克里国务卿牛津大学2016年毕业典礼演讲
约翰·福布斯·克里(John ForbesKerry)，美国政治家，第68任国务卿，马萨诸塞州参议员。1962年，克里进入耶鲁大学学习政治学，1966年毕业获学士学位。他毕业后即加入海军预备役，1968-1969年参加越南战争，并因此获得三枚紫心勋章。1976年克里进入波士顿学院(BOSTON
COLLEGE)法学院就读, 并获得法学学位.
克里2004年7月29日获民主党提名为该党2004年美国总统选举的候选人，同当时的在任总统小布什竞选美国总统一职。2008年12月，克里当选为美国参议院外交委员会主席。2013年1月29日，接替希拉里出任新一任美国国务卿，这是16年来美国第一位白人男性国务卿。2013年，美国民众投票，对国务卿克里上任以来在推进美国外交方面取得的卓有成效的进展给予了极高的评价与肯定，美国多家媒体将克里评价为“美国历史上不可多得的外交之星”。
"http://player.youku.com/player.php/sid/XMTU2OTczNjkyNA==/v.swf
John Kerry
Secretary of State
Oxford, United Kingdom
May 11, 2016
SECRETARY KERRY: (Applause.) Wow. I think I’m just going to stop right now.
(Laughter.) Thankyou for just an incredibly warm, generous welcome to this
historic hall. It’s a great honor for meto be here. Bob, where’d you run off to?
Where did he go? Thank you so much for your welcome.And Warden MacMillan, thank
you very much. I appreciate it. (Inaudible) Baroness Cathy Ashton,my good
friend, thank you so much for your incredible work for several years as you
helped shapeand get us down the road on the Iran nuclear agreement. Everybody
here joins me in sayingthank you for your many, many labors as the EU high
representative. We’re very grateful. Thankyou. (Applause.) I want to ask you all
to join me in recognizing the United States Ambassador toGreat Britain, the
Court of St. James, Matthew Barzun. (Applause.)
And before I begin, I want to give a special shout-out to my chief of
staff, Jon Finer, who’s nowmiserable that I’m doing this. (Laughter.) But he
wears a second hat as the State Departmentdirector of policy and planning. And I
love him. He played hockey in New England. We both comefrom New England. He also
played soccer. We both love both games and both played them. Butas you know, I
went to college in New Haven, Connecticut, and Jon somehow got lost on his wayto
college and found himself at a small college in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
(Laughter.) And ifyou think the Cambridge-Oxford rivalry is hot, folks,
Harvard-Yale is no slouch, let me tell you. (Applause.) And that said, I have to
tell you that Jon offers a unique blend of intellect, humor,prose, and I will
give him a pass for his wayward education – (laughter) – because of the
simplefact besides having achieved the rare honor of getting a mail-order
diploma – (laughter) – he isalso a Rhodes Scholar and he loves Oxford and he
loved his time here and I want you all to saythank you for this alumnus.
(Applause.)
(无法正常观看的小伙伴点击这里哦!)
Now, to all of you Union members, I really am pleased to stand here. I had
the privilege of servingas the president of the Yale Political Union, which is
modeled on the Oxford Union, and it’s a greatprivilege for me to be able to be
here and to stand here with so many speakers that stood before– distinguished
speakers Robert Kennedy, Winston Churchill, Mother Teresa, the woman whoplays
Crazy Eyes on the Netflix show Orange Is The New Black. (Laughter.) Now, that’s
greatcompany. (Laughter.) I know that some of you have also been waging a very
energetic campaign,a creative campaign to bring another tall, thin American to
this hall – (laughter) – so I apologize toanybody who was disappointed that I am
not, in fact, Taylor Swift. (Laughter.) If I thought itwould make you feel a
little bit better, I’m happy to sing a few bars of “Shake It Off.”
(Laughter.)But I (inaudible) put you through that; I didn’t come here to torture
you. (Laughter.) Andwhether you disagree with me or agree with me this
afternoon, I just want you all to know that Ihave done you an enormous favor by
not bringing my guitar. (Laughter.)
