'The Future Is Knocking At Our Door Right Now'

Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Honorable members of the NorwegianNobel Committee, Excellencies, Ladies and gentlemen.

I have a purpose here today. It is a purpose I have tried to serve for manyyears. I have prayed that God would show me a way to accomplish it.

Sometimes, without warning, the future knocks on our door with a precious andpainful vision of what might be. One hundred and nineteen years ago, a wealthyinventor read his own obituary, mistakenly published years before his death.Wrongly believing the inventor had just died, a newspaper printed a harshjudgment of his life's work, unfairly labeling him "The Merchant ofDeath" because of his invention – dynamite. Shaken by this condemnation,t he inventor made a fateful choice to serve the cause of peace.

Seven years later, Alfred Nobel created this prize and the others that bearhis name.

Seven years ago tomorrow, I read my own political obituary in a judgment thatseemed to me harsh and mistaken – if not premature. But that unwelcome verdictalso brought a precious if painful gift: an opportunity to search for fresh newways to serve my purpose.

Unexpectedly, that quest has brought me here. Even though I fear my wordscannot match this moment, I pray what I am feeling in my heart will becommunicated clearly enough that those who hear me will say, "We mustact."

The distinguished scientists with whom it is the greatest honor of my life toshare this award have laid before us a choice between two different futures –a choice that to my ears echoes the words of an ancient prophet: "Life ordeath, blessings or curses. Therefore, choose life, that both thou and thy seedmay live."

We, the human species, are confronting a planetary emergency – a threat tothe survival of our civilization that is gathering ominous and destructivepotential even as we gather here. But there is hopeful news as well: we have theability to solve this crisis and avoid the worst – though not all – of itsconsequences, if we act boldly, decisively and quickly.

However, despite a growing number of honorable exceptions, too many of theworld's leaders are still best described in the words WinstonChurchill applied to those who ignored Adolf Hitler's threat: "They goon in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute,adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all powerful to be impotent."

So today, we dumped another 70 million tons of global-warming pollution intothe thin shell of atmosphere surrounding our planet, as if it were an opensewer. And tomorrow, we will dump a slightly larger amount, with the cumulativeconcentrations now trapping more and more heat from the sun.

As a result, the earth has a fever. And the fever is rising. The experts havetold us it is not a passing affliction that will heal by itself. We asked for asecond opinion. And a third. And a fourth. And the consistent conclusion,restated with increasing alarm, is that something basic is wrong.

We are what is wrong, and we must make it right.

Last September 21, as the Northern Hemisphere tilted away from the sun,scientists reported with unprecedented distress that the North Polar ice cap is"falling off a cliff." One study estimated that it could be completelygone during summer in less than 22 years. Another new study, to be presented byU.S. Navy researchers later this week, warns it could happen in as little as 7years.

Seven years from now.

In the last few months, it has been harder and harder to misinterpret thesigns that our world is spinning out of kilter. Major cities in North and SouthAmerica, Asia and Australia are nearly out of water due to massive droughts andmelting glaciers. Desperate farmers are losing their livelihoods. Peoples in thefrozen Arctic and on low-lying Pacific islands are planning evacuations ofplaces they have long called home. Unprecedented wildfires have forced a halfmillion people from their homes in one country and caused a national emergencythat almost brought down the government in another. Climate refugees havemigrated into areas already inhabited by people with different cultures,religions, and traditions, increasing the potential for conflict. Strongerstorms in the Pacific and Atlantic have threatened whole cities. Millions havebeen displaced by massive flooding in South Asia, Mexico, and 18 countries inAfrica. As temperature extremes have increased, tens of thousands have losttheir lives. We are recklessly burning and clearing our forests and driving moreand more species into extinction. The very web of life on which we depend isbeing ripped and frayed.

We never intended to cause all this destruction, just as Alfred Nobel neverintended that dynamite be used for waging war. He had hoped his invention wouldpromote human progress. We shared that same worthy goal when we began burningmassive quantities of coal, then oil and methane.

Even in Nobel's time, there were a few warnings of the likely consequences.One of the very first winners of the Prize in chemistry worried that, "Weare evaporating our coal mines into the air." After performing 10,000equations by hand, SvanteArrhenius calculated that the earth's average temperature would increase bymany degrees if we doubled the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.

Seventy years later, my teacher, Roger Revelle, and his colleague, DaveKeeling, began to precisely document the increasing CO2 levels day by day.

