约翰·福布斯·克里(John Forbes Kerry)，美国政治家，第68任国务卿，马萨诸塞州参议员。1962年，克里进入耶鲁大学学习政治学，1966年毕业获学士学位。他毕业后即加入海军预备役，1968-1969年参加越南战争，并因此获得三枚紫心勋章。1976年克里进入波士顿学院(BOSTON COLLEGE)法学院就读, 并获得法学学位.

　　克里2004年7月29日获民主党提名为该党2004年美国总统选举的候选人，同当时的在任总统小布什竞选美国总统一职。2008年12月，克里当选为美国参议院外交委员会主席。2013年1月29日，接替希拉里出任新一任美国国务卿，这是16年来美国第一位白人男性国务卿。2013年，美国民众投票，对国务卿克里上任以来在推进美国外交方面取得的卓有成效的进展给予了极高的评价与肯定，美国多家媒体将克里评价为“美国历史上不可多得的外交之星”。

　　John Kerry

　　Secretary of State

　　Oxford, United Kingdom

　　May 11, 2016

　　SECRETARY KERRY: (Applause.) Wow. I think I’m just going to stop right now. (Laughter.) Thankyou for just an incredibly warm, generous welcome to this historic hall. It’s a great honor for meto be here. Bob, where’d you run off to? Where did he go? Thank you so much for your welcome.And Warden MacMillan, thank you very much. I appreciate it. (Inaudible) Baroness Cathy Ashton,my good friend, thank you so much for your incredible work for several years as you helped shapeand get us down the road on the Iran nuclear agreement. Everybody here joins me in sayingthank you for your many, many labors as the EU high representative. We’re very grateful. Thankyou. (Applause.) I want to ask you all to join me in recognizing the United States Ambassador toGreat Britain, the Court of St. James, Matthew Barzun. (Applause.)

　　And before I begin, I want to give a special shout-out to my chief of staff, Jon Finer, who’s nowmiserable that I’m doing this. (Laughter.) But he wears a second hat as the State Departmentdirector of policy and planning. And I love him. He played hockey in New England. We both comefrom New England. He also played soccer. We both love both games and both played them. Butas you know, I went to college in New Haven, Connecticut, and Jon somehow got lost on his wayto college and found himself at a small college in Cambridge, Massachusetts. (Laughter.) And ifyou think the Cambridge-Oxford rivalry is hot, folks, Harvard-Yale is no slouch, let me tell you. (Applause.) And that said, I have to tell you that Jon offers a unique blend of intellect, humor,prose, and I will give him a pass for his wayward education – (laughter) – because of the simplefact besides having achieved the rare honor of getting a mail-order diploma – (laughter) – he isalso a Rhodes Scholar and he loves Oxford and he loved his time here and I want you all to saythank you for this alumnus. (Applause.)

　　(无法正常观看的小伙伴点击这里哦!)

　　Now, to all of you Union members, I really am pleased to stand here. I had the privilege of servingas the president of the Yale Political Union, which is modeled on the Oxford Union, and it’s a greatprivilege for me to be able to be here and to stand here with so many speakers that stood before– distinguished speakers Robert Kennedy, Winston Churchill, Mother Teresa, the woman whoplays Crazy Eyes on the Netflix show Orange Is The New Black. (Laughter.) Now, that’s greatcompany. (Laughter.) I know that some of you have also been waging a very energetic campaign,a creative campaign to bring another tall, thin American to this hall – (laughter) – so I apologize toanybody who was disappointed that I am not, in fact, Taylor Swift. (Laughter.) If I thought itwould make you feel a little bit better, I’m happy to sing a few bars of “Shake It Off.” (Laughter.)But I (inaudible) put you through that; I didn’t come here to torture you. (Laughter.) Andwhether you disagree with me or agree with me this afternoon, I just want you all to know that Ihave done you an enormous favor by not bringing my guitar. (Laughter.)

