{"id":41755,"date":"2021-11-01T10:25:11","date_gmt":"2021-11-01T17:25:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=41755"},"modified":"2021-11-01T10:25:11","modified_gmt":"2021-11-01T17:25:11","slug":"secretary-antony-j-blinken-at-the-cop26-u-s-center-opening-event","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=41755","title":{"rendered":"Secretary Antony J. Blinken At the COP26 U.S. Center Opening Event"},"content":{"rendered":"
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11\/01\/2021 11:09 AM EDT<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

Antony J. Blinken, Secretary of State<\/p>\n

Glasgow, United Kingdom<\/p>\n

SECRETARY BLINKEN:\u00a0\u00a0<\/b>Good afternoon.\u00a0 It is a great pleasure to join all of you for what is the official launch of the U.S. Center here at COP26.\u00a0 And I just want to thank everyone across the U.S. Government who made all of this happen.<\/p>\n

Over the next two weeks, we will be hosting dozens of conversations, bringing together hundreds of people here in Glasgow, and thousands more online to step up our response to the climate crisis.<\/p>\n

As you saw from that video, tackling the climate crisis isn\u2019t the responsibility of any single agency or department in the U.S. Government because climate change doesn\u2019t only threaten our economy, our infrastructure, or our national security; it\u2019s a threat to all of them and more.<\/p>\n

In the past week, we have received two very powerful reminders of that fact.\u00a0 The first was a comprehensive report from the U.S. Director of National Intelligence.\u00a0 It laid out the evidence of how climate change is driving regional instability and straining nearly every aspect of human life, from food and water insecurity to migration patterns.\u00a0 I can attest from my own conversations with colleagues around the world that these are increasingly daily struggles that they are dealing with in their countries.\u00a0 And in our country, we also see the effects of climate change including droughts in some places, floods in others, more intense storms, longer and more damaging wildlife seasons \u2013 wildfire seasons, excuse me.<\/p>\n

The second recent reminder was the United Nations annual Emissions Gap Report which discussed the mounting effects of climate change on the most vulnerable people and communities around the world.\u00a0 We have a microphone issue?\u00a0 It made clear the imperative that we have before us to strengthen both our ambition and our action in this decisive decade if we want to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius and prevent a climate catastrophe.<\/p>\n

For years, Americans from all walks of life \u2013 governors, mayors, activists, business leaders \u2013 have been doing the difficult daily work of reducing these emissions and building resilience in close coordination with friends around the world.\u00a0 Then within hours of taking office on January 20th, President Biden rejoined the Paris Agreement.\u00a0 Soon after that, he convened 40 world leaders, including the world\u2019s 17 largest greenhouse gas emitters, for the Leaders Summit on Climate.\u00a0 There, he announced a bold new commitment from the United States: a 50 to 52 percent reduction in emissions by 2030.\u00a0 That target puts us on course to reach net zero by 2050.<\/p>\n

And Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry will talk more about how here in Glasgow we will lay out our path to get to that goal.<\/p>\n

President Biden also told his team to integrate climate action into everything we do across the U.S. Government not just in our domestic policy, which National Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy will speak to shortly, but also in our foreign policy, in our national security.\u00a0 This process is well underway at the State Department thanks in large part to the leadership of John Kerry and his outstanding team.\u00a0 We\u2019ve created new Foreign Service positions dedicated full-time to climate issues, one in every regional bureau and in critical posts overseas, including India and Brazil.\u00a0 And we\u2019re seeking funding to educate and train officers around the world on climate diplomacy.<\/p>\n

Here at COP26, that climate diplomacy will continue.\u00a0 Special Envoy Kerry will lay out in greater detail what we hope to accomplish here, but for now, let me just say that we\u2019re working with our allies and making tremendous progress.\u00a0 In just the past few months, we\u2019ve mobilized the strongest and most concrete commitments ever put forward by countries to combat the climate crisis.\u00a0 We substantially narrowed the ambition gap.\u00a0 More countries are setting bolder goals, and they\u2019re closer to where we need them to be.\u00a0 But we still have work to do.<\/p>\n

Too many countries still have not stepped up, and we shouldn\u2019t leave Glasgow without acknowledging that fact and without making clear our intention to strengthen climate ambition and climate action substantially in the months and years ahead.\u00a0 This is a decisive decade.\u00a0 We\u2019ve got to make it count.<\/p>\n

Of course, this is not an issue that we can solve through national government action alone.\u00a0 We need civil society to continue leading the way, providing expertise, educating the public, building coalitions that hold policymakers like us to account.\u00a0 We need state and local governments to continue to develop and implement creative initiatives on the ground.\u00a0 And we need companies to make the investments that will get us to net zero emissions.\u00a0 That\u2019s the smart thing for business to do and the right thing.\u00a0 The green economy is the future, and companies that make the right investments now will reap the rewards for years to come.<\/p>\n

Over the next couple of weeks, the U.S. Center will bring together leaders from across these sectors \u2013 government, business, civil society \u2013 to join forces on climate action.\u00a0 We\u2019ll address topics like the partnerships we\u2019re building to strengthen the resilience of vulnerable communities; the initiatives we\u2019ve launched to protect tropical forests; the efforts that we\u2019re making to make sure the transition to the clean energy future is rooted in equity so it\u2019s not just the wealthy who benefit.<\/p>\n

Many of you here today have emphasized in your activism and leadership that climate action is not about sacrifice.\u00a0 It\u2019s about opportunity.\u00a0 It\u2019s about innovation.\u00a0 It\u2019s about prosperity.\u00a0 It\u2019s about justice.\u00a0 And it\u2019s about building a future that we can all be proud of and the future that our children and grandchildren deserve.\u00a0 So I\u2019m very honored to be in this fight with all of you, to work together to build on our progress here in Scotland in the months and years ahead.<\/p>\n

And now it\u2019s a particular privilege and pleasure to introduce someone who had dedicated years to the climate fight and who has done so much to elevate this issue around the world.\u00a0 At this critical moment, President Biden trusted him to rally the world around this cause, and we\u2019re all better off because he stepped up to take on this responsibility.\u00a0 Ladies and gentlemen, John Kerry.\u00a0 (Applause.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

11\/01\/2021 11:09 AM EDT   Antony...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-u-s-a","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41755"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41755\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41756,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41755\/revisions\/41756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}