Now, under any circumstances, it is a special thing to be here at Oxford
today for me. I had thechance to walk around a little bit. I had lunch at St.
Antony’s, as I mentioned, and chatted with afew of the students there. And this
reminds me a lot of my alma mater, Yale, and of course, that’sprobably because
Yale’s campus was actually designed to make it look as much like Oxford
aspossible. In fact, at one point, an architect actually poured acid over the
walls of Yale’s HarknessTower in order to replicate the centuries of soot and
sludge – (laughter) – on (inaudible) college.Now, in America, we call that
character – (laughter) – sort of like buying brand-new jeans thatalready have
holes in the knees (inaudible). (Laughter.)
But Oxford University, needless to say, and the Oxford Union are the real
deal, and I’m delightedto be here, particularly because we meet at such a
critical time.
Let me take a moment to put that into context. Consider that 75 years ago
last night, under a fullmoon, more than 500 Nazi warplanes launched one of the
most destructive air raids of the SecondWorld War. Bombs tore through London’s
residential neighborhoods, including, I might add, theapartment building in
which my American grandmother lived – though she, thankfully, wasn’thome when
they hit. The explosions rocked Westminster Abbey and Parliament and blew a hole
inone of the most magnificent roofs in the world – the arches and the oaken
beams of WestminsterHall.
At the time, the Third Reich controlled virtually all of Europe. Great
Britain and the refugee fighterswho gathered here stood seemingly alone against
perhaps the greatest evil the world has everknown.
But Great Britain fought back. And shortly after the blitz, Labor Minister
Ernest Bevin declared: Ourbombers are growing in size and carrying capacity. Our
science is developing more rapidly thantheirs. We are on the up grade. Never
mind the croakers, he said. We are winning.
And indeed we – we did. But as we all know too well, the joy and relief of
V-E Day – whoseanniversary we just celebrated a couple days ago – were soon
tempered by the emergence of anew division in Europe, and the descent, in
Churchill’s phrase, of an Iron Curtain that separatedfree from un-free, Soviet
satellites from NATO allies.
This was the bipolar world in which my generation grew up, came of age.
But during the time when my father was a member of America’s Foreign
Service, our family movedto Berlin, where I got a child’s-eye view of East-West
tensions – especially when I rode my bicyclewithout permission into the
Communist sector and was promptly grounded by my dad, whoinformed me that I
could have been an international incident.
Now, later, I was an 18-year-old freshman at Yale during the Cuban Missile
Crisis. Nineteen whenPresident John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Twenty-two when
I joined the Navy and twenty-three when I deployed for my first tour in
Vietnam.
By the time the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, I was in my forties and serving
in the United StatesSenate, and the Cold War had significantly shaped my world
view throughout those formativeyears.
The stakes of that period – inevitable – felt incredibly high because they
were. But it was also atime when the challenges – and what to do about them –
were pretty clear, and when the primaryforces shaping our world were leaders of
recognized states.
When we went to war in that era, we fought an enemy army in uniform that
was answerable to anestablished government with a known address. We could pull
out a world map and color eachstate clearly – our friends, our foes, the
nonaligned. The ideological fault line between freedomand authoritarianism was
just as clear as those colors on the map and the lines that were drawn.
Now, the world that confronts us today, confronts you today as you prepare
for the day you’llleave here and some of you will spend a few more years and
then ultimately go out and make adifference – the world that confronts us today
is, in many ways, much more complicated. HenryKissinger, who wrote one of the
greatest books, Diplomacy, called me once, told me not so longago – a few months
ago that he thought this was far more, much more difficult.
Non-state actors compete with national governments for influence and power.
The cliche oftechnology bringing the world closer is, in fact, a stark reality
in a world filled with extremism andconflict. Disturbing images and outright
lies can circle the globe in an instant. Conflicts are foughtusing an eclectic
mix of weapons, and often by combatants who are difficult to distinguish
fromordinary civilians.
