Death Is Optional (Video/Transcript)

 Source: Edge

• Yuval Noah Harari

Professor, Department of History, Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Author, Sapiens

• Daniel Kahneman

Recipient, Nobel Prize in Economics, 2002; Eugene Higgins Professor of Psychology Emeritus, Princetin; Author, Thinking Fast and Slow

 

DANIEL KAHNEMAN: Before asking you what are the questions you are asking yourself, I want to say that I've now read your book Sapiens twice and in that book you do something that I found pretty extraordinary. You cover the history of mankind. It seems to be like an invitation for people to dismiss it as superficial, so I read it, and I read it again, because in fact, I found so many ideas that were enriching. I want to talk about just one or two of them as examples.

Your chapter on science is one of my favorites and so is the title of that chapter, "The Discovery of Ignorance". It presents the idea that science began when people discovered that there was ignorance, and that they could do something about it, that this was really the beginning of science. I love that phrase.

And in fact, I loved that phrase so much that I went and looked it up. Because I thought, where did he get it? My search of the phrase showed that all the references were to you. And there are many other things like that in the book.

How did you transition from that book to what you're doing now?

YUVAL NOAH HARARI: It came naturally. My big question at present is what is the human agenda for the 21st century. And this is a direct continuation from covering the history of humankind, from the appearance of Homo Sapiens until today, so when you finish that, immediately, you think, okay, what next? I'm not trying to predict the future, which is impossible, now more than ever. Nobody has a clue how the world will look like in, say, 40, 50 years. We may know some of the basic variables but, if you really understand what's going on in the world, you know that it's impossible to have any good prediction for the coming decades. This is the first time in history that we're in this situation.

I'm trying to do something that is the opposite of predicting the future. I'm trying to identify what are the possibilities, what is the horizon of possibilities that we are facing? And what will happen from among these possibilities? We still have a lot of choice in this regard.

KAHNEMAN: Could you elaborate on these possibilities? I mean, what's the distinction between predicting and setting up a range of possibilities?

HARARI: I think about it in visual terms, whether you try to narrow your field of vision, or to broaden it. For example, when you try to predict the weather for tomorrow, there are a lot of possibilities to begin with. It might rain, it might snow, there might be sunshine. And a good meteorologist, according to one view of science, is a meteorologist that takes this horizon of possibilities and narrows it down to a single possibility or just two possibilities. It will certainly rain, maybe hard, maybe less so. That's it.

And after you finish reading the book or taking the course or whatever, your view of the world in this sense is narrower, because you have fewer possibilities to consider. You know it's going to rain. The same thing in economics, in medicine, and also in history. People ask what will happen next? You have all these possibilities, and I'm telling you, China is going to be the superpower, end of story. You narrow down the range.

There is room of course for that. When I go to the doctor to get a medicine, I want him to narrow down the possibilities, not just to enumerate all the options. But I personally like the kind of science that broadens the horizons. I often tell my students at the University that my aim is that after three years, you basically know less than when you first got here. When you first got here, you thought you knew what the world is like and what is war and what is a state, and so forth. After three years, my hope is that you will understand that you actually know far, far less, and you come out with a much broader view of the present and of the future.

KAHNEMAN: But do you get to a broader view by becoming more differentiated, that is, by having more detailed views? Or is it just that you get people to consider a possibility that wouldn't occur to them?

HARARI: Mainly, the second way. The main thing, and my main task as a historian is to get people to consider the possibilities which usually are outside their field of vision, because our present field of vision has been shaped by history and has been narrowed down by history, and if you understand how history has narrowed down our field of vision, this is what enables you to start broadening it.

Let me give you an example that I'm thinking about a lot today, concerning the future of humankind in the field of medicine. At least to the best of my understanding, we're in the middle of a revolution in medicine. After medicine in the 20th century focused on healing the sick, now it is more and more focused on upgrading the healthy, which is a completely different project. And it's a fundamentally different project in social and political terms, because whereas healing the sick is an egalitarian project ... you assume there is a norm of health, anybody that falls below the norm, you try to give them a push to come back to the norm, upgrading is by definition an elitist project. There is no norm that can be applicable to everybody.

And this opens the possibility of creating huge gaps between the rich and the poor, bigger than ever existed before in history. And many people say no, it will not happen, because we have the experience of the 20th century, that we had many medical advances, beginning with the rich or with the most advanced countries, and gradually they trickled down to everybody, and now everybody enjoys antibiotics or vaccinations or whatever, so this will happen again.

And as a historian, my main task is to say no, there were peculiar reasons why medicine in the 20th century was egalitarian, why the discoveries trickled down to everybody. These unique conditions may not repeat themselves in the 21st century, so you should broaden your thinking, and you should take into consideration the possibility that medicine in the 21st century will be elitist, and that you will see growing gaps because of that, biological gaps between rich and poor and between different countries. And you cannot just trust a process of trickling down to solve this problem.

There are fundamental reasons why we should take this very seriously, because generally speaking, when you look at the 20th century, it's the era of the masses, mass politics, mass economics. Every human being has value, has political, economic, and military value, simply because he or she is a human being, and this goes back to the structures of the military and of the economy, where every human being is valuable as a soldier in the trenches and as a worker in the factory.

But in the 21st century, there is a good chance that most humans will lose, they are losing, their military and economic value. This is true for the military, it's done, it's over. The age of the masses is over. We are no longer in the First World War, where you take millions of soldiers, give each one a rifle and have them run forward. And the same thing perhaps is happening in the economy. Maybe the biggest question of 21st century economics is what will be the need in the economy for most people in the year 2050.

And once most people are no longer really necessary, for the military and for the economy, the idea that you will continue to have mass medicine is not so certain. Could be. It's not a prophecy, but you should take very seriously the option that people will lose their military and economic value, and medicine will follow.

KAHNEMAN: You seem to be describing this as something that is already happening. Are you referring to developments such as the plans to do away with death? That absolutely would not be a mass project. But could you elaborate on that?

HARARI: Yes, the attitude now towards disease and old age and death is that they are basically technical problems. It is a huge revolution in human thinking. Throughout history, old age and death were always treated as metaphysical problems, as something that the gods decreed, as something fundamental to what defines humans, what defines the human condition and reality.
Even a few years ago, very few doctors or scientists would seriously say that they are trying to overcome old age and death. They would say no, I am trying to overcome this particular disease, whether it's tuberculosis or cancer or Alzheimers. Defeating disease and death, this is nonsense, this is science fiction.