　　Now, under any circumstances, it is a special thing to be here at Oxford today for me. I had thechance to walk around a little bit. I had lunch at St. Antony’s, as I mentioned, and chatted with afew of the students there. And this reminds me a lot of my alma mater, Yale, and of course, that’sprobably because Yale’s campus was actually designed to make it look as much like Oxford aspossible. In fact, at one point, an architect actually poured acid over the walls of Yale’s HarknessTower in order to replicate the centuries of soot and sludge – (laughter) – on (inaudible) college.Now, in America, we call that character – (laughter) – sort of like buying brand-new jeans thatalready have holes in the knees (inaudible). (Laughter.)

　　But Oxford University, needless to say, and the Oxford Union are the real deal, and I’m delightedto be here, particularly because we meet at such a critical time.

　　Let me take a moment to put that into context. Consider that 75 years ago last night, under a fullmoon, more than 500 Nazi warplanes launched one of the most destructive air raids of the SecondWorld War. Bombs tore through London’s residential neighborhoods, including, I might add, theapartment building in which my American grandmother lived – though she, thankfully, wasn’thome when they hit. The explosions rocked Westminster Abbey and Parliament and blew a hole inone of the most magnificent roofs in the world – the arches and the oaken beams of WestminsterHall.

　　At the time, the Third Reich controlled virtually all of Europe. Great Britain and the refugee fighterswho gathered here stood seemingly alone against perhaps the greatest evil the world has everknown.

　　But Great Britain fought back. And shortly after the blitz, Labor Minister Ernest Bevin declared: Ourbombers are growing in size and carrying capacity. Our science is developing more rapidly thantheirs. We are on the up grade. Never mind the croakers, he said. We are winning.

　　And indeed we – we did. But as we all know too well, the joy and relief of V-E Day – whoseanniversary we just celebrated a couple days ago – were soon tempered by the emergence of anew division in Europe, and the descent, in Churchill’s phrase, of an Iron Curtain that separatedfree from un-free, Soviet satellites from NATO allies.

　　This was the bipolar world in which my generation grew up, came of age.

　　But during the time when my father was a member of America’s Foreign Service, our family movedto Berlin, where I got a child’s-eye view of East-West tensions – especially when I rode my bicyclewithout permission into the Communist sector and was promptly grounded by my dad, whoinformed me that I could have been an international incident.

　　Now, later, I was an 18-year-old freshman at Yale during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Nineteen whenPresident John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Twenty-two when I joined the Navy and twenty-three when I deployed for my first tour in Vietnam.

　　By the time the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, I was in my forties and serving in the United StatesSenate, and the Cold War had significantly shaped my world view throughout those formativeyears.

　　The stakes of that period – inevitable – felt incredibly high because they were. But it was also atime when the challenges – and what to do about them – were pretty clear, and when the primaryforces shaping our world were leaders of recognized states.

　　When we went to war in that era, we fought an enemy army in uniform that was answerable to anestablished government with a known address. We could pull out a world map and color eachstate clearly – our friends, our foes, the nonaligned. The ideological fault line between freedomand authoritarianism was just as clear as those colors on the map and the lines that were drawn.

　　Now, the world that confronts us today, confronts you today as you prepare for the day you’llleave here and some of you will spend a few more years and then ultimately go out and make adifference – the world that confronts us today is, in many ways, much more complicated. HenryKissinger, who wrote one of the greatest books, Diplomacy, called me once, told me not so longago – a few months ago that he thought this was far more, much more difficult.

　　Non-state actors compete with national governments for influence and power. The cliche oftechnology bringing the world closer is, in fact, a stark reality in a world filled with extremism andconflict. Disturbing images and outright lies can circle the globe in an instant. Conflicts are foughtusing an eclectic mix of weapons, and often by combatants who are difficult to distinguish fromordinary civilians.