And while the world as a whole is more prosperous than it has ever been,
inequality has alsogrown in almost every single country, fueling instability.
Weak or corrupt governance has led to anincreasing number of failed or failing
states, robbing too many citizens of the economicopportunity and a hopeful
future. And all the while, climate change – a decidedly differentchallenge, but
one that is existential – is already impacting our daily lives, giving us a
preview ofthe planet-wide catastrophe that we will face if we don’t change
course.
The complexity of all of this is enough to make some people just want to
climb back into bed, pullthe sheets up over your head and wish that everything
would disappear. But that’s not how yousolve anything, folks, except maybe a
hangover. (Laughter.)
Amid the crush of daily events, it is really important to step back and
consider the full range ofwhat we are up against. And I’ve spent more than 2,300
hours – or a full 96 days – on a planesince I took this job. That is a lot of
long flights where one can take the time to sit and think. Andwhile there are
literally dozens of issues that cross my desk every day, as I see it, there are
threethat leap out as interrelated – but distinct – and they are generational
challenges. All threedemand urgent and unified action by the global community,
because they cannot be solved byone country alone. And all three will require
not just years, but decades of internationalcooperation in order to resolve. And
all three must matter to every single one of us, because theyare the challenges
that will shape the world that our children and grandchildren will inherit.
Now, the first of these challenges – pretty obvious, I suspect, because it
dominates the headlinestoday here in Europe and around the world – and that is
the need to counter and overcome theforces that seek to impose a radical
extremism on us all.
Not a single country endorses the kind of vicious and indiscriminate
violence perpetrated by suchgroups as ISIL – or Daesh – or groups like al-Qaida,
al-Shabaab, Boko Haram, and others, in WestAfrica and the Persian peninsula and
the Arab peninsula – Arabian peninsula. In fact, it isopposition to these
terrorists that is bringing governments and people together in every region.And
that is exactly as it ought to be, because those thugs are the living definition
of evil – the kindof evil that I described that Great Britain fought back
against so hard in World War II. Let me justemphasize for you that the crimes of
these people go way beyond theft and destruction. They’resmugglers, extorters.
They destroy cultural treasures. They attack history itself. They attackschools.
They butcher teachers, murder innocent journalists, abduct young boys and turn
theminto killers, auction off terrified girls in modern-day slave markets with
notarized sales contracts,and use the term “marriage” to describe what is
actually sanctioned, even encouraged, systematicrape.
This is Daesh’s standard practice. They have built a bureaucracy out of
brutality – systematicallymurdering Christians, Yezidis, Shias and others
because of where they’re from and because of whothey are, because of what they
believe – a reign of terror which, in my estimation, amounts togenocide.
So together, we must defeat Daesh, its affiliates, and its imitators. It
may surprise you, but all theevidence indicates that we are on the path to doing
just that. The international coalition tocounter Daesh is now 66 members strong.
Its members are drawn from every single corner of theglobe, and all are taking
on different aspects of this fight, dividing up the responsibilities anddividing
up its effectiveness.
To date, the coalition has conducted more than 12,000 airstrikes. The
United States and othershave put special forces on the ground in Syria and Iraq
to advise, train, and better equip our localpartners for the challenges ahead.
Together, we have already pushed Daesh out of roughly one-third of the territory
that it once controlled in Iraq and Syria. And we’re hammering Daesh’s
heavyweapons, its training camps, its supply routes, its infrastructure,
increasingly pressuring andisolating its so-called capitals in Raqqa and Mosul.
And the military campaign to end Daesh’sterrorism is only expanding.
We are also destroying Daesh’s economic lifeline. We are targeting and
hitting the terrorists’ oilproduction, their refining facilities, their tanker
trucks, their cash centers, their illicit banking hubs.And already, they’ve had
to reduce the paychecks to their fighters by 50 percent.
So Daesh is losing ground – not as fast as some of us would like, but
losing ground – losingleaders, losing fighters, losing cash. And you know what?
