the planet grows in the next 30, 40 years. Think of that: 9 billion users in the next decades. By 2040, investment in the power sector is expected to reach nearly $20 trillion. That is an enormous amount of investment. And we want to see clean, accessible energy be the biggest slice of that pie.
So how do realize the full potential of this opportunity?
To begin, we need leaders with the political courage to set us on the right path. And I am proud to serve with a President who has accepted that challenge. Today, thanks to President Obama’s Climate Action Plan, the United States is well on its way to meeting our international commitments to cut greenhouse gases emissions by 2020. And that’s because we’re going straight to the largest sources of pollution. We’re targeting emissions from cars, trucks, utilities, which account for about 60 percent of greenhouse gases that we release. And we’re also tackling more modest opportunities so that we cover every sector of the economy and every variety of greenhouse gas.
We’re also investing in cleaner alternatives. Since President Obama took office, the United States has upped its wind energy production by three times. We’ve increased our solar energy generation more than ten times. We’ve also become smarter about the way we use energy in our homes and in our businesses. And all of these are big steps.
But I can’t emphasize this fact enough: No single country – not China, not the United States, not India – no single country can solve this problem or foot this bill alone. Climate change is not an abstract future concern. Its effects are already on us right now. I think we had something like $110 billion of costs last year to make up for the fires and the floods and the extraordinary storms and all of the damage that was done by increased tides and so forth.
Here in Panama, extreme weather events are creating cycles of flood and drought and they’re threatening the water supplies that enable the Panama Canal to operate effectively and supply electricity. Just a few years ago, due to a record storm, the canal had to close for only the third time in its 100-year history, disrupting one of the world’s most important economic lifelines. In Peru, where I attended the climate change conference in December, tropical glaciers and fisheries are under threat. We’ve seen sea level rise contribute to the erosion of Puerto Rico’s coastline around Rincon. And coral reefs are at risk from warming waters and ocean acidification. The number of major hurricanes in the Atlantic basin has increased and then it increased some more, and that hurts tourism. Some of your nations, especially those in this region and in the Caribbean, climate change may well be the single gravest danger to security and prosperity. So when I say we need a global solution, I mean it. Anything less won’t work.
But still in our hemisphere, there are several steps that we can take without waiting for the rest of the world. You don’t have to wait for the rest of the world, and we can’t afford to wait for the rest of the world.
Governments can follow the United States and Mexico and commit to strong post-2020 plans that mitigate the impacts of climate, and that will increase the chances that we can have a successful outcome at the Paris negotiations that will take place this December. All the countries of the world will be coming together in Paris to try to deal with climate change, and we all need to live up to our responsibility to set the targets now so this can be successful.
Second, we can encourage governments, businesses, and consumers to rely less on costly fossil fuels. That means investing more in mass transit, in renewable energy sources like solar, wind, geothermal, sustainable hydro. It’s why, in Jamaica earlier today, President Obama launched a new Clean Energy Finance Facility for Central America and the Caribbean and a task force to do everything that we can do in order to promote clean energy development and energy security.
Third, we can push for the world’s highest standards in the environmental chapters of the trade agreements that some of us are pursuing, and that includes the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the TPP, which will build prosperity throughout our hemisphere, and it will do so based on shared principles and shared values. It’s not just a technical trade agreement. It’s a strategic opportunity for all of us, and we need to seize it.
Finally, we can bring the private and public sectors together with our leading academic institutions – with all of you – to make the most of the innovative clean energy technology that entrepreneurs are developing today, including technology that increases the efficiency of appliances, vehicles, and machines.
So there we have it, ladies and gentlemen: Education, innovation, conservation. Three words. One big challenge. And I have absolute confidence in our ability to succeed. But it is going to take all of us, working together, getting rid of the ideology, getting rid of the politics, looking at each other and talking common sense and coming together to make our shared vision a reality for this hemisphere. And in the doing of it, there are millions of jobs to be created. Life will be better. Health will be better. The environment will be better. The economy will be better. And security will be better.
More than a century ago, one of my predecessors visited Panama at a time of great challenge and opportunity in the region. On his tour through the entire region, he spoke at a meeting of the American Republics in Rio de Janeiro. And he said simply this, I quote: “Not in a single conference, nor by a single effort, can very much be done. You labor more for the future than for the present; but if the right impulse be given, if the right tendency be established, the work you do here will go on among all the millions of people in the American continents long after your final adjournment, long after your lives, with incalculable benefit to all of our beloved countries.” That’s the challenge.
The seventh Summit of the Americas may be just a single conference, but it reflects an energy and a determination and a set of hopes and aspirations that connects the present to the future in a way that could not be more uplifting or real. Because when we join together to expand the boundaries of education, to unleash the spirit of innovation that is so widely present in our young, and to harness clean and renewable sources of power – when we change what tomorrow will look like for hundreds of millions of people from the Chilean foothills to the furthest reaches of Alaska’s North Slopes – when we do that, we’re meeting our obligations as citizens, not just of our countries but of the world.
Obviously, we are looking at a time of great challenge, with particular parts of the world witnessing upheaval and violence. Governance is more demanding as it deals with greater cultural, religious, ideological complexity in a world of instant communications. But the same thing that brings us the complexity actually brings us greater opportunity, and we have, all of us, learned lessons from the past.
So here at the dawn of the 21st century, here at the seventh Summit of the Americas, I hope we will overcome the stereotypes and not fall victim to the cynicism, but rather make the most of this extraordinary period of innovation, entrepreneurial activity, and individual opportunity. And I have great faith in the Americas’ ability to lead the world in doing that. Thank you all very, very much.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)