Obama at U.N.: ‘We Cannot Condemn our Children’ to a Future They Cannot Repair

Speaking today at the United Nations about global warming, President Obama said "we cannot condemn our children, and their children, to a future that is beyond their capacity to repair":

No nation is immune.  In America, the past decade has been our hottest on record.  Along our eastern coast, the city of Miami now floods at high tide.  In our west, wildfire season now stretches most of the year.  In our heartland, farms have been parched by the worst drought in generations, and drenched by the wettest spring in our history.  A hurricane left parts of this great city dark and underwater.  And some nations already live with far worse.  Worldwide, this summer was the hottest ever recorded -- with global carbon emissions still on the rise.

So the climate is changing faster than our efforts to address it.  The alarm bells keep ringing.  Our citizens keep marching.  We cannot pretend we do not hear them.  We have to answer the call.  We know what we have to do to avoid irreparable harm.  We have to cut carbon pollution in our own countries to prevent the worst effects of climate change.  We have to adapt to the impacts that, unfortunately, we can no longer avoid.  And we have to work together as a global community to tackle this global threat before it is too late. 

We cannot condemn our children, and their children, to a future that is beyond their capacity to repair.  Not when we have the means -- the technological innovation and the scientific imagination -- to begin the work of repairing it right now. 

As one of America’s governors has said, “We are the first generation to feel the impact of climate change and the last generation that can do something about it.”  So today, I’m here personally, as the leader of the world’s largest economy and its second largest emitter, to say that we have begun to do something about it.