They’re losing confidence as well. A weekago Daesh beheaded four teenagers –
young teenagers, 13 and 14 – in Raqqa – kids – becausethey feared they might be
some sort of spies. Hauled them out into the square, slashed theirheads off for
everybody to see and terrorize people. Kids. And as a result, we know from
survivors,defectors, and intelligence reports that members of Daesh’s rank and
file are also now losing hope.
But we also know that beating Daesh on the battlefield in Iraq and Syria is
only the beginning ofwhat we must do. As Henry David Thoreau wrote: There are a
thousand hacking at the branchesof evil, to only one who is striking at the
root. So we have to strike at the root – the root causesof violent extremism.
And we can’t do that unless we first understand what those causes are.
Since the fighting broke out in 2011, at least 800 Britons have left this
country to join Daesh.Seventeen-year-old Talha Asma was an A-student at his West
Yorkshire high school, but in thespring of his senior year, Talha and his
next-door neighbor left for Syria. A couple months later, hedetonated a Toyota
Land Cruiser full of explosives at an Iraqi oil refinery, killing himself and
11others.
It may be disconcerting – I know it is, but it’s nonetheless true – that
some of these terrorists orwould-be terrorists are our neighbors – in America
too, in Australia, Germany, France, Belgium –men and women and, yes, children
from our communities who are somehow coming to theconclusion that Daesh or
another terrorist group is their destiny, not Oxford or a job, a future.
While some individuals, we know, are driven by tribal or sectarian
allegiances; others, in responseto oppression. For example – for years now –
Assad’s iron-fisted rule has played right into theDaesh recruitment strategy,
particularly among Sunnis who view Assad as an existential threat totheir
communities. And having made peaceful change impossible, Assad made violence
inevitable,and he thereby paved the way for Daesh to emerge and feed off each
other, with the cruelty ofeach driving the desperate into the poisonous embrace
of the other.
I want to underscore: The biggest blow that we could conceivably deal to
Daesh would be to endthe war between the regime and the opposition and bring
about a political transition in Syria. Andthat is why the United States and the
UK and 18 other nations, including Saudi Arabia, Iran, andevery major country
with a direct interest and stake in Syria, have all come together to form
theInternational Syria Support Group. For the first time since the conflict
began five years ago, wehave brought all the key international players to the
same table – impossible a year ago. We havenegotiated a cessation of hostilities
and deliveries of aid that, yes, has been violated in places, andat one point a
few days ago was very fragile, but we have reduced the violence. We have
helpedsave thousands of lives. And we continue now to push for the only viable,
long-term solution tothis terrible conflict, which is a political transition
away from Assad.
We had a spirited discussion at lunch today about, why can’t you deal with
Assad? Why can’t youmake something happen? It’s very simple, folks. Even if we
wanted to, we couldn’t end the warthat way because of what Assad has done,
because of the 12 million people who have been nowdislodged and displaced and
refugeed, and because Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, others will notstop because
of Assad’s presence. The quicker we help to end this conflict, the quicker we
willalleviate the suffering of the Syrian people, and the quicker we can all
focus on eliminating Daeshfrom Iraq and Syria.
Now, we also know that some people are radicalized for reasons that have
really very little to dowith religion or politics. Some people become terrorists
because they have trouble findingmeaning in life or economic opportunity in
their daily lives – because they are deeply frustrated –and because they hope
that groups like Daesh are somehow going to give them a sense ofidentity, or
purpose, or power that they have not received from the normal currency of their
lives.
It isn’t complicated. When people – and particularly young people – have no
hope for the futureand no faith in legitimate authority – when there are no
outlets for people to express theirconcerns – frustration festers. And no one
knows that better than violent extremist groups, whichregularly use indignity
and marginalization and inequality and corruption as a super-easyrecruitment
tool.
Therefore, the second great challenge that we face together today is
overcoming the virulent badgovernance that persists in too many places – the
failed and failing states I’ve talked about. Weneed to do this because we need
to build a strong, sustainable, global economy that unlocksopportunity, rather
than stifling it.