But, the new attitude is to treat old age and death as technical problems, no different in essence than any other disease. It's like cancer, it's like Alzheimers, it's like tuberculosis. Maybe we still don't know all the mechanisms and all the remedies, but in principle, people always die due to technical reasons, not metaphysical reasons. In the middle ages, you had an image of how does a person die? Suddenly, the Angel of Death appears, and touches you on the shoulder and says, "Come. Your time has come." And you say, "No, no, no. Give me some more time." And Death said, "No, you have to come." And that's it, that is how you die.

We don't think like that today. People never die because the Angel of Death comes, they die because their heart stops pumping, or because an artery is clogged, or because cancerous cells are spreading in the liver or somewhere.
These are all technical problems, and in essence, they should have some technical solution. And this way of thinking is now becoming very dominant in scientific circles, and also among the ultra-rich who have come to understand that, wait a minute, something is happening here. For the first time in history, if I'm rich enough, maybe I don't have to die.

KAHNEMAN: Death is optional.

HARARI: Death is optional. And if you think about it from the viewpoint of the poor, it looks terrible, because throughout history, death was the great equalizer. The big consolation of the poor throughout history was that okay, these rich people, they have it good, but they're going to die just like me. But think about the world, say, in 50 years, 100 years, where the poor people continue to die, but the rich people, in addition to all the other things they get, also get an exemption from death. That's going to bring a lot of anger.

KAHNEMAN: Yes. I really like that phrase of "people not being necessary," can you elaborate on this dystopia? It's a new phrase for me. Such things, by the way, are developing very, very slowly. I was worrying about what computers would do in displacing people. I was worried about this when I was a graduate student, and that was more than 50 years ago, and I thought that's a very serious, immediate problem. It wasn't a serious immediate problem then, but a serious ... not immediate, but it may be a serious problem now. You have thought about it deeply, can you tell us about people becoming unnecessary, economically, and unnecessary militarily? What will that do?

HARARI: The basic process is the decoupling of intelligence from consciousness. Throughout history, you always had the two together. If you wanted something intelligent, this something had to have consciousness at its basis. People were not familiar with anything not human, that didn't have consciousness, that could be intelligent, that could solve problems like playing chess or driving a car or diagnosing disease.

Now, what we're talking about today is not that computers will be like humans. I think that many of these science fiction scenarios, that computers will be like humans, are wrong. Computers are very, very, very far from being like humans, especially when it comes to consciousness. The problem is different, that the system, the military and economic and political system doesn't really need consciousness.

KAHNEMAN: It needs intelligence.

HARARI: It needs intelligence. And intelligence is a far easier thing than consciousness. And the problem is, computers may not become conscious, I don't know, ever ... I would say 500 years ... but they could be as intelligent or more intelligent than humans in particular tasks very quickly. And if you think, for example, about this self-driving car of Google, and you compare the self-driving car to a taxi driver, a taxi driver is immensely more complex than the self-driving car.

There are a zillion things that the taxi driver can do and the self-driving car cannot. But the problem is that from a purely economic perspective, we don't need all the zillion things that the taxi driver can do. I only need him to take me from point A to point B as quickly and as cheaply as possible. And this is something a self-driving car can do better, or will be able to do better very quickly.

And when you look at it more and more, for most of the tasks that humans are needed for, what is required is just intelligence, and a very particular type of intelligence, because we are undergoing, for thousands of years, a process of specialization, which makes it easier to replace us. To build a robot that could function effectively as a hunter-gatherer is extremely complex. You need to know so many different things. But to build a self-driving car, or to build a "Watson-bot" that can diagnose disease better than my doctor, this is relatively easy.

And this is where we have to take seriously, the possibility that even though computers will still be far behind humans in many different things, as far as the tasks that the system needs from us are concerned, most of the time computers will be able to do better than us. And again, I don't want to give a prediction, 20 years, 50 years, 100 years, but what you do see is it's a bit like the boy who cried wolf, that, yes, you cry wolf once, twice, three times, and maybe people say yes, 50 years ago, they already predicted that computers will replace humans, and it didn't happen. But the thing is that with every generation, it is becoming closer, and predictions such as these fuel the process.

The same thing will happen with these promises to overcome death. My guess, which is only a guess, is that the people who live today, and who count on the ability to live forever, or to overcome death in 50 years, 60 years, are going to be hugely disappointed. It's one thing to accept that I'm going to die. It's another thing to think that you can cheat death and then die eventually. It's much harder.

While they are in for a very big disappointment, in their efforts to defeat death, they will achieve great things. They will make it easier for the next generation to do it, and somewhere along the line, it will turn from science fiction to science, and the wolf will come.

KAHNEMAN: What you are doing here, in terms of prediction, is about trends. The trend is clear, what progress means is clear, but when you describe people as superfluous, you are presenting the background for a huge problem. Who decides what to do with the superfluous people. Especially, what are the social implications that you see, the technical or technological development that you foresee?

HARARI: Well, again, I am an historian, I am not a biologist, I'm not a computer scientist, I am not in a position to say whether all these ideas are realizable or not. I can just look from the view of the historian and say what it looks from there. So the social and philosophical and political implications are the things that interest me most. Basically, if any of these trends are going to actually be fulfilled, then the best I can do is quote Marx and say that everything solid melts into air.

Once you really solve a problem like direct brain-computer interface ... when brains and computers can interact directly, to take just one example, that's it, that's the end of history, that's the end of biology as we know it. Nobody has a clue what will happen once you solve this. If life can basically break out of the organic realm into the vastness of the inorganic realm, you cannot even begin to imagine what the consequences will be, because your imagination at present is organic. So if there is a point of Singularity, as it's often referred to, by definition, we have no way of even starting to imagine what's happening beyond that.

Looking before the point of Singularity, just as the trend is gathering pace, one thing we can say is there may be a repeat of what happened in the 19th century with the Industrial Revolution, of the opening of huge gaps between different classes and different countries. Generally speaking, the 20th century was a century of closing gaps, fewer gaps between classes, between genders, between ethnic groups, between countries. So maybe we are starting to see the reopening of these gaps with a vengeance, gaps that will be far greater then were between the industrialized and the non-industrialized part of the world, 150 or 200 years ago.

In the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century, what humanity basically learned to produce was all kinds of stuff, like textiles and shoes and weapons and vehicles, and this was enough for the very few countries that underwent the revolution to subjugate everybody else. What we're talking about now is like a second Industrial Revolution, but the product this time will not be textiles or machines or vehicles, or even weapons. The product this time will be humans themselves.

