Former US president Barack Obama on Friday made an impassioned plea for the world to embrace “clean energy” and overcome climate change at a gathering of experts in Argentina.
Obama told an audience of government ministers, business leaders and young environmentalists that they were part of a generation with the scientific means and imagination to begin to repair the planet.
“This is no longer speculation, this is no longer an issue that we can put off, this is firmly in the present. If we take advantage of this critical time, we have the chance to slow and even stop a trend that could be disastrous,” said Obama, who signed the Paris climate agreement.
“We cannot condemn our children and their children to a future they cannot repair,” Obama said. “We are the first generation to feel the impact of climate change, but we’re also the last generation that can do something about it.”
However, he warned that the Paris accord would not solve the climate crisis on its own, and that as technology evolves, more ambitious targets would have to be set.
“If we set bolder targets then we will open the floodgates for businesses, scientists, engineers to reach the high-tech low-carb investment and innovation that’s needed on a scale we’ve never seen before,” he said.
The two-day Green Economy Summit in the central city of Cordoba heard from experts, including Nobel economic laureate Edmund Phelps, that the global fight for clean energy rests with businesses and ordinary people, because governments have been lagging behind.
Obama kept with the theme, saying young people in particular “understand this is not just a job for politicians.”
“We’ve got to educate our friends, our families, our colleagues, and describe what’s at stake. And we need to speak up in town halls and in churches. We need to push back against those who would try to spread misinformation, and deny science,” Obama said.
“If we can look beyond the daily news cycle and think about the basics, the air that our children breathe, if that is our focus and we’re willing to put that above any short term interests, then it won’t be too late,” he added.
He said business leaders had to be reminded that there was no contradiction between a clean environment and strong economic growth.
However, Phelps also warned against climate change provoking “mass hysteria” and leading to overregulation, which he said would be an “innovation killer.”
“If an entrepreneur has to demonstrate to a whole bunch of government agencies that he is not going to cause any pollution, then we would lose the normal tendency of new companies and new ideas starting up,” Phelps said.
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