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  • I stand before you not as an expert but as a concerned citizenone of the 400,000

  • people who marched in the streets of New York on Sunday and the billions of others around

  • the world who want to solve our climate crisis.

  • As an actor, I pretend for a living.

  • I play fictitious characters, often solving fictitious problems.

  • I believe that mankind has looked at climate change in that same way, as if it were fiction,

  • as if pretending the climate change wasn't real would somehow make it go away.

  • But I think we all know better than that now.

  • Every week we're seeing new and undeniable climate events, evidence that accelerated

  • climate change is here right now.

  • Droughts are intensifying.

  • Our oceans are acidifying with methane plumes rising up from the ocean floor.

  • We are seeing extreme weather events and the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets melting

  • at unprecedented rates, decades ahead of scientific projections.

  • None of this is rhetoric and none of it is hysteria.

  • It is fact.

  • The scientific community knows it.

  • Industry knows it.

  • Governments know it.

  • Even the United States military knows it.

  • The Chief of the US Navy's Pacific Command Admiral Samuel Locklear recently said that

  • climate change is our single greatest security threat.

  • My friends, this body, perhaps more than any other gathering in human history now faces

  • this difficult but achievable task.

  • You can make history or you will be vilified by it.

  • To be clear this is not about just telling people to change their light bulbs or to buy

  • a hybrid car.

  • This disaster has grown beyond the choices that individuals make.

  • This is now about our industries and our governments around the world taking decisive large-scale

  • action.

  • Now must be our moment for action.

  • We need to put a price tag on carbon emissions and eliminate government subsidies for all

  • oil coal and gas companies.

  • We need to end the free ride that industrial polluters have been given in the name of a

  • free market economy.

  • They do not deserve our tax dollars.

  • They deserve our scrutiny for the economy itself will die if our ecosystems collapse.

  • The good news is that renewable energy is not only achievable but good economic policy.

  • This is not a partisan debate.

  • It is a human one.

  • Clean air and a livable climate are inalienable human rights.

  • And solving this crisis is not a question of politics.

  • It is a question of our own survival.

  • This is the most urgent of times and the most urgent of messages.

  • Honored delegates, leaders of the world, I pretend for a living but you do not.

  • The people made their voices heard on Sunday around the world and the momentum will not

  • stop.

  • But now it is your turn.

  • The time to answer humankind's greatest challenge is now.

  • We beg of you to face it with courage and honesty.

  • Thank you.

I stand before you not as an expert but as a concerned citizenone of the 400,000

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