Joe Biden Speech Transcript April 23: Leaders Summit on Climate Day 2

President Joe Biden: (00:00)
All the world leaders who’ve joined us, thank you for joining, and John, thank you for putting this together. We’ve made great progress, in my view, so far, and I’m grateful to all the leaders who’ve announced new commitments to help us meet the existential threat of climate change. This summit is a start, a start of a road that will take us to Glasgow for the UN Climate Change Conference in November, where we’re going to make these commitments real, putting all of our nations on a path to a secure, prosperous, and sustainable future.

Today’s final session is not about the threat of climate change poses. It’s about the opportunity that addressing climate change provides. It’s an opportunity to create millions of good-paying jobs around the world in innovative sectors, jobs that bring greater quality of life, greater dignity to the people who are performing those jobs in every nation. For a line worker, electricians, utility workers, line, transmission lines, connecting battery storage, and making our electric grid more modern. For automotive workers, building electric cars, trucks, and buses. Skilled workers installing charging stations to accommodate them throughout our countries. Construction workers, engineers, insulators upgrading our schools and commercial buildings and constructing new energy-efficient homes. Manufacturing. Manufacturing workers building nuclear and carbon capture technologies, solar panels, and wind turbines. And people working in the fields that we haven’t even conceived of yet, on farms and on factories and in laboratories and universities, the things we haven’t even thought of so far.

This challenge and these opportunities are going to be met by working people in every nation, and as we transition to a clean energy future, we must ensure that workers who have thrived in yesterday’s and today’s industries have as bright a tomorrow in the new industries, as well as in the places where they live, in the communities they have built. When we invest in climate resilience and infrastructure, we create opportunities for everyone. That’s the heart of my jobs plan that I proposed here in the United States. It’s how our nation intends to build an economy that gives everybody a fair shot.

As you heard in the last session, it requires investing in innovation. That’s why I’ve asked the Secretary of Energy, my energy secretary, Jennifer Granholm, who you saw earlier, to speed the development of critical technologies to tackle the climate crisis. No single technology is the answer on its own because every sector requires innovation to meet this moment. This critical effort is going to propel the most impactful breakthroughs at home and around the world and lower the cost of what we’re paying now for polluting the air so badly. We’re going to move to net zero in a transition in all countries.

And look, every country will need to invest in new clean energy technologies as we work forward and to deal with net zero emissions. I am also very proud to announce the United States is again becoming a key leader in Mission Innovation. We helped launch the program during the Obama-Biden administration, a pact between the world’s largest economies to ramp up investments in clean energy research and development. And today, America is once again stepping into the leadership role. We will be joining in a partner for the nations and efforts to decarbonize critical sectors across the board, including industrial sector, where we’ll join with Sweden and India in the leadership group for industry transition; the power sector, where we’ll work alongside of the United Kingdom to spread progress and speed it up toward a carbon-free power system, both here and around the world; and an agriculture, the agricultural sector, where we’ll launch the Agriculture Innovation Mission for Climate with the United United Arab Emirates and other partners.

We also, I’m very heartened by President Putin’s call yesterday for the world to collaborate and advance carbon dioxide removal, and the United States looks forward to working with Russia and other countries in that endeavor. It has a great promise. This is a moment for all of us to build better economies for our children and our grandchildren and all of us to thrive, to thrive in not just now, but beyond, for the next generations. Nations that work together to invest in a cleaner economy will reap rewards for their citizens.

The United States is committed. We are committed to making those investments to grow our economy here at home while connecting with markets around the world. For example, we’re launching a new global partnership for climate smart infrastructure. This will create good-paying jobs here in America by supporting development of new clean infrastructure in our partner countries. These are the sort of partnerships that are going to be good for all of us, and I think they’ll have additional benefits just us working together. And today, I’m excited to welcome my counterparts in Spain, Nigeria, Vietnam, and Poland to share their thinking on how to realize the economic opportunities of the climate response. And we’re going to be joined by labor and business community leaders from around the world to talk about what’s happening in their communities around climate-related jobs. And I’m pleased to be joined by Secretary Buttigieg, Ambassador Tai, and National Climate Adviser Gina McCarthy, the chair of my national climate task force. I look forward to our conversation and making more progress throughout the day. Thank you.

Joe Biden Speech Transcript April 23: Leaders Summit on Climate Day 2

Other Related Transcripts

Stay updated.