Secretary of State John Kerry addressed fellow world leaders Wednesday at an “Entry into Force” event for the United Nations Paris Agreement on climate change with a salutation that sounded like a throwback to 1970s Saturday morning cartoons: “Thank you, warriors for the planet,” he praised the assembled crowd.
As Kerry has often done in the past, he first spoke of the dangers of increasing temperatures and even potential violence caused by climate refugees. Kerry confessed U.S. culpability for the problems, saying that “the United States and China [are] the two largest emitters in the world, I regret to say…” and also that:
[W]e have shared our part of the blame for what has been a difficult road, and we accept that. And it’s one of the reasons why President Obama and I have been so focused and so committed to try to make up that difference and help us to get where we are today.
Kerry also said that he recalls attempting to help manage legislation to implement the Kyoto Protocol in the “United States Senate and running into a buzz saw of opposition from the coal industry in our country.”
Kerry did acknowledge that ultimately the private sector will likely come up with solutions:
It’s going to be some magician, some young entrepreneur, some kid in a basement, some genius who comes up with better battery storage or better solar panels that have greater efficiency and lower cost. The private sector is going to take the message we sent in Paris and invest, and we will find a solution to this challenge. I have no doubt about that.
He then closed his remarks in dramatic fashion, capped off with his thanks to the “warriors for the planet”:
In Paris, we began to rewrite the ending of this story. And provided that we implement the agreement that we reached last year…it will finally become a story that we will be proud to tell our grandchildren and future generations. It will be a story of how the world came together in the greatest aspirations of United Nations, of this institution, to embrace this moment and to safeguard the future of this planet for generations to come. That is this mission, nothing less, and we intend to get the job done. Thank you, warriors for the planet. Thank you. (Applause.)
Video of Kerry’s full speech can be found here.