We're basically learning to produce bodies and minds. Bodies and minds are going to be the two main products of the next wave of all these changes. And if there is a gap between those that know how to produce bodies and minds and those that do not, then this is far greater than anything we saw before in history.

And this time, if you're not fast enough to become part of the revolution, then you'll probably become extinct. Countries like China, missed the train for the Industrial Revolution, but 150 years later, they somehow have managed to catch up, largely, speaking in economic terms, thanks to the power of cheap labor.

Now, those who miss the train will never get a second chance. If a country, if a people, today are left behind, they will never get a second chance, especially because cheap labor will count for nothing. Once you know how to produce bodies and brains and minds, cheap labor in Africa or South Asia or wherever, it simply counts for nothing. So in geopolitical terms, we might see a repeat of the 19th century, but in a much larger scale.

KAHNEMAN: What I find difficult to imagine is that as people are becoming unnecessary, the translation of that into sort of 20th-century terms is mass unemployment. Mass unemployment means social unrest. And it means there are things going to happen, processes going to happen in society, as a result of people becoming superfluous, and that is a gradual process, people becoming superfluous.

We may be seeing that in the growing inequality now, we may be seeing the beginning of what you're talking about. But have you thought, in the same way as you're thinking in interesting and novel ways about technology, have you thought about the social side?

HARARI: Yes, the social side is the more important and more difficult one. I don't have a solution, and the biggest question maybe in economics and politics of the coming decades will be what to do with all these useless people. I don't think we have an economic model for that. My best guess, which is just a guess, is that food will not be a problem. With that kind of technology, you will be able to produce food to feed everybody. The problem is more boredom, and what to do with people, and how will they find some sense of meaning in life when they are basically meaningless, worthless.

My best guess at present is a combination of drugs and computer games as a solution for most ... it's already happening. Under different titles, different headings, you see more and more people spending more and more time, or solving their inner problems with drugs and computer games, both legal drugs and illegal drugs. But this is just a wild guess.

What I can say is that maybe we are again in analogous position to the world in 1800. When the Industrial Revolution begins, you see the emergence of new classes of people. You see the emergence of a new class of the urban proletariat, which is a new social and political phenomenon. Nobody knows what to do with it. There are immense problems. And it took a century and more of revolutions and wars for people to even start coming up with ideas what to do with the new classes of people.

What is certain is that the old answers were irrelevant. Today, everybody is talking about ISIS, and the Islamic fundamentalism, and the Christian revival, and things like that. There are new problems, and people go back to the ancient texts, and think that there is an answer in the Sharia, in the Qur'an, in the Bible. We also had the same thing in the 19th century. You had the Industrial Revolution. You had huge sociopolitical problems all over the world, as a result of industrialization, of modernization. You got lots of people thinking that the answer is in the Bible or in the Qur'an. You had religious movements all over the world.

In the Sudan, for example, you have the Mahdi establishing Muslim theocracy according to the Sharia. An Anglo-Egyptian army comes to suppress the rebellion, and they are defeated. They behead General Charles Gordon.
Basically, this is the same thing that you're now seeing with ISIS. Nobody remembers the Mahdi today because the answers that he found in the Qur'an and the Sharia to the problem of industrialization didn't work.

In China, the biggest war of the 19th century is not the Napoleonic war, it's not the American Civil War, it's the Taiping Rebellion in China, which started in 1850, when a failed scholar named Hong Xuiquan, if I remember correctly, had a vision from God that he, Hong, is the younger brother of Jesus Christ, and that he had a divine mission to establish the Kingdom of Heavenly Peace on Earth, and to solve all the problems China had due to the coming of the British and of modern industry. He started the rebellion, and millions followed him. According to the most moderate estimates, 20 million people were killed in the Taiping Rebellion, and it was 14 years before they suppressed it. He didn't establish a Kingdom of Heavenly Peace, and he didn't solve the problems of industrialization.

Eventually, people came up with new ideas, not from the Sharia, and not from the Bible, and not from some vision. People studied industry, they studied coalmines, they studied electricity, they studied steam engines, railroads, they looked at how these developments transformed the economy and society, and they came up with some new ideas. Not necessarily everybody liked the new ideas, but it was something at least to argue against.

And looking from the perspective of 2015, I don't think we now have the knowledge to solve the social problems of 2050, or the problems that will emerge as a result of all these new developments. We should be looking for new knowledge and new solutions, and starting with the realization that in all probability, nothing that exists at present offers a solution to these problems.

KAHNEMAN: What is very interesting and frightening about this scenario is that it is true, as you point out, that people have lived to work, or worked to live, and that what you are describing is a scenario in which work is unnecessary for most people.

There is a class of people who work because they enjoy it, and are able to do it, and then there is most of humanity, for which work no longer exists. That mass of people cannot work, but they can still kill people. How do you see the possibility of strife and conflict, between the superfluous people and those who are not?

HARARI: Once you are superfluous, you don't have power. Again, we are used to the age of the masses, of the 19th and 20th century, where you saw all these successful massive uprisings, revolutions, revolts, so we are used to thinking about the masses as powerful, but this is basically a 19th century and 20th century phenomenon.

If you go back in most periods in history, say to the middle ages, you do see peasant uprisings. They all failed, because the masses were not powerful. And once you become superfluous, militarily and economically, you can still cause trouble, of course, but you don't have the power to really change things.

Once you have the revolution we are undergoing in the military in which the number of soldiers simply becomes irrelevant in comparison with factors like technology, you still need people, but you don't need the millions of soldiers, each with a rifle. You need much smaller numbers of experts, who know how to produce and how to use the new technologies. Against such military powers, the masses, even if they somehow organize themselves, don't stand much of a chance. We are not in Russia of 1917, or in 19th century Europe.

And so again, it's not a prophecy. Maybe it will turn out differently. But as a historian, the most important thing to realize is that the power of the masses, that we are so used to, is rooted in particular historical conditions, economic, military, political, which characterized the 19th and 20th centuries. These conditions are now changing, and there is no reason to be certain that the masses will retain their power.

KAHNEMAN: What you're describing, the scenario that you're pointing to, is one of fairly rapid technological progress, and it really doesn't matter whether we're talking about 50 years or 150 years. There is a social arrangement that has been around for a long time, for decades and centuries. And they change relatively slowly. So what you bring to my mind, as I hear you, is a major disconnect between rapid technological change and quite rigid cultural and social arrangements that will not actually keep up.

HARARI: Yes, this is one of the big dangers, one of the big problems with technology. It develops much faster than human society and human morality, and this creates a lot of tension. But, again, we can try and learn something from our previous experience with the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century, that actually, you saw very rapid changes in society, not as fast as the changes in technology, but still, amazingly fast.