Any government’s most basic duty – you all, I’m sure, have debated this at
length in one class oranother: the rights of man and the evolution of human
power on Earth and governance – themost basic duty is to meet the needs of your
citizens.
When governments are fragile and leaders are incompetent, or worse,
dishonest, when the gapbetween rich and poor grows and the space for basic
freedoms shrinks, when corruption is not anaberration but an entrenched part of
society, the needs of citizens cannot be met.
Weak or corrupt governance invariably leaves young people caught up in the
race between hopeand frustration. And it’s absolutely essential that hope wins
that race.
Think about it this way: Worldwide, there are nearly two billion people who
are younger than 15years old. In the Middle East, that includes three out of
every ten people. In parts of Africa, suchas Niger and Somalia, the DRC, roughly
half the population is under 15. It matters to all of uswhether these kids are
going to be able to access education, have a job, find an opportunity
thatenables them to be able to contribute to their community in beneficial
ways.
It matters because today’s globalized economy sees a connection – an
intimate connection, in fact– between how we each do and how we all do. Partly,
because from a moral standpoint, givingyoung people a chance to succeed is
simply the right thing to do. But guess what, it also mattersbecause these young
people are essentially swing voters in the fight against violent extremism.We
need them to make wise choices, and yet, that is a lot less likely if they grow
up without faithin government, without an education, without the chance for a
better life.
And that means that governments have to break down barriers to innovation.
It means making iteasier to start up a business. It means improving the climate
for foreign investment. It meansstreamlining bureaucracies and preventing
military cronies from crowding out private enterprise. Itmeans giving women and
girls an equal chance to compete in the classroom and in the workplace.And this
is the only way we are going to meet the needs of the modern world – plain and
simple.
It also means making the fight against corruption a global security
priority of the first order.Bribery, fraud, other forms of venality feed
organized crime. Those are your narcotics traffickers,those are your arms
traffickers, and those are often the greatest links to terrorist networks.
Theycontribute to human trafficking, discourage honest and accountable
investment. They undermineentire communities.
Now, I don’t have any illusions. I used to be a prosecutor. I understand
that corruption is as oldas government itself. Every nation, including mine –
the United States – has wrestled at somepoint to a greater or lesser degree with
corruption at one point or another. But today, the cost ofcorruption globally is
exploding, and it’s exploding everywhere. In the Middle East, a recent
surveyfound that fully one-third of citizens had to pay a bribe in order to get
a supposedly freegovernment service. In Ukraine, under the previous government,
corrupt governance helpedtrigger an international crisis that we’re still
engaged in. In Cameroon, a senior inspector of policewas arrested for selling
local ID cards to Boko Haram – to the militants coming in from Nigeria.And just
last week in Pakistan, officers seized currency and gold worth nearly 6.5
million from thehome of a senior official in Balochistan province.
Now, the good news is that more and more citizens – citizens around the
world are saying no tothis runaway corruption. We saw this in Guatemala City
last year when thousands of citizensgathered in the central square every Sunday,
rain or shine, to protest the venality that they knewwas taking place at the
highest levels of their government. And with the help of some courageousnational
prosecutors, they exposed a sitting vice president, and then a sitting
president, and theyput their country’s political leaders on notice for many
years to come.
Tomorrow, I will have the privilege of attending Prime Minister Cameron’s
Anti-Corruption Summitin London, and we’re going to discuss the various ways
that the international community can helpcitizens of the world to address this
challenge. For our part, just last week, President Obamaproposed new legislation
that would, for the first time, require all 50 states to collect informationon
shell companies for law enforcement to be able to use, and shed greater light on
real estatetransactions in cities like Miami and New York, which are used too
often to shelter illicit funds. Andwe have to stop and ask on an international
basis how it is that a bunch of generals in a countrylike Nigeria, which
happened previously, and the new president has run against all this, and
we’reworking with him now to change it. But Nigeria saw tens of billions of
dollars taken out of thecountry. Those were schools. Those were healthcare.
Those were infrastructure. There was newjobs hidden in bank accounts around the
world.