　　And while the world as a whole is more prosperous than it has ever been, inequality has alsogrown in almost every single country, fueling instability. Weak or corrupt governance has led to anincreasing number of failed or failing states, robbing too many citizens of the economicopportunity and a hopeful future. And all the while, climate change – a decidedly differentchallenge, but one that is existential – is already impacting our daily lives, giving us a preview ofthe planet-wide catastrophe that we will face if we don’t change course.

　　The complexity of all of this is enough to make some people just want to climb back into bed, pullthe sheets up over your head and wish that everything would disappear. But that’s not how yousolve anything, folks, except maybe a hangover. (Laughter.)

　　Amid the crush of daily events, it is really important to step back and consider the full range ofwhat we are up against. And I’ve spent more than 2,300 hours – or a full 96 days – on a planesince I took this job. That is a lot of long flights where one can take the time to sit and think. Andwhile there are literally dozens of issues that cross my desk every day, as I see it, there are threethat leap out as interrelated – but distinct – and they are generational challenges. All threedemand urgent and unified action by the global community, because they cannot be solved byone country alone. And all three will require not just years, but decades of internationalcooperation in order to resolve. And all three must matter to every single one of us, because theyare the challenges that will shape the world that our children and grandchildren will inherit.

　　Now, the first of these challenges – pretty obvious, I suspect, because it dominates the headlinestoday here in Europe and around the world – and that is the need to counter and overcome theforces that seek to impose a radical extremism on us all.

　　Not a single country endorses the kind of vicious and indiscriminate violence perpetrated by suchgroups as ISIL – or Daesh – or groups like al-Qaida, al-Shabaab, Boko Haram, and others, in WestAfrica and the Persian peninsula and the Arab peninsula – Arabian peninsula. In fact, it isopposition to these terrorists that is bringing governments and people together in every region.And that is exactly as it ought to be, because those thugs are the living definition of evil – the kindof evil that I described that Great Britain fought back against so hard in World War II. Let me justemphasize for you that the crimes of these people go way beyond theft and destruction. They’resmugglers, extorters. They destroy cultural treasures. They attack history itself. They attackschools. They butcher teachers, murder innocent journalists, abduct young boys and turn theminto killers, auction off terrified girls in modern-day slave markets with notarized sales contracts,and use the term “marriage” to describe what is actually sanctioned, even encouraged, systematicrape.

　　This is Daesh’s standard practice. They have built a bureaucracy out of brutality – systematicallymurdering Christians, Yezidis, Shias and others because of where they’re from and because of whothey are, because of what they believe – a reign of terror which, in my estimation, amounts togenocide.

　　So together, we must defeat Daesh, its affiliates, and its imitators. It may surprise you, but all theevidence indicates that we are on the path to doing just that. The international coalition tocounter Daesh is now 66 members strong. Its members are drawn from every single corner of theglobe, and all are taking on different aspects of this fight, dividing up the responsibilities anddividing up its effectiveness.

　　To date, the coalition has conducted more than 12,000 airstrikes. The United States and othershave put special forces on the ground in Syria and Iraq to advise, train, and better equip our localpartners for the challenges ahead. Together, we have already pushed Daesh out of roughly one-third of the territory that it once controlled in Iraq and Syria. And we’re hammering Daesh’s heavyweapons, its training camps, its supply routes, its infrastructure, increasingly pressuring andisolating its so-called capitals in Raqqa and Mosul. And the military campaign to end Daesh’sterrorism is only expanding.

　　We are also destroying Daesh’s economic lifeline. We are targeting and hitting the terrorists’ oilproduction, their refining facilities, their tanker trucks, their cash centers, their illicit banking hubs.And already, they’ve had to reduce the paychecks to their fighters by 50 percent.

　　So Daesh is losing ground – not as fast as some of us would like, but losing ground – losingleaders, losing fighters, losing cash. And you know what? They’re losing confidence as well. A weekago Daesh beheaded four teenagers – young teenagers, 13 and 14 – in Raqqa – kids – becausethey feared they might be some sort of spies. Hauled them out into the square, slashed theirheads off for everybody to see and terrorize people. Kids. And as a result, we know from survivors,defectors, and intelligence reports that members of Daesh’s rank and file are also now losing hope.