The most obvious example is the collapse of the family and of the intimate community, and their replacement by the state and the market. Basically, for the entirety of history, humans lived as part of these small and very important units, the family and the intimate community, say 200 people, who are your village, your tribe, your neighborhood. You know everybody; they know you. You may not like them, but your life depends on them. They provide you with almost everything you need in order to survive. They are your healthcare. There is no pension fund; you have children, they are your pension fund. They are your bank, your school, your police, everything. If you lose your family and the intimate community, you're dead, or you have to find a replacement family.

And this was the situation for hundreds of thousands of years of evolution. Even once history started, say 70,000 years ago, and you see all the changes and agriculture and cities and empires and religions, you don't see any significant change on that level. Even in the year, say, 1700, most people in the world still live as part of families and intimate communities, which provide them with most of what they need in order to survive. And you could have easily imagined, at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, that this will continue to be the situation.
If you were, say, an evolutionary psychologist back in 1800, and you saw the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, you could have very confidently said all these changes in technology are well and good, but they won't change the basic structure of human society. Human society is built from these small building blocks, the family and intimate community, because this is kind of an evolutionary given. Humans must have this. They cannot live in any other way.

And you look at the last 200 years, and you see them collapse after millions of years of evolution. Suddenly, within 200 years, the family and the intimate community break, they collapse. Most of the roles filled by the family and by the intimate community for thousands and tens of thousands of years, are transferred very quickly to new networks provided by the state and the market. You don't need children, you can have a pension fund. You don't need somebody to take care of you. You don't need neighbors and sisters or brothers to take care of you when you're sick. The state takes care of you. The state provides you with police, with education, with health, with everything.

And you can say that maybe life today is in some ways worse than in 1700, because we have lost much of the connection to the community around us ... it's a big argument ... but it happened. People today actually manage to live, many people, as isolated, alienated individuals. In the most advanced societies, people live as alienated individuals, with no community to speak about, with a very small family. It's no longer the big extended family. It's now a very small family, maybe just a spouse, maybe one or two children, and even they, they might live in a different city, in a different country, and you see them maybe once in every few months, and that's it. And the amazing thing is that people live with that. And that's just 200 years.

What might happen in the next hundred years on that level of daily life, of intimate relationships? Anything is possible. You look at Japan today, and Japan is maybe 20 years ahead of the world in everything. And you see these new social phenomena of people having relationships with virtual spouses. And you have people who never leave the house and just live through computers. And I don't know, maybe it's the future, maybe it isn't, but for me, the amazing thing is that you'd have thought, given the biological background of humankind, that this is impossible, yet we see that it is possible. Apparently, Homo Sapiens is even more malleable than we tend to think.

We can also learn something from the Agricultural Revolution. Some experts think that agriculture was the biggest mistake in human history, in terms of what it did to the individual. It's obvious that on the collective level, agriculture enhanced the power of humankind in an amazing way. Without agriculture, you could not have cities and kingdoms and empires and so forth, but if you look at it from the viewpoint of the individual, then for many individuals, life was probably much worse as peasants in ancient Egypt then as hunter gatherers 20,000, 30,000 years earlier. You had to work much harder. The body and mind of Homo Sapiens evolved for millions of years in adaptation to climbing trees and picking fruits and to running after gazelles and looking for mushrooms. And suddenly you start all day digging canals and carrying water buckets from the river and harvesting the corn, and grinding the corn, this is much more difficult for the body, and also much more boring to the mind.

In exchange for all this hard work, most peasants got a far worse diet than hunter-gatherers, because hunter-gatherers relied on dozens of species of animals and plants and mushrooms and whatever, that provided them with all the nutrients and vitamins they needed, whereas peasants relied on usually just a single crop, like wheat or rice or potatoes. And on top of that, you had all the new social hierarchies and the beginning of mass exploitation, where you have small elites exploiting everybody else. Putting all this together, there is a good case to be said for the idea that for the individual, agriculture was perhaps the biggest mistake in history.

This may provide us with a lesson, or at least something to think about with regard to the new technological revolution. Nobody would doubt that all the new technologies will enhance again the collective power of humankind, but the question we should be asking ourselves is what's happening on the individual level. We have enough evidence from history that you can have a very big step forward, in terms of collective power, coupled with a step backwards in terms of individual happiness, individual suffering. We need to ask ourselves about the new technologies emerging at present, not only how are they going to impact the collective power of humankind, but also how are they going to impact the daily life of individuals.

In terms of history, the events in Middle East, of ISIS and all of that, is just a speed bump on history's highway. The Middle East is not very important. Silicon Valley is much more important. It's the world of the 21st century ... I'm not speaking only about technology.

In terms of ideas, in terms of religions, the most interesting place today in the world is Silicon Valley, not the Middle East. This is where people like Ray Kurzweil, are creating new religions. These are the religions that will take over the world, not the ones coming out of Syria and Iraq and Nigeria.

President Barack Obama Weekly Address March 7, 2015 (Video/Trascript )

President Barack Obama
Weekly Address
The White House
March 7, 2015

Hi, everybody. Sunday is International Women’s Day -- a day to celebrate remarkable women and girls worldwide, and to re-dedicate ourselves to defending the fundamental rights and dignity of all people.

That’s why, this week, Michelle and I launched a new initiative on a topic that’s close to both our hearts: girls’ education.

It’s called “Let Girls Learn.” And its goal is to help more girls around the world go to school and stay in school. Right now, 62 million girls who should be in school, are not. And that’s not an accident. It’s the direct result of barriers, large and small, that stand in the way of girls who want to learn.

Maybe their families can’t afford the school fees. Maybe the risk of being hurt or kidnapped or even killed by men who will do anything to stop girls from learning is just too great. Or maybe they aren’t in school because they’re expected to get married and become mothers while they’re still teenagers -- or even earlier. In too many parts of the world, girls are still valued more for their bodies than for their minds. That’s just plain wrong. And we all have to do more to stop it.

That’s the idea behind “Let Girls Learn.” We’re making it clear to any country that’s our partner -- or that wants to be our partner -- that they need to get serious about increasing the number of girls in school. Our diplomats and development experts are already hard at work. Our Peace Corps volunteers will play a big role, too. And we’re putting our partnerships with NGOs, businesses and foundations to work on behalf of girls everywhere.

