Kerry's Speech on Wednesday @ COP15

photo: Senator Kerry speaking @ COP15

I stumbled upon this article in the Politico today. The opening paragraph makes me smile each time I read it:

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) is tired of the world telling the Senate what to do — so he spent his brief stopover Wednesday at the U.N. climate conference telling the world what it can do for the Senate.

In a speech that was part climate-change pep rally, part lecture on America’s legislative political dynamics, Kerry argued that he needs a strong political settlement at COP-15 to jolt the Senate into action on its moribund cap-and-trade bill.

Most of Senator Kerry's speech was captured in the video below. Full recording should be posted on Senator Kerry's website soon.

Senator John Kerry at the COP15 UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen 2009 from Northseasailor on Vimeo.

Some highlights from the speech (full transcript available here):

If Dick Cheney can argue that even a 1% chance of a terrorist attack is 100% justification for preemptive action—then surely, when scientists tell us that climate change is nearly a 100% certainty, we ought to be able to stand together, all of us, and join in an all out effort to combat a mortal threat to the life of this planet.

After stating that the US Senate could pass climate legislation by June, a month or two after the deadline Al Gore set during his COP15 appearance, Senator Kerry went on to say --

And vitally, we must agree on a process to come back together next year to transform the Copenhagen political agreement into a binding international treaty. That process should not delay and I believe an early summer date of June or July 2010 is realistic and necessary.