But unlike most other forms of pollution, CO2 is invisible, tasteless, andodorless – which has helped keep the truth about what it is doing to ourclimate out of sight and out of mind. Moreover, the catastrophe now threateningus is unprecedented – and we often confuse the unprecedented with theimprobable.

We also find it hard to imagine making the massive changes that are nownecessary to solve the crisis. And when large truths are genuinely inconvenient,whole societies can, at least for a time, ignore them. Yet as George Orwellreminds us: "Sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality,usually on a battlefield."

In the years since this prize was first awarded, the entire relationshipbetween humankind and the earth has been radically transformed. And still, wehave remained largely oblivious to the impact of our cumulative actions.

Indeed, without realizing it, we have begun to wage war on the earth itself.Now, we and the earth's climate are locked in a relationship familiar to warplanners: "Mutually assured destruction."

More than two decades ago,scientistscalculated thatnuclear war could throw somuch debris and smoke into the air that it would block life-giving sunlight fromour atmosphere, causing a "nuclear winter." Their eloquent warningshere in Oslo helped galvanize the world's resolve to halt the nuclear arms race.

Now science is warning us that if we do not quickly reduce the global warmingpollution that is trapping so much of the heat our planet normally radiates backout of the atmosphere, we are in danger of creating a permanent "carbonsummer."

As the American poet Robert Frost wrote, " Some say the world will end infire; some say in ice." Either, he notes, "would suffice."

But neither need be our fate.It is time to make peace with the planet.

We must quickly mobilize our civilization with the urgency and resolve thathas previously been seen only when nations mobilized for war. These priorstruggles for survival were won when leaders found words at the 11^thhour that released a mighty surge of courage, hope and readiness to sacrificefor a protracted and mortal challenge.

These were not comforting and misleading assurances that the threat was notreal or imminent; that it would affect others but not ourselves; that ordinarylife might be lived even in the presence of extraordinary threat; thatProvidencecould be trusted to do for us what we would not do for ourselves.

No, these were calls to come to the defense of the common future. They werecalls upon the courage, generosity and strength of entire peoples, citizens ofevery class and condition who were ready to stand against the threat once askedto do so. Our enemies in those times calculated that free people would not riseto the challenge; they were, of course, catastrophically wrong.

Now comes the threat of climate crisis – a threat that is real, rising,imminent, and universal. Once again, it is the 11th hour. The penaltiesforignoring this challenge are immense and growing, and at some near point would beunsustainable and unrecoverable. For now we still have the power to choose ourfate, and the remaining question is only this: Have we the will to actvigorously and in time, or will we remain imprisoned by a dangerous illusion?

Mahatma Gandhi awakened the largest democracy on earth and forged a sharedresolve with what he called "Satyagraha" – or "truthforce."

In every land, the truth – once known – has the power to set us free.

Truth also has the power to unite us and bridge the distance between"me" and "we," creating the basis for common effort andshared responsibility.

There is an African proverb that says, "If you want to go quickly, goalone. If you want to go far, go together." We need to go far, quickly.

We must abandon the conceit that individual, isolated, private actions arethe answer. They can and do help. But they will not take us far enough withoutcollective action. At the same time, we must ensure that in mobilizing globally,we do not invite the establishment of ideological conformity and a new lock-step"ism."

That means adopting principles, values, laws, and treaties that releasecreativity and initiative at every level of society in multifold responsesoriginating concurrently and spontaneously.

This new consciousness requires expanding the possibilities inherent in allhumanity. The innovators who will devise a new way to harness the sun's energyfor pennies or invent an engine that's carbon negative may live in Lagos orMumbai or Montevideo. We must ensure that entrepreneurs and inventors everywhereon the globe have the chance to change the world.

When we unite for a moral purpose that is manifestly good and true, thespiritual energy unleashed can transform us. The generation that defeatedfascism throughout the world in the 1940s found, in rising to meet their awesomechallenge, that they had gained the moral authority and long-term vision tolaunch the Marshall Plan, the United Nations, and a new level of globalcooperation and foresight that unified Europe and facilitated the emergence ofdemocracy and prosperity in Germany, Japan, Italy and much of the world. One oftheir visionary leaders said, "It is time we steered by the stars and notby the lights of every passing ship."