I come to this issue as the leader of the world’s largest economy, and Commander-in-Chief of the world’s most powerful military, and I’m convinced that a world in which girls are educated is a safer, more stable, more prosperous place. When girls are educated, their future children are healthier and better nourished. Their future wages increase, which in turn strengthens their families’ security. National growth gets a boost, too. And places where women and girls are treated as full and equal citizens tend to be more stable and more democratic.

But I also come to this issue as the father of two wonderful young women. And I know that there are lots of girls just like Malia and Sasha out there -- girls who are funny and caring and inquisitive and strong, and have so much to offer the world.

It’s a privilege to be the parent of girls. And we want to make sure that no girl out there is denied her chance to learn -- that no girl is prevented from making her unique contributions to the world. Because every girl -- every girl -- deserves our respect. And every girl deserves an education.

Thanks, and have a great weekend.

The Warming World: Is Capitalism Destroying Our Planet?

By Alexander Jung, Horand Knaup, Samiha Shafy and Bernhard Zand

 World leaders decided in Copenhagen that global warming should be limited to 2 degrees Celsius. Achieving that target, though, would take nothing less than a miracle. With another round of climate negotiations approaching, it is becoming increasingly clear that mankind has failed to address its most daunting problem.

 Humans are full of contradictions, including the urge to destroy things they love. Like our planet. Take Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott. Like everyone living Down Under, he's extremely proud of his country's wonder of the world, the Great Barrier Reef. At the same time, though, Abbott believes that burning coal is "good for humanity," even though it produces greenhouse gases that ultimately make our world's oceans warmer, stormier and more acidic. In recent years, Australia has exported more coal than any other country in the world. And the reef, the largest living organism on the planet, is dying. Half of the corals that make up the reef are, in fact, already dead.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi also wants the best for his country and is loathe to see it damaged by droughts, cyclones and storm surges. Nevertheless, he is planning on doubling India's coal production by 2019 in addition to importing more coal from Australia. It is necessary to do so, he says, to help his country's poor. India is already the third largest producer of greenhouse gases, behind China and the United States. But climate change is altering the monsoon season, with both flooding and drought becoming more common.

And who would accuse the majority of US Senators of being insensitive to the extreme shortage of water afflicting California? Yet the law-making body recently brushed aside everything science has learned about global warming and voted down two measures that attributed the phenomenon to human activity. For Americans and foreign tourists alike, California is a magical place, famous for Yosemite National Park, its Pacific coastline, its golden light. The state also grows around a third of all US produce. For now. An historic drought that has been ongoing for over three years has forced farmers to abandon their fields and to slaughter their animals.

Since 1880, when global temperatures began to be systematically collected, no year has been warmer than 2014. The 15 warmest years, with one single exception, have come during the first 15 years of the new millennium. Indeed, it has become an open question as to whether global warming can be stopped anymore -- or at least limited as policymakers have called for. Is capitalism ultimately responsible for the problem, or could it actually help to solve it?

At the end of November, political leaders from around the world will gather in Paris to once again address the problem of global warming, just as they did five years ago in Copenhagen. Back then, a deep chasm opened up between the rich countries that want to protect the climate and the poor countries who are demanding that the rich countries pay for measures to combat climate change. Participants were hopelessly at loggerheads and proved unable to reach an agreement. The only product of the long days and nights of negotiation was a single number: 2 degrees Celsius.

Since then, politicians around the world have repeated the number like a mantra: Average global temperatures should not be allowed to increase by more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) relative to pre-industrial times. A "dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system" is to be prevented, reads the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The choice of 2 degrees Celsius as the maximum limit was largely an arbitrary one. Indeed, the 44 members of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) believe that, in a world that is 2 degrees warmer, many of their islands would disappear. They are demanding that the upper target limit be reduced to 1.5 degrees Celsius. But as things currently look, the 2-degree target is hopelessly utopian. It is supposed to sound reassuring, but it is little more than hot air. Since 1880, average global temperatures have already increased by 0.8 degrees Celsius, and the consequences have become widely evident.

At the Paris climate summit, leaders will have to reach agreement on questions that led to bitter disagreement five years ago in Copenhagen. Which countries have to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and by how much? What does it cost? And most importantly: Who pays? The goal is that of coming up with a successor treaty to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the first international agreement aimed at protecting the climate.

Should greenhouse gas emissions continue as they are today, the world will likely reach the 2 degree Celsius maximum within 30 years. Indeed, in order to have any chance at all of stopping global warming at 2 degrees Celsius, emissions would have to fall by 10 percent per year starting in 2017 at the latest, says Fatih Birol, head of the International Energy Agency.

But is that even possible? In 2014, around 60 percent more greenhouse gases were pumped into the atmosphere than in 1990, the year against which most reduction targets are measured. There is little to indicate that the trend might soon change. And if it doesn't, if emissions continue at today's rate, the World Bank calculates that average global temperatures will increase by 4 degrees Celsius by the end of the century. The consequences of so much warming, the World Bank says, would be "extreme heat-waves, declining global food stocks, loss of ecosystems and biodiversity, and life-threatening sea level rise."

The sheer scope of the destructive effect the production of fossil fuels already has today is visible when you visit places that provide the world with its supplies of coal, oil and natural gas. Louisiana, for example, an oil-rich US state whose coast is sinking into the sea and which is threatened by hurricanes. Or the Chinese coal province Hebei, whose 70 million inhabitants would be better advised not to leave their homes on many days of the year because levels of fine particulate matter go far beyond those considered to be safe.

Is Capitalism the Problem?
 
Following the Copenhagen fiasco, the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Yvo de Boer of the Netherlands, resigned in frustration. He had, he said in a 2013 interview with Bloomberg Business, lost his faith in climate diplomacy. "The only way that a 2015 agreement can achieve a 2-degree goal is to shut down the whole global economy," he said.

Might it be enough, though, to fundamentally change the rules by which the global economy functions? That is what Canadian bestselling author Naomi Klein is demanding. (Editors note: SPIEGEL International has also published an accompanying interview with Klein.) The leftist icon's controversial new book, which will be published in Germany next week, is a carefully researched polemic about mankind's collective failure in the face of the greatest challenge it has ever faced. Klein spells out her thesis in the introduction to her book "This Changes Everything": "We have not done the things that are necessary to lower emissions because those things fundamentally conflict with deregulated capitalism, the reigning ideology for the entire period we have been struggling to find a way out of this crisis."

In other words, climate protection and capitalism are mutually exclusive. In order to stop global warming, Klein argues, we have to use fewer resources. But in order to prevent the collapse of our capitalist economic system, unlimited growth is necessary. "Only one of these sets of rules can be changed," Klein writes. "And it's not the laws of nature."