　　But we also know that beating Daesh on the battlefield in Iraq and Syria is only the beginning ofwhat we must do. As Henry David Thoreau wrote: There are a thousand hacking at the branchesof evil, to only one who is striking at the root. So we have to strike at the root – the root causesof violent extremism. And we can’t do that unless we first understand what those causes are.

　　Since the fighting broke out in 2011, at least 800 Britons have left this country to join Daesh.Seventeen-year-old Talha Asma was an A-student at his West Yorkshire high school, but in thespring of his senior year, Talha and his next-door neighbor left for Syria. A couple months later, hedetonated a Toyota Land Cruiser full of explosives at an Iraqi oil refinery, killing himself and 11others.

　　It may be disconcerting – I know it is, but it’s nonetheless true – that some of these terrorists orwould-be terrorists are our neighbors – in America too, in Australia, Germany, France, Belgium –men and women and, yes, children from our communities who are somehow coming to theconclusion that Daesh or another terrorist group is their destiny, not Oxford or a job, a future.

　　While some individuals, we know, are driven by tribal or sectarian allegiances; others, in responseto oppression. For example – for years now – Assad’s iron-fisted rule has played right into theDaesh recruitment strategy, particularly among Sunnis who view Assad as an existential threat totheir communities. And having made peaceful change impossible, Assad made violence inevitable,and he thereby paved the way for Daesh to emerge and feed off each other, with the cruelty ofeach driving the desperate into the poisonous embrace of the other.

　　I want to underscore: The biggest blow that we could conceivably deal to Daesh would be to endthe war between the regime and the opposition and bring about a political transition in Syria. Andthat is why the United States and the UK and 18 other nations, including Saudi Arabia, Iran, andevery major country with a direct interest and stake in Syria, have all come together to form theInternational Syria Support Group. For the first time since the conflict began five years ago, wehave brought all the key international players to the same table – impossible a year ago. We havenegotiated a cessation of hostilities and deliveries of aid that, yes, has been violated in places, andat one point a few days ago was very fragile, but we have reduced the violence. We have helpedsave thousands of lives. And we continue now to push for the only viable, long-term solution tothis terrible conflict, which is a political transition away from Assad.

　　We had a spirited discussion at lunch today about, why can’t you deal with Assad? Why can’t youmake something happen? It’s very simple, folks. Even if we wanted to, we couldn’t end the warthat way because of what Assad has done, because of the 12 million people who have been nowdislodged and displaced and refugeed, and because Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, others will notstop because of Assad’s presence. The quicker we help to end this conflict, the quicker we willalleviate the suffering of the Syrian people, and the quicker we can all focus on eliminating Daeshfrom Iraq and Syria.

　　Now, we also know that some people are radicalized for reasons that have really very little to dowith religion or politics. Some people become terrorists because they have trouble findingmeaning in life or economic opportunity in their daily lives – because they are deeply frustrated –and because they hope that groups like Daesh are somehow going to give them a sense ofidentity, or purpose, or power that they have not received from the normal currency of their lives.

　　It isn’t complicated. When people – and particularly young people – have no hope for the futureand no faith in legitimate authority – when there are no outlets for people to express theirconcerns – frustration festers. And no one knows that better than violent extremist groups, whichregularly use indignity and marginalization and inequality and corruption as a super-easyrecruitment tool.

　　Therefore, the second great challenge that we face together today is overcoming the virulent badgovernance that persists in too many places – the failed and failing states I’ve talked about. Weneed to do this because we need to build a strong, sustainable, global economy that unlocksopportunity, rather than stifling it.

