John Kerry on How the Paris Climate Agreement Could Help Fight Terrorism

(crowd murmuring)

Paris climate agreement finally gets signed.

As we ask for other countries,

go to their parliaments, congresses,

and take steps that are,

at least in the short term,

potentially against their economic best interests,

when one of the two candidates for president

running for office now has said

that he would abandon that agreement,

how do you have that conversation with another country?

Well, it's harder when you have

a candidate running for president

who obviously is espousing a different point of view.

It makes it harder.

It creates a delay in some countries.

People will say, well, let's wait and see

what the outcome of the election is

before we make a decision.

Fortunately, most countries

have leaders who actually understand science.

And so the fact is that we now already this year

have so many countries that have signed up

to the agreement that we're over the 55 countries

and we're over the 55% of emissions

represented by those countries.

So this agreement is going to come into force

in the beginning of November,

and that is a monumental accomplishment.

It's huge,

because everybody in the marketplace

now understands with clarity

that this agreement is going to be enforced,

and that means that is the path the world is setting out on

for the future production of energy for our nation,

for all of our nations,

which will, it's already creating a revolution

in terms of energy production.

I met this morning with a group of energy CEOs

here in the valley,

all of whom are engaged in putting out

renewable, sustainable alternative energy.

Particular solar was represented, among others.

Wind was represented.

And they're trying to do this in Africa.

They're trying to do distributive power

and get it out into communities that have no electricity,

which is critical, by the way,

to really dealing with the crisis of terrorism.

I mean, you've got to deal with poverty.

You've got to deal with these young people

who have no future.

If you don't have electricity in a country,

it's hard to provide jobs,

hard to be a, you know,

educate people and so forth.

So people here in America need to see the connection

of what we choose to do in terms of energy

or other kinds of things

with respect to the opportunities

that are available to people in other countries.

But in terms of energy policy now,

the fact is it is an,

it is absolutely uncontested

by any reasonable standard of accounting

that if you make a choice for alternative renewable energy,

it is not in fact more expensive in the long run.

Because if you're doing coal-fired power plant,

for instance, which California doesn't do now,

but in the East, it's still an issue,

your costs are gonna be much greater in the long run

because you're gonna have health concerns,

you're gonna have CO2 emission,

acidification of the ocean,

you're gonna have problems with the quality of air,

you're gonna have environmentally induced asthma for kids,

which costs billions every year.

I mean, there are all kinds of costs

to fossil fuel burning that do not get accounted for

in the context of normal business accounting,

and it doesn't make sense.

So when they tell you,

well, wow, we gotta do coal,

'cause coal's only three cents a kilowatt-hour,

it's not true.

Coal ultimately is much more expensive

than the now three cents of solar, by the way.

There are contracts for solar being let

for about 2.99 cents,

or three cents a kilowatt-hour.

So as the accounting changes,

the entire marketplace is gonna change,

and last year,

we had a record $358 billion spent invested in energy,

in the energy sector,

new energy, alternative energy,

renewable energy, gas,

gasification, and so forth.

So we're on a different course here,

and I'm very confident that

we've created a construct

which could help solve the problem

if people continue down that path.

If they don't, we're in trouble.