Regardless of whether one finds her standpoint to be plausible, radical or beyond the pale, it is difficult to disagree with one of her points: Our reaction to climate change is inversely proportional to the dimension of the problem it presents.

For over two decades, more than 20,000 delegates from countries around the world have been traveling from conference to conference to negotiate a treaty to save the world. It is an historic challenge they are facing -- a heroic assignment they are failing to master. A miracle is necessary to put the brakes on climate change -- or a revolution, a global mass movement. Were such a thing to materialize, that too would be a miracle. The slow pace of climate change stands in fatal contrast to the speed of our times, an era characterized by distraction, consumption and shrinking attention spans.

When did global warming cease being merely a computer simulation? It must have been at some point between the 1970s, when the world experienced 660 natural catastrophes, and the last decade, with its 3,322 storms, heat waves and flooding. It came quietly, as most of us were looking away.

Since then, the ice cap at the North Pole is melting, glaciers in the Alps are disappearing and dikes on the North Sea have had to be heightened. Rainfall has become even more intense in Western Europe whereas precipitation has fallen in the southern part of the Continent. Extreme weather phenomena such as violent storms, torrential downpours and hail storms have become much more frequent in Germany since 1970. Back then, the country experienced an average of 10 such phenomena annually, says Peter Hoeppe, head of climate risk research for Munich RE, the world's largest re-insurance company. "Now, there are 35." In 2013, a July hailstorm in Germany cost insurance companies €3.6 billion, making it the most expensive catastrophe in the world that year.

On the Arabian Peninsula, which is almost entirely covered in desert, ground water levels are falling dangerously. In Africa and Central Asia, deserts are expanding. In Israel, Australia and Brazil, lakes and rivers are drying up. Soon, climate change could result in shortages of such goods as coffee, chocolate and wine from southern France.

Disappearing Land
 
In the American South, on the coast of Louisiana, a piece of land the size of a soccer field disappears into the sea every hour. At such a rate, the New York Times Magazine recently calculated, Central Park would vanish within a month. The Principality of Monaco would be history after just 15 days.

Had Naomi Klein sought to find a place to illustrate her theory of the destructive effects capitalism has on our climate, she couldn't have found a better one than Louisiana. It is the second poorest state in the US, but it is also an important hub of the oil and natural gas industries. It is a place that shows in all its grotesqueness what can happen when desire for fossil fuels trumps common sense.

The Pointe-au-Chien Indian tribe has lived on Louisiana's coast for generations, 50 miles southwest of New Orleans. The tribe today counts some 45 families, and they have had to move several times in recent years. Following Hurricane Lili in 2002, they built wooden houses on high stilts to avoid the storm surges, a strategy that helped them survive hurricanes Rita, Gustav, Cindy, Isodore and Katrina, the most expensive natural catastrophe in US history. Almost 2,000 people died in Hurricane Katrina, which slammed into Louisiana in August of 2005, and hundreds of thousands lost their homes. The storm caused more than $125 billion in damage.

"When the wind blows, the water rises," says Donald Dardar, 59. Dardar is the second chairman of the Point-au-Chien tribe, a compactly built man with tousled gray hair and the raw hands of a fisherman. After a storm, Dardar says nonchalantly, you clean up, just as it has always been. Lately, though, the wind has been blowing harder and the storms have become more frequent. And sea levels are rising. It's not a good combination.

Dardar's brother Russell steers the boat to the south, through a mosaic of land and water. He advances slowly and carefully, over black oil lines. A dolphin appears next to the small vessel; drilling rigs can be seen in the distance.

The boat has been chugging along for half an hour before Donald Dardar points ahead: "This is where we lived when I was a child." On the right side of the canal, a white cross can be seen among dead oak trees. "The gravestones have washed away," Dardar says. "But the dead haven't been forgotten."

Over the last several decades, energy companies have drilled over 50,000 holes into this section of Louisiana coast in order to suck oil and natural gas out of the ground. A 10,000-mile-long web of channels and pipelines criss-crosses the Mississippi Delta marshland, bringing the oil to refineries on the mainland.

Back when the river was still allowed to flow untamed into the Gulf of Mexico, the land at its mouth was constantly renewed by the sediment carried by the Mississippi. But today, the tamed river carries hardly any sediment at all and the land is sinking into the sea, bit by bit. The canals dug by the oil and gas industry have exacerbated the problem by allowing salt water from the sea to penetrate deep into the delta wetlands, killing the vegetation and causing the fragile land to sink. Thus, the industry whose products help cause global warming is also making the coast more vulnerable to one of its consequences: rising ocean levels.

Dardar and his brother live from oyster and shrimp fishing, as do most in their tribe. But in 2010, just five years after Hurricane Katrina, they experienced the next horrific disaster in the form of the largest oil spill ever seen off the US coast. In the Gulf of Mexico, the oil platform Deepwater Horizon exploded, and it took its operator BP fully 87 days to stop the oil from gushing out of the sea floor.

In the first years following the disaster, Dardar says, they hardly caught anything. Now, business is improving again and 2014 was a year free of bad storms. "We don't want to leave," he says. "We're going to stay until ..." He stops talking in the middle of his sentence.

The Green General
 
Native Americans don't have much of a lobby in Louisiana, but they do have a three-star general on their side: Russell Honoré, who led the army's relief mission following Hurricane Katrina. Since then, Honoré -- a broad-shouldered, mustachioed man of 67 who is fond of wearing cowboy boots -- is considered a hero around these parts. "You know who gets rich in Louisiana?" he asks with a dismissive laugh. "Oil and gas companies. And the lawyers who sue oil and gas companies."

Environmentalists, by contrast, had a tough time of it prior to Honoré's arrival. In 2013, he formed an alliance of environmental groups, dubbed it the Green Army, and began recruiting supporters. People took notice, in part because of Honoré's military past. He was a tank commander in the 1980s on the West German border with East Germany and later, as general of the First Army, he had 500,000 soldiers under his command. He drives a Cadillac Escalade and likes to eat blood sausage and pork rinds.

Honoré is sitting on a veranda in front of a horse stall in Baton Rouge, where his stallion Big Red is kept. Big Red used to be named Pie, but the general thought the name didn't suit the animal. "I spent 37 years, three months and three days in the army," Honoré says. "I didn't come back to my home state to see it run by oil and gas companies."

The companies, he says, pollute the air and water and destroy the land while politicians who depend on their donations allow them to do as they please. In frequent public appearances, Honoré encourages people to protest against the destruction of their environment. He also threw his support behind a lawsuit filed against 97 oil, gas and pipeline companies that, should it be successful, will overshadow even the multi-billion dollar proceedings against BP following the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe.