　　Any government’s most basic duty – you all, I’m sure, have debated this at length in one class oranother: the rights of man and the evolution of human power on Earth and governance – themost basic duty is to meet the needs of your citizens.

　　When governments are fragile and leaders are incompetent, or worse, dishonest, when the gapbetween rich and poor grows and the space for basic freedoms shrinks, when corruption is not anaberration but an entrenched part of society, the needs of citizens cannot be met.

　　Weak or corrupt governance invariably leaves young people caught up in the race between hopeand frustration. And it’s absolutely essential that hope wins that race.

　　Think about it this way: Worldwide, there are nearly two billion people who are younger than 15years old. In the Middle East, that includes three out of every ten people. In parts of Africa, suchas Niger and Somalia, the DRC, roughly half the population is under 15. It matters to all of uswhether these kids are going to be able to access education, have a job, find an opportunity thatenables them to be able to contribute to their community in beneficial ways.

　　It matters because today’s globalized economy sees a connection – an intimate connection, in fact– between how we each do and how we all do. Partly, because from a moral standpoint, givingyoung people a chance to succeed is simply the right thing to do. But guess what, it also mattersbecause these young people are essentially swing voters in the fight against violent extremism.We need them to make wise choices, and yet, that is a lot less likely if they grow up without faithin government, without an education, without the chance for a better life.

　　And that means that governments have to break down barriers to innovation. It means making iteasier to start up a business. It means improving the climate for foreign investment. It meansstreamlining bureaucracies and preventing military cronies from crowding out private enterprise. Itmeans giving women and girls an equal chance to compete in the classroom and in the workplace.And this is the only way we are going to meet the needs of the modern world – plain and simple.

　　It also means making the fight against corruption a global security priority of the first order.Bribery, fraud, other forms of venality feed organized crime. Those are your narcotics traffickers,those are your arms traffickers, and those are often the greatest links to terrorist networks. Theycontribute to human trafficking, discourage honest and accountable investment. They undermineentire communities.

　　Now, I don’t have any illusions. I used to be a prosecutor. I understand that corruption is as oldas government itself. Every nation, including mine – the United States – has wrestled at somepoint to a greater or lesser degree with corruption at one point or another. But today, the cost ofcorruption globally is exploding, and it’s exploding everywhere. In the Middle East, a recent surveyfound that fully one-third of citizens had to pay a bribe in order to get a supposedly freegovernment service. In Ukraine, under the previous government, corrupt governance helpedtrigger an international crisis that we’re still engaged in. In Cameroon, a senior inspector of policewas arrested for selling local ID cards to Boko Haram – to the militants coming in from Nigeria.And just last week in Pakistan, officers seized currency and gold worth nearly 6.5 million from thehome of a senior official in Balochistan province.

　　Now, the good news is that more and more citizens – citizens around the world are saying no tothis runaway corruption. We saw this in Guatemala City last year when thousands of citizensgathered in the central square every Sunday, rain or shine, to protest the venality that they knewwas taking place at the highest levels of their government. And with the help of some courageousnational prosecutors, they exposed a sitting vice president, and then a sitting president, and theyput their country’s political leaders on notice for many years to come.

　　Tomorrow, I will have the privilege of attending Prime Minister Cameron’s Anti-Corruption Summitin London, and we’re going to discuss the various ways that the international community can helpcitizens of the world to address this challenge. For our part, just last week, President Obamaproposed new legislation that would, for the first time, require all 50 states to collect informationon shell companies for law enforcement to be able to use, and shed greater light on real estatetransactions in cities like Miami and New York, which are used too often to shelter illicit funds. Andwe have to stop and ask on an international basis how it is that a bunch of generals in a countrylike Nigeria, which happened previously, and the new president has run against all this, and we’reworking with him now to change it. But Nigeria saw tens of billions of dollars taken out of thecountry. Those were schools. Those were healthcare. Those were infrastructure. There was newjobs hidden in bank accounts around the world.