Over the last four years, U.S. foreign assistance for anti-corruption
programs has more thandoubled. And today, we’re working in dozens of countries
to help build online, automatedbusiness registries, which will reduce both the
red tape and the opportunities for graft to holdpeople up with a bribe. We’re
also expanding programs that send American judges overseas toshare best
practices. And we’re developing better intelligence on kleptocrats and their
networks inorder to deny bad actors the profits from graft and more.
Now, I will have more to say about this at tomorrow’s summit, but for now
let me justunderscore: Despite recent progress, as a global community, we just
are not doing nearly enoughto eliminate this scourge, and that needs to change
if we’re going to have a chance of addressingthe concerns of those two billion
young people. Because we all pay for it – you pay for it, we payfor it.
Corruption costs the global economy about $2.6 trillion a year. That’s 2.6
trillion that couldbe going towards the infrastructure, towards healthcare,
towards education, towards food securityinitiatives, or any number of areas
where additional funding is desperately needed. You can buy alot with 2.6
trillion. In fact, that’s about 10 times the total amount the international
communityspends each year on all development assistance. Think what a difference
we could make.
Now, the magnitude of corruption that exists today is not just disgraceful,
it’s also dangerous.There’s nothing more demoralizing, more destructive, more
disempowering to any citizen than thebelief that the system is rigged against
them and that people in positions of power – to use adiplomatic term – are
crooks who are embezzling the future of their own people, and by the
way,depositing their ill-gotten gains in financial institutions that claim
respectability.
Good, responsible governance is supposed to protect citizens’ future, not
pillage it. And that’s astrue about the economy as it is about the
environment.
Now, I know that to some people, because I’ve been at this a long time –
when I first came backfrom Vietnam, I took part in a Earth Day – the first Earth
Day in America, 1970, and we’ve been atit ever since trying to change things.
And I know that some people still think environmentalprotection is a fringe
issue. But the fact is that because of ignorance at first, and more recently
theirresponsibility of vested interests that have consciously sought to obscure
the facts in pursuit oftheir own short-sighted greed, the fragile home that all
of us share today is changing in alarmingways.
That’s why today’s third and final generational challenge is to finally
step up and deal withwidespread environmental degradation taking place around
the world.
Ladies and gentlemen, in just the past 40 years, we human beings have wiped
out fully one-half ofmarine vertebrates. The vast majority of the world’s fish
stocks are either fully exploited oroverfished. We’re adding millions of tons of
plastic trash into the ocean every year. At this point,our ocean is so polluted
that hundreds of dead zones exist, where life simply cannot exist.
On land, we are destroying the equivalent of 16 or 17 football fields of
forest every minute. Andbecause of the obscene amount of pollution that we
allowed into the air over the years, today 3.5billion of the world’s population
live in communities that fall short of the air quality standards thatare set by
the World Health Organization.
And of course, on top of these troubling statistics, there’s the greatest
threat that our planet hasfaced in modern history: (inaudible), climate
change.
Week after week, month after month, year after year, we continue to see new
evidence of thedanger climate change poses to our planet. We learned recently
that 2015 was the hottest year inrecorded history by far, after knowing that the
decade before that was the hottest on record, andthe one before that the second
hottest on record, and the one before that the third hottest onrecord. And when
does somebody stop and say, “Enough”? And now we already know this year
isalready on track to be the warmest of all.
Now, most of you who are here are under the age of 30. And those of you who
are may not beaware of it, but you haven’t lived through one single month in
your life – not one – that wascooler than its 20th century average.
The facts are staggering. And yet, despite all the science, one of my
former colleagues thought itwould be persuasive to walk onto the floor of the
United States Senate with a snowball in his handand point to it as evidence that
climate change is a hoax. I hate to tell you, folks, it provessomething for
sure, but not what he intended. (Laughter.)
Thankfully, as we saw in Paris last December, most of the world understands
the severity of thisthreat and is moving decisively towards collective action to
fix it.
