madam president there is a new film on climate change called
it is set in twenty fifty-five and focuses on a lone survivor of climate catastrophe
i am haunted by some words from that film where the actor looking back to two thousand and nine looking back to now says why knowing what they knew then didn t they act when there was still time
in other words why have we failed to galvanise sufficient political will
partly it is because we do not talk enough about the benefits of shifting to a post-carbon world the millions of jobs in green energy the better-insulated homes the improved public transport
that is the message the eu must champion
yet even the most ambitious target the eu is currently proposing a thirty cut by twenty twenty will give us only a fifty fifty chance of avoiding the worst of climate change
if you were told that a plane that you were about to get on had a fifty fifty chance of crashing you probably would not get on
and yet the stakes we are playing for in copenhagen are a lot higher than that
so my message to you is please be more ambitious
do not let the epitaph for copenhagen be that this was the age of stupid
