President Obama Addresses the United Nations General Assembly

Yesterday, President Obama addressed the UN Climate Change Summit in New York where he called on world leaders to pursue policies that allow economies to grow without endangering our planet. He recognized that "mankind has been slow to respond or even recognize the magnitude of the climate threat," but called it a new day -- noting that we have "done more to promote clean energy and reduce carbon pollution in the last eight months than at any other time in our history."

This morning, in his first address to the UN General Assembly, President Obama talked about the climate threat again – calling the “preservation of our planet” one of the “four pillars that are fundamental to the future we want for our children.” The President said the United States was committed to new era of global engagement and called on world leaders to share responsibility for managing some the world’s largest challenges: climate, nuclear proliferation, violent extremism and economic recovery.

Here’s an excerpt from his remarks about climate change:

Third, we must recognize that in the 21st century, there will be no peace unless we make take responsibility for the preservation of our planet.

The danger posed by climate change cannot be denied, and our responsibility to meet it must not be deferred. If we continue down our current course, every member of this Assembly will see irreversible changes within their borders. Our efforts to end conflicts will be eclipsed by wars over refugees and resources. Development will be devastated by drought and famine. Land that human beings have lived on for millennia will disappear. Future generations will look back and wonder why we refused to act – why we failed to pass on intact the environment that was our inheritance.

That is why the days when America dragged its feet on this issue are over. We will move forward with investments to transform our energy economy, while providing incentives to make clean energy the profitable kind of energy. We will press ahead with deep cuts in emissions to reach the goals that we set for 2020, and eventually 2050. We will continue to promote renewable energy and efficiency – and share new technologies – with countries around the world. And we will seize every opportunity for progress to address this threat in a cooperative effort with the whole world.

Those wealthy nations that did so much to damage the environment in the 20th century must accept our obligation to lead. But responsibility does not end there. While we must acknowledge the need for differentiated responses, any effort to curb carbon emissions must include the fast-growing carbon emitters who can do more to reduce their air pollution without inhibiting growth. And any effort that fails to help the poorest nations both adapt to the problems that climate change has already wrought – and travel a path of clean development – will not work.

It is hard to change something as fundamental as how we use energy. It’s even harder to do so in the midst of a global recession. Certainly, it will be tempting to sit back and wait for others to move first. But we cannot make this journey unless we all move forward together. As we head into Copenhagen, let us resolve to focus on what each of us can do for the sake of our common future.

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