The Paris climate change agreement that I had the privilege of signing with
my granddaughter onmy lap in New York a few days ago is important – not because
the text, in and of itself, is going toguarantee that we keep the level of
temperature at 2 degrees centigrade and don’t get to thetipping point. That’s
not what it absolutely guarantees. It doesn’t mean we’ll avoid the worsteffects
of climate change. The Paris Agreement is important because of the clear signal
it sendsfrom nearly 200 nations to all sectors of the global economy: that the
future will and must befueled by cleaner energy sources.
Now, today we know: The new energy future, the efficiencies, the
alternative sources, the cleanoptions – none of what we must achieve is beyond
our capacity. It isn’t as if we’re sitting herestumped by a mathematical
equation we can’t figure out or by some logarithm that is yet to bediscovered.
That’s not the situation. There’s only one question: Is doing something and what
weneed to do beyond our collective resolve?
And happily, there is now a growing body of evidence that we’re beginning
to move in the rightdirection. Last year, global investment in renewable energy
was at an all-time high – nearly $330billion.
For the first time in history – despite the low price of coal and oil and
gas – more of the world’smoney was spent fostering renewable energy technologies
than on new fossil fuel plants. So we’restarting to break through.
And by the middle of this century, it is projected that roughly $50
trillion will be invested in newenergy – and the vast majority of that in clean
energy.
Now, if these numbers don’t, as raw numbers, mean something to you, here’s
the upshot: Theclean energy market of the future is the largest market the world
has ever seen. My state ofMassachusetts made a lot of money in the 1990s because
we’re a tech state and we were ridingthe crest of computers and communications
and so forth – not as much as a couple of otherstates: California, Texas,
others. That economic energy of the 1990s created more wealth in ournation than
at any time since the 1920s, when didn’t have an income tax. And every
singlequintile of American taxpayer saw their income go up – everybody. The – it
was a $1 trillionmarket with 1 billion users. The energy market today – 4 to 5
billion users today. It’s going to goup to 9 billion users if we do what we can
do. And it is in the multi-trillions of dollars in the size ofmarket.
So if, in the spirit of Paris, we continue to pursue solutions together,
the enormous economicbenefits of that market is going to be felt by people
everywhere.
And the good news is this cooperation is actually written right into the
Paris Agreement. Becausewe all understand that this is, in fact, a generational
challenge – and it will take a full generation toaddress what has to be done –
the Paris Agreement requires ongoing international collaboration,calling on the
parties to ramp up their climate plans every five years, with a
mandatoryrequirement that people engage in the measurement and then the ramp-up.
So our collectiveresponse actually gets stronger and stronger as time passes and
technology evolves.
Now, ultimately, our success is going to depend on whether we keep our eye
on the ball andmaintain the momentum that finally exists today.
And in the time ahead, we are going to need an all-out global commitment –
not only to cleanenergy – but to clean air, clean harbors, clean coasts, and the
preservation of our endangeredocean and marine resources. Now, if you think
current conflicts are all-consuming, imagine whathappens when we add food
shortages, water shortages, stronger storms, longer droughts, steadyrises in
sea-levels, which are already being predicted, and entire countries swallowed by
the sea. Ifwe don’t make the choices available to us today, then the problems of
today are going to pale incomparison with what’s coming down the road. But we
don’t hear a lot of people, not enoughpeople, laying those real choices in
front.
The bottom line is that we don’t have to sit here and wait for this to
happen. If we accelerate thetransition towards clean energy solutions – we have
the technology, we have the knowledge.Solar has now moved down – I saw contracts
the other day that are being sold at about 3 cents, 3-point-something cents per
kilowatt hour, less than that. In one case, Saudi Arabia did a solarcontract for
2.9, I think it is. That is totally, more than, competitive with coal and other
sources.But a lot of countries can’t afford to do it. They need to make the
transition. And I believe,President Obama believes, that the global community
needs to come together in order to helpthem do it. If we do this, we have time
to prevent the worst impacts of climate change. And thesolution here is not a
mystery. Our planet is not predestined for destruction. It is, as
PresidentKennedy reminded us, in our hands, when he said in his inauguration,
“that here on earth God’swork must truly be our own.” And when you look at any
scripture of any religion or anyphilosophy of life, and it will tell you
something about creation and preservation and theimportance of our respect for
our environment.