　　Over the last four years, U.S. foreign assistance for anti-corruption programs has more thandoubled. And today, we’re working in dozens of countries to help build online, automatedbusiness registries, which will reduce both the red tape and the opportunities for graft to holdpeople up with a bribe. We’re also expanding programs that send American judges overseas toshare best practices. And we’re developing better intelligence on kleptocrats and their networks inorder to deny bad actors the profits from graft and more.

　　Now, I will have more to say about this at tomorrow’s summit, but for now let me justunderscore: Despite recent progress, as a global community, we just are not doing nearly enoughto eliminate this scourge, and that needs to change if we’re going to have a chance of addressingthe concerns of those two billion young people. Because we all pay for it – you pay for it, we payfor it. Corruption costs the global economy about $2.6 trillion a year. That’s 2.6 trillion that couldbe going towards the infrastructure, towards healthcare, towards education, towards food securityinitiatives, or any number of areas where additional funding is desperately needed. You can buy alot with 2.6 trillion. In fact, that’s about 10 times the total amount the international communityspends each year on all development assistance. Think what a difference we could make.

　　Now, the magnitude of corruption that exists today is not just disgraceful, it’s also dangerous.There’s nothing more demoralizing, more destructive, more disempowering to any citizen than thebelief that the system is rigged against them and that people in positions of power – to use adiplomatic term – are crooks who are embezzling the future of their own people, and by the way,depositing their ill-gotten gains in financial institutions that claim respectability.

　　Good, responsible governance is supposed to protect citizens’ future, not pillage it. And that’s astrue about the economy as it is about the environment.

　　Now, I know that to some people, because I’ve been at this a long time – when I first came backfrom Vietnam, I took part in a Earth Day – the first Earth Day in America, 1970, and we’ve been atit ever since trying to change things. And I know that some people still think environmentalprotection is a fringe issue. But the fact is that because of ignorance at first, and more recently theirresponsibility of vested interests that have consciously sought to obscure the facts in pursuit oftheir own short-sighted greed, the fragile home that all of us share today is changing in alarmingways.

　　That’s why today’s third and final generational challenge is to finally step up and deal withwidespread environmental degradation taking place around the world.

　　Ladies and gentlemen, in just the past 40 years, we human beings have wiped out fully one-half ofmarine vertebrates. The vast majority of the world’s fish stocks are either fully exploited oroverfished. We’re adding millions of tons of plastic trash into the ocean every year. At this point,our ocean is so polluted that hundreds of dead zones exist, where life simply cannot exist.

　　On land, we are destroying the equivalent of 16 or 17 football fields of forest every minute. Andbecause of the obscene amount of pollution that we allowed into the air over the years, today 3.5billion of the world’s population live in communities that fall short of the air quality standards thatare set by the World Health Organization.

　　And of course, on top of these troubling statistics, there’s the greatest threat that our planet hasfaced in modern history: (inaudible), climate change.

　　Week after week, month after month, year after year, we continue to see new evidence of thedanger climate change poses to our planet. We learned recently that 2015 was the hottest year inrecorded history by far, after knowing that the decade before that was the hottest on record, andthe one before that the second hottest on record, and the one before that the third hottest onrecord. And when does somebody stop and say, “Enough”? And now we already know this year isalready on track to be the warmest of all.

　　Now, most of you who are here are under the age of 30. And those of you who are may not beaware of it, but you haven’t lived through one single month in your life – not one – that wascooler than its 20th century average.

　　The facts are staggering. And yet, despite all the science, one of my former colleagues thought itwould be persuasive to walk onto the floor of the United States Senate with a snowball in his handand point to it as evidence that climate change is a hoax. I hate to tell you, folks, it provessomething for sure, but not what he intended. (Laughter.)

　　Thankfully, as we saw in Paris last December, most of the world understands the severity of thisthreat and is moving decisively towards collective action to fix it.