The lawsuit was filed by the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-East (SLFPA-E), a local flood protection authority that was founded in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. SLFPA-E came to the conclusion that oil and gas exploitation in the region is the primary cause of the coastlands sinking into the sea and that the companies involved should pay to protect the coast to the degree possible. The plan to provide that protection is called the Coastal Master Plan, but between $50 billion and $100 billion dollars are necessary to implement it, depending on which calculation you go by.

Earlier this month, a federal district court dismissed the lawsuit and the governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal, has been doing all he can to prevent it as well. Those who publicly support it have earned themselves powerful enemies. But the general of the Green Army isn't concerned. "The governor is a smart guy," Honoré says. "But he sold his brain to the oil and gas industry. He goes with the dollar."

Governor Bobby Jindal said last September that climate change is nothing more than a "Trojan horse" for the left: "a way for them to come in and make changes to our economy that they would otherwise want to make." Jindal is considering a presidential run in 2016 and statements like that tend to be well received by the Republican grassroots.

Not long ago, the Senate -- which has been in Republican hands since last November -- backed Jindal's viewpoint by rejecting the notion that humankind has anything to do with global warming. "God is still up there," Jim Inhofe, the new Republican chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, has said. "The arrogance of people to think that we human beings would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is to me outrageous."

In the US, in the year 2015, the issue of climate change continues to trigger a culture war between two adversarial political camps. On the one side are the Republicans who, following last November's midterm elections, now control both houses of Congress. On the other are the weakened Democrats, led by President Barack Obama, who at least seems to take the warnings of climate scientists seriously.

"No challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change," Obama said in January during his State of the Union address. "I will not let this Congress endanger the health of our children." His government, he said, has done more than any before it to protect the climate.

It was a strong, courageous speech by a president who is famous for his public speaking abilities. More, even, than for his deeds. It is, after all, also true that the US under Obama has become one of the world's largest producers of oil and natural gas. When he steps down in 2016, his country will likely produce more fossil fuels than even Saudi Arabia. And that's a development Obama is indeed proud of. During a campaign appearance in Oklahoma in 2012, he said: "We've added enough new oil and gas pipelines to encircle the Earth and then some."

India and China Blockade Efforts
 
Last December, the United Nations' climate diplomats converged once again, bringing together hundreds of politicians and negotiators as well as thousands of experts and lobbyists. This time they met in a tent city the Peruvian government had erected in central Lima. Their aim was to prepare for the Paris summit and take initial steps toward a new climate treaty.

The atmosphere was once again one of hope -- despite the resolution taken by many delegates to lower their expectations following the disastrous Copenhagen summit. Shortly before the Lima conference, the American and Chinese presidents had actually made some progress, agreeing for the first time to concrete annual figures for emissions reduction targets, even if they remain modest.

For one week, attendees met in mobile units and tents, discussing, arguing and sometimes actually making a serious effort to save the planet. But the important questions didn't get answered in Lima. Like the speed at which emissions cuts should be made and what they might cost.

On the surface, the talks focused on commitments, obligations and controls. Behind the scenes, however, delegates forged new alliances. The industrialized nations, including Germany, wanted to leave behind the old world order -- with rich countries on one side and poor ones on the other -- and hold emerging economies like China, Brazil and Indonesia more accountable for their emissions.

As in Copenhagen, however, envoys representing those countries wanted to hear nothing of it. Instead the Chinese acted as the voice of the developing nations and as the chief blockader among them. "We were astounded by the extent to which the African countries aligned themselves with China," an EU negotiator would later confess.

An additional emerging economy, one which has now become the world's third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, likewise showed little willingness to budge: India. Even as growth in China has begun to level off, India's big growth spurt still lives in the future. Indeed, analysts expect economic growth in India to exceed that seen in China within just a few years. In a related forecast, India's consumption of coal is expected to increase from just under 600 million tons to over 1 billion.

When Barack Obama arrived for his state visit in New Delhi at the end of January, Indian Prime Minister Modi announced his contribution to improving the global climate: India plans to expand its solar energy capacity from today's modest 3 gigawatts to 100 gigawatts by 2022. The US, meanwhile, promised to provide a large share of the investments necessary to make that happen in exchange for the opportunity for US companies to invest in the development of India's civilian nuclear energy sector.

Modi, who addressed environmental issues during his campaign, now has other priorities. By 2022, he plans to ensure that all Indians have access to electricity, 24 hours a day. It's a goal that China achieved long ago, not to mention the West. But the price has been large, measured in the mega- and gigatons of greenhouse gas emissions now polluting the atmosphere.

The scale of China's coal consumption is historic in its dimensions: The country is the world's largest producer and consumer of coal and it emits more greenhouse gases than the United States and Europe combined. The cities of Beijing and Tianjin as well as the Hebei and Shandong provinces alone burn more coal than all of Europe.

Hebei is to China what China is to the world: a coal-consuming monster. The province surrounding Beijing has more than 70 million inhabitants and is half as big as Germany. It produces more than double the amount of steel created in the US each year. Seven of China's 10 most-polluted cities are located in Hebei. Among the most polluted is Xingtai, a city two hours away by high-speed train from Beijing. In 2013, Xingtai had a daily average level of 150 micrograms per cubic meter of fine particulate matter, six times the maximum amount suggested by the World Health Organization. Visitors arriving at the city's train station are greeted by an acrid burning smell and the other side of the station is blurred by a gray haze.

One of the biggest polluters is Kingboard Cokechem, a coking plant in the northeastern part of the city. It's a subsidiary of Hong Kong-based, publicly traded Kingboard Chemical Holding, whose shareholders also include major international investors like JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Farmer Zhao Chunhe, 60, stands at the edge of her wheat field located next to the coking facility. Every few minutes, a massive cloud puffs out of its quenching tower. Although the field's yield hasn't changed much since the arrival of the coking plant, she says the color definitely has. "Earlier, the wheat was white," she says. "Now it's black and we have to wash it before we can sell it."

On the street that leads from Zhao Chunhe's village to Kingboard, heavy trucks loaded with coal from the surrounding mines are lined up for kilometers. Empty trucks wait to load the refined coke.

An electronic display board is set up at the factory gate indicating the coking plant's emissions values. On this particular morning, there are 479 micrograms per cubic meter of fine particulate matter, 19 times the recommended amount. Officially, children are no longer allowed to go out onto the playground at this level of smog. During the winter, hundreds of millions of Chinese live in conditions of thick smog. A study by the Global Commission on the Economy and the Climate concluded that air pollution was linked in 2010 to the premature deaths of 1.23 million people in China. In other words, the very industry that is destabilizing the climate is also ruining the health of the people who live near these industrial sites.