In the last year of that war, you gave the Peace Prize to a man from myhometown of 2000 people, Carthage, Tennessee. CordellHull was described by Franklin Roosevelt as the "Father of the UnitedNations." He was an inspiration and hero to my own father, who followedHull in the Congress and the U.S. Senate and in his commitment to world peaceand global cooperation.

My parents spoke often of Hull, always in tones of reverence and admiration.Eight weeks ago, when you announced this prize, the deepest emotion I felt waswhen I saw the headline in my hometown paper that simply noted I had won thesame prize that Cordell Hull had won. I n that moment, I knew what my father andmother would have felt were they alive.

Just as Hull's generation found moral authority in rising to solve the worldcrisis caused by fascism, so too can we find our greatest opportunity in risingto solve the climate crisis. In the Kanji characters used in both Chinese andJapanese, "crisis" is written with two symbols, the first meaning"danger," the second "opportunity." By facing and removingthe danger of the climate crisis, we have the opportunity to gain the moralauthority and vision to vastly increase our own capacity to solve other crisesthat have been too long ignored.

We must understand the connections between the climate crisis and theafflictions of poverty, hunger, HIV-Aids and other pandemics. As these problemsare linked, so too must be their solutions. We must begin by making the commonrescue of the global environment the central organizing principle of the worldcommunity.

Fifteen years ago, I made that case at the "Earth Summit" in Rio deJaneiro. Ten years ago, I presented it in Kyoto. This week, I will urge thedelegates in Bali to adopt a bold mandate for a treaty that establishes auniversal global cap on emissions and uses the market in emissions trading toefficiently allocate resources to the most effective opportunities for speedyreductions.

This treaty should be ratified and brought into effect everywhere in theworld by the beginning of 2010 – two years sooner than presently contemplated.The pace of our response must be accelerated to match the accelerating pace ofthe crisis itself.

Heads of state should meet early next year to review what was accomplished inBali and take personal responsibility for addressing this crisis. It is notunreasonable to ask, given the gravity of our circumstances, that these heads ofstate meet every three months until the treaty is completed.

We also need a moratorium on the construction of any new generating facilitythat burns coal without the capacity to safely trap and store carbon dioxide.

And most important of all, we need to put a price on carbon – witha CO2 tax that is then rebated back to the people, progressively, according tothe laws of each nation, in ways that shift the burden of taxation fromemployment to pollution. This is by far the most effective and simplest way toaccelerate solutions to this crisis.

The world needs an alliance – especially of those nations that weighheaviest in the scales where earth is in the balance. I salute Europe and Japanfor the steps they've taken in recent years to meet the challenge, and the newgovernment in Australia, which has made solving the climate crisis its firstpriority.

But the outcome will be decisively influenced by two nations that are nowfailing to do enough: the United States and China. While India is also growingfast in importance, it should be absolutely clear that it is the two largest CO2emitters – most of all, my own country – that will need to make the boldestmoves, or stand accountable before history for their failure to act.

Both countries should stop using the other's behavior as an excuse forstalemate and instead develop an agenda for mutual survival in a shared globalenvironment.

These are the last few years of decision, but they can be the first years ofa bright and hopeful future if we do what we must. No one should believe asolution will be found without effort, without cost, without change. Let usacknowledge that if we wish toredeem squandered time and speak again with moralauthority, then these are the hard truths:

The way ahead is difficult. The outer boundary of what we currently believeis feasible is still far short of what we actually must do. Moreover, betweenhere and there, across the unknown, falls the shadow.

That is just another way of saying that we have to expand the boundaries ofwhat is possible. In the words of the Spanish poet, Antonio Machado, "Pathwalker,there is no path. You must make the path as you walk."

We are standing at the most fateful fork in that path. So I want to end as Ibegan, with a vision of two futures – each a palpable possibility – and witha prayer that we will see with vivid clarity the necessity of choosing betweenthose two futures, and the urgency of making the right choice now.

The great Norwegian playwright, Henrik Ibsen, wrote, "One of these days,the younger generation will come knocking at my door."

The future is knocking at our door right now. Make no mistake, the nextgeneration will ask us one of two questions. Either they will ask:"What were you thinking; why didn't you act? "

Or they will ask instead: "How did you find the moral courage to riseand successfully resolve a crisis that so many said was impossible tosolve?"

We have everything we need to get started, save perhaps political will, butpolitical will is a renewable resource.

So let us renew it, and say together: "We have a purpose. We are many.For this purpose we will rise, and we will act."