　　The Paris climate change agreement that I had the privilege of signing with my granddaughter onmy lap in New York a few days ago is important – not because the text, in and of itself, is going toguarantee that we keep the level of temperature at 2 degrees centigrade and don’t get to thetipping point. That’s not what it absolutely guarantees. It doesn’t mean we’ll avoid the worsteffects of climate change. The Paris Agreement is important because of the clear signal it sendsfrom nearly 200 nations to all sectors of the global economy: that the future will and must befueled by cleaner energy sources.

　　Now, today we know: The new energy future, the efficiencies, the alternative sources, the cleanoptions – none of what we must achieve is beyond our capacity. It isn’t as if we’re sitting herestumped by a mathematical equation we can’t figure out or by some logarithm that is yet to bediscovered. That’s not the situation. There’s only one question: Is doing something and what weneed to do beyond our collective resolve?

　　And happily, there is now a growing body of evidence that we’re beginning to move in the rightdirection. Last year, global investment in renewable energy was at an all-time high – nearly $330billion.

　　For the first time in history – despite the low price of coal and oil and gas – more of the world’smoney was spent fostering renewable energy technologies than on new fossil fuel plants. So we’restarting to break through.

　　And by the middle of this century, it is projected that roughly $50 trillion will be invested in newenergy – and the vast majority of that in clean energy.

　　Now, if these numbers don’t, as raw numbers, mean something to you, here’s the upshot: Theclean energy market of the future is the largest market the world has ever seen. My state ofMassachusetts made a lot of money in the 1990s because we’re a tech state and we were ridingthe crest of computers and communications and so forth – not as much as a couple of otherstates: California, Texas, others. That economic energy of the 1990s created more wealth in ournation than at any time since the 1920s, when didn’t have an income tax. And every singlequintile of American taxpayer saw their income go up – everybody. The – it was a $1 trillionmarket with 1 billion users. The energy market today – 4 to 5 billion users today. It’s going to goup to 9 billion users if we do what we can do. And it is in the multi-trillions of dollars in the size ofmarket.

　　So if, in the spirit of Paris, we continue to pursue solutions together, the enormous economicbenefits of that market is going to be felt by people everywhere.

　　And the good news is this cooperation is actually written right into the Paris Agreement. Becausewe all understand that this is, in fact, a generational challenge – and it will take a full generation toaddress what has to be done – the Paris Agreement requires ongoing international collaboration,calling on the parties to ramp up their climate plans every five years, with a mandatoryrequirement that people engage in the measurement and then the ramp-up. So our collectiveresponse actually gets stronger and stronger as time passes and technology evolves.

　　Now, ultimately, our success is going to depend on whether we keep our eye on the ball andmaintain the momentum that finally exists today.

　　And in the time ahead, we are going to need an all-out global commitment – not only to cleanenergy – but to clean air, clean harbors, clean coasts, and the preservation of our endangeredocean and marine resources. Now, if you think current conflicts are all-consuming, imagine whathappens when we add food shortages, water shortages, stronger storms, longer droughts, steadyrises in sea-levels, which are already being predicted, and entire countries swallowed by the sea. Ifwe don’t make the choices available to us today, then the problems of today are going to pale incomparison with what’s coming down the road. But we don’t hear a lot of people, not enoughpeople, laying those real choices in front.

　　The bottom line is that we don’t have to sit here and wait for this to happen. If we accelerate thetransition towards clean energy solutions – we have the technology, we have the knowledge.Solar has now moved down – I saw contracts the other day that are being sold at about 3 cents, 3-point-something cents per kilowatt hour, less than that. In one case, Saudi Arabia did a solarcontract for 2.9, I think it is. That is totally, more than, competitive with coal and other sources.But a lot of countries can’t afford to do it. They need to make the transition. And I believe,President Obama believes, that the global community needs to come together in order to helpthem do it. If we do this, we have time to prevent the worst impacts of climate change. And thesolution here is not a mystery. Our planet is not predestined for destruction. It is, as PresidentKennedy reminded us, in our hands, when he said in his inauguration, “that here on earth God’swork must truly be our own.” And when you look at any scripture of any religion or anyphilosophy of life, and it will tell you something about creation and preservation and theimportance of our respect for our environment.