So my friends, the same is true for each of the other challenges that I
addressed today. There isnothing inevitable about succumbing to the problems
that we confront – nothing. Each is aproduct of human choice or lack of choice.
And what we have the power to choose, we have thepower to change.
And that is why I am confident that in our collective ability we can meet
these challenges. Andwhen you consider that the university you attend predates
not only the founding of my nation,but also the Reformation, the Renaissance –
the Magna Carta – you consider that this institutionsurvived the Black Death,
endured the War of the Roses, the Great War, and the Blitz – come on, Ithink
it’s a little easier on this campus than elsewhere to put things in perspective,
and I’m sureyou can (inaudible). (Laughter.) Oxford has stood through it all –
with a history that reaches backto the Middle Ages – or in other words, the last
time a subfusc was in fashion. (Laughter.)
So because of the creativity and the persistence of previous generations,
we actually have hugeadvantages over them – over all of that history that I just
talked about. A child today is morelikely to be born healthy, more likely to be
adequately fed, more likely to get the necessaryvaccinations, more likely to
attend school, and more likely to actually live a long life than anyearlier
generation. We are the beneficiaries – you are the beneficiaries – of
incrediblebreakthroughs in medicine and education, communications,
transportation, food production –you name it. And meanwhile, the number of
nuclear weapons has fallen by two-thirds in the last30 years – while the number
of democracies has doubled. That is called progress. Against all thecacophony of
talking heads on TV and the sort of sense of doom and gloom, we can make – weare
making progress.
So on that note, let me just underscore to you – we who live in countries
like the United Statesand the United Kingdom have actually one more significant
advantage. For centuries, mankind hasseen governments come and governments go.
Virtually every form of government imagined hasbeen attempted somewhere – from
totalitarianism to socialism, monarchy, constitutionalmonarchy, military junta,
theocracy, republic.
It isn’t a coincidence that the course of history has led so much of the
modern world to settle ondemocracy. And no one put it better, as usual, than
Winston Churchill, born less than 10 milesfrom here, who called democracy the
worst form of government there is – except for all theothers. Democracy can be
noisy, frustrating, and occasionally chaotic. But the genius in democracyis that
it carries within itself the remedy for its own shortcomings. Wrong policies can
– through aprocess of open debate, which you cherish here at the Oxford Union –
be replaced by betterpolicies. Poor leaders can – through a process of free and
fair elections – be replaced by betterones.
We have a reason, I think, to look to the future not only with resolve, but
with confidence, andwith the understanding that there is much we can accomplish
if we just dare to push the limits. Ifyou don’t believe me, ask Leicester City
fans. (Laughter.) Or consider the words of anotherAmerican who studied here many
years ago, T.S. Eliot. “Only those who will risk going too far,” hesaid, “can
possibly find out how far one can go.”
So each of you will leave this university with a different path in mind.
Some of you may decide towork in government. Others may continue on in academia.
The world is moving so fast now that Iguarantee you many of you will embark on a
career in a company not yet founded, using devicesnot yet developed, based on
ideas not yet conceived. But no matter where you end up – nomatter what you
choose to do – don’t underestimate the power that you have to make adifference.
Participation is the best antidote to pessimism. If you have questions, ask
them. Whenyou see injustices, go out and correct them. When you dream up a
solution, pursue it and put iton the table and fight for it. That is the way.
And it’s only if you do that, only if you push to seehow far you can go, that
you’re going to find out that you have gone on as far as you can andyou’ve made
a difference. That will make all the difference, my friends, and I hope you have
agreat adventure and have some fun while you’re doing it.
Thank you very much. (Applause.)
You have no idea how excited I was when I heard I get to sit on a throne.
(Laughter.)
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