Obama to Young People on Global Warming: ‘You Have To Care About this a Lot’

OBAMA:  "Thank you.  Well, first of all, I think that so many of the young people here understand why climate change is so important.  The science is very clear that because of the carbon emissions that we send in, mostly from the use of fossil fuels -- oil, gas, coal -- the temperatures worldwide, on average, are getting higher.  And that begins to change weather patterns.  The oceans begin to get warmer.  The ice in the Arctic begins to melt.  And you get a feedback loop that as things get warmer that creates even more of a trend towards warming.

And if we don't stop the amount of carbon that we send up, and we don't find new ways of creating energy, then you'll see the oceans rise, more extreme weather events, more drought, more flooding, bigger hurricanes, typhoons.  And it could have a devastating effect on countries all around the world.  And probably the biggest effect will be on poorer countries who don't have as much infrastructure to protect themselves.

So this is not just an environmental issue, but it's also a development issue.  And once it starts, it's hard to reverse.  So this has to be one of our highest priorities, but it's a hard issue to deal with because it doesn't happen right away.  It happens gradually.  And so people always think, well, that's something we don't have to worry about now.  But if we don't get started now, it's going to be too late.

So we have to be wise and think about the future.  And young people especially, you have to care about this a lot, because if you don't do anything about it, you're the ones who are going to have to deal with it. I'll be gone.  But you'll have to deal with it, and your children and your grandchildren.

So business has an important role to play in this because, first of all, a lot of the carbon pollution is created by industry for energy production, for electricity production, power plants, transportation.  And one of the things that we're trying to do is to encourage companies to both become more efficient so that they're using less energy, which means that they can produce the same amount with less electricity or less oil or less gas.  Also, transition to new energy forms, like solar or wind that are clean.  And create, through research and development and new products, new ways of producing energy.

So when I was in the Philippines, I was with Jack Ma, who was the founder of Alibaba, and that's a huge company that is really the leader in e-commerce in Asia.  But I was also with a young woman who had just invented a lamp that could generate energy with sea water.  So she could just take one cup of water and two tablets of salt, or take seawater potentially from the ocean, and it would create eight hours of light, instead of using kerosene.  So she's now trying to get funding to manufacture and distribute this lamp that she has created.

So business is going to be critical in dealing with climate change, because sometimes -- especially in poor countries -- people think, well, we don't have to worry about the environment because first we have to develop and create businesses and become wealthier, and then we can worry later about the environment.  But part of what I'm trying to persuade business is that you have start now, and there's business opportunities -- you can make money in clean energy, instead of using dirty energy.

And more and more businesses, I think, are beginning to realize that there's no contradiction.  And the same is true in countries as well.  If you look at a country like China that has developed to fast, but now they can't breathe in Beijing because the pollution can be so bad, and they're starting to realize that if they want to sustain their development, they've got to start using different production models.  And businesses can help to design new ways of manufacturing, new ways of developing energy. So we really want to encourage businesses to get involved, and they can make money doing it.

The most polluting industries are typically the old-fashioned industries, the old ways of doing business.  I know that people here, for example, have been dealing with smoke from the peat fires that are coming over from Indonesia.  Well, the palm oil industry, that's not a high-value industry.  I mean, that's not something that's going to develop a strong middle class and business opportunities over the long term.  It's just a classic extractive industry or commodity industry.  And in the modern economy, you want to be inventing new products and services rather than just figuring out what you can take out of the ground.  And so I'm encouraging both governments and businesses to start thinking about the opportunities of clean energy.

In Paris, our hope is to get all the countries to agree that they will set targets for reducing carbon emissions.  It won't be the same for every country.  More developed countries, they should do more.  Less developed, they don't have to do as much because they haven't contributed so much to carbon pollution.  But everybody has to do something.  And what we want to do is have each country try to create incentives for businesses, whether it's tax breaks or investments in research so that businesses can work alongside communities to try to solve the problem.  And I feel optimistic that we'll get it done.  It won't be as strong initially as it needs to be eventually, but if we start now and everybody agrees that this is important and we don't something, then I'm confident that we'll be able to solve the problem."