　　So my friends, the same is true for each of the other challenges that I addressed today. There isnothing inevitable about succumbing to the problems that we confront – nothing. Each is aproduct of human choice or lack of choice. And what we have the power to choose, we have thepower to change.

　　And that is why I am confident that in our collective ability we can meet these challenges. Andwhen you consider that the university you attend predates not only the founding of my nation,but also the Reformation, the Renaissance – the Magna Carta – you consider that this institutionsurvived the Black Death, endured the War of the Roses, the Great War, and the Blitz – come on, Ithink it’s a little easier on this campus than elsewhere to put things in perspective, and I’m sureyou can (inaudible). (Laughter.) Oxford has stood through it all – with a history that reaches backto the Middle Ages – or in other words, the last time a subfusc was in fashion. (Laughter.)

　　So because of the creativity and the persistence of previous generations, we actually have hugeadvantages over them – over all of that history that I just talked about. A child today is morelikely to be born healthy, more likely to be adequately fed, more likely to get the necessaryvaccinations, more likely to attend school, and more likely to actually live a long life than anyearlier generation. We are the beneficiaries – you are the beneficiaries – of incrediblebreakthroughs in medicine and education, communications, transportation, food production –you name it. And meanwhile, the number of nuclear weapons has fallen by two-thirds in the last30 years – while the number of democracies has doubled. That is called progress. Against all thecacophony of talking heads on TV and the sort of sense of doom and gloom, we can make – weare making progress.

　　So on that note, let me just underscore to you – we who live in countries like the United Statesand the United Kingdom have actually one more significant advantage. For centuries, mankind hasseen governments come and governments go. Virtually every form of government imagined hasbeen attempted somewhere – from totalitarianism to socialism, monarchy, constitutionalmonarchy, military junta, theocracy, republic.

　　It isn’t a coincidence that the course of history has led so much of the modern world to settle ondemocracy. And no one put it better, as usual, than Winston Churchill, born less than 10 milesfrom here, ‎who called democracy the worst form of government there is – except for all theothers. Democracy can be noisy, frustrating, and occasionally chaotic. But the genius in democracyis that it carries within itself the remedy for its own shortcomings. Wrong policies can – through aprocess of open debate, which you cherish here at the Oxford Union – be replaced by betterpolicies. Poor leaders can – through a process of free and fair elections – be replaced by betterones.

　　We have a reason, I think, to look to the future not only with resolve, but with confidence, andwith the understanding that there is much we can accomplish if we just dare to push the limits. Ifyou don’t believe me, ask Leicester City fans. (Laughter.) Or consider the words of anotherAmerican who studied here many years ago, T.S. Eliot. “Only those who will risk going too far,” hesaid, “can possibly find out how far one can go.”

　　So each of you will leave this university with a different path in mind. Some of you may decide towork in government. Others may continue on in academia. The world is moving so fast now that Iguarantee you many of you will embark on a career in a company not yet founded, using devicesnot yet developed, based on ideas not yet conceived. But no matter where you end up – nomatter what you choose to do – don’t underestimate the power that you have to make adifference. Participation is the best antidote to pessimism. If you have questions, ask them. Whenyou see injustices, go out and correct them. When you dream up a solution, pursue it and put iton the table and fight for it. That is the way. And it’s only if you do that, only if you push to seehow far you can go, that you’re going to find out that you have gone on as far as you can andyou’ve made a difference. That will make all the difference, my friends, and I hope you have agreat adventure and have some fun while you’re doing it.

　　Thank you very much. (Applause.)

　　You have no idea how excited I was when I heard I get to sit on a throne. (Laughter.)

（编辑：何莹莹）