In contrast to many countries in the West, the consequences of China's failed environmental policies are clearly palpable. In order to mollify an angry public, Beijing has spent the past three years tightening emissions laws and raising fines for violaters. Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang announced in March 2014 that China was "declaring war on pollution."

It's Time for a New Energy Policy
 
So does Naomi Klein have it right? Is climate protection doomed to failure so long as the world continues to pursue growth?

During that past two centuries, humanity has experienced something never before seen on this scale: a period of almost continuous growth. Earth's population has increased sevenfold since 1800. Per capita earnings have grown on average from $700 to $6,500 per year and economic output is 60 times bigger than it was 200 years ago.

That continual boom, though, was made possible fossil fuels, resources people long held to be inexhaustible. Coal, followed by oil and natural gas, made unprecedented economic growth in Europe, America, Australia and Asia possible.
Naomi Klein's argument sounds almost banal. She believes that growth is inevitably linked to destruction of nature and that the climate can only be protected by curbing economic activity. In other words, the only thing that can help the environment is giving up material things. "Less is more" is the mantra of the degrowth movement, which began more than four decades ago when a research group lead by the American Dennis Meadows was tasked by the Club of Rome to examine the frontiers of economic expansion in 1972. The resulting report was titled, "The Limits to Growth," and the theory that grew out of it has been finding great resonance ever since.

As proof of the irreconcilability of capitalism with environmental goals, economists like to cite the "rebound effect," which holds that all efforts to increase efficiency are negatively offset by increasing demand.

The first person to describe the rebound effect was William Stanley Jevons of Britain. His book, "The Coal Question," was published 150 years ago and described how steam engines required decreasing amounts of coal because of technological advances. Nevertheless, he noted, consumption of the fuel continued to rise because an increasing number of steam engines were being used. Jevons concluded that more efficient use of energy is not accompanied by sinking consumption. Instead the opposite is true.

Newer car engines use less fuel, heating becomes more efficient and yet the total consumption of oil, natural gas and fuels continues to increase because automobiles get heavier and apartments larger. In that way, what has been gained in efficiency has been lost again -- at least to a certain degree. But the extent of the effect is the subject of debate. A few studies have concluded that no more than 15 percent of the savings are lost. Others claim the loss to be as great as 30, 50 or even 80 percent.

In some cases, though, the rebound effect can also destroy all efficiency gains. Lighting provides a good example. With each level of development -- from the candle to the light bulb to today's LED lights -- less and less energy was required, with efficiency increasing within 200 years by 1,000 times. And yet per capita use of lights has grown at an even faster rate -- by more than 25,000 times.

A similar trend can be observed in crude oil. Thanks largely to improved extraction technologies, the global supply has grown so much that it has caused prices to collapse and triggered a renaissance of gas-guzzling SUVs.

Low energy prices should provide a natural opportunity to reform energy policies, at least in theory. Developing nations could pare back the subsidies they pay to make fuel cheaper for consumers. And industrialized nations should systematically invest the billions saved by consumers through cheap fuel into renewable energies. Unfortunately, though, that kind of farsightedness goes beyond the constraints of the current everyday political reality in which many governments are trapped.

That backdrop is the reason that proponents of degrowth like Naomi Klein consider the idea of green growth to be an illusion, indeed self-deception. But it's a view that Ottmar Edenhofer doesn't share. The researcher says there's a "fallacy" in that thinking.

Edenhofer is a professor for the economics of climate change at Berlin's Technical University, the only academic post of its kind in the world. His office is located on the second floor of a modernized brick building that was formerly part of a Berlin gas plant. The professor stares out at the steel frame of a gasometer, "an icon of the Industrial Revolution," he says almost awestruck. Today electric cars are parked in front of it charging their batteries, and energy for the campus is provided by solar and wind power, biogas and geothermal sources.

Is Germany a Model for the World?
 
For Edenhofer, the site is the perfect place to conduct his work: Although he's surrounded by physical evidence of the fossil past, it's the transition to renewable energies that dominates the thinking here. Edenhofer says he firmly believes that growth can be managed in ways that are not in conflict with the environment. For that to happen, it is essential that an important criterion be fulfilled: "We have to put the right price on CO2."

As societies, we haven't succeeded in doing that so far. The European Union has had emissions trading for 10 years now, but the system has never functioned as intended.

The idea is nevertheless a fascinating one. The EU places an upper limit on pollution rights, with just over 2 billion certificates allocated in 2014. Around 11,000 companies participate in emissions trading, purchasing the certificates and trading them amongst each other, thus setting a price for each ton of CO2 emitted.

The problem with the system is that the EU -- under pressure from countries like Poland, where 92 percent of electricity is generated from coal, and Germany, with its strong coal lobby -- issues far more certificates than the companies actually need. The result being that the price on CO2 emissions certificates is stagnating at under €7.

Additionally, the emissions trading system doesn't even cover half of the greenhouse gases that are being emitted. It excludes the transportation, real estate and agriculture sectors. All efforts to change the system are met with stiff resistance. Edenhofer argues that if the price of CO2 were considerably higher, there would be greater incentive to invest in low-carbon technologies. "The problem is not that we're short on fossil energy sources," he says, "it's that there's not enough storage space in the atmosphere. We need to apply a price to this scarcity. That's the whole point."

Of course, it would also be possible to reduce emissions by restricting growth the way Naomi Klein proposes. Edenhofer says it would be conceivable, but costly. Assuming a 1 percent reduction in both economic output and CO2 emissions in an environment of global gross domestic product of $70 trillion and emissions of 33 gigatons, he calculates it would cost $2,100 to cut a ton of CO2.

By comparison, he says it would only cost around $40 to reduce the same amount of CO2 by instead using wind power. Edenhofer believes that deliberately lowering growth is the most expensive option.

The climate economist argues that Earth's fate hinges largely on whether countries can agree to an appropriate price for CO2. Of course, the world is far from reaching any agreement, particularly given that Europe is comparatively more environmentally conscientious than other areas of the world and it still hasn't come up with a working model.

Therefore, at the climate conference in Paris, world leaders will once again be discussing who will have to foot the bill for a global shift to sustainable energies.
The wealthiest countries will have to bring a lot of money to the table. In 2010, they held out the prospect of spending $100 billion a year starting in 2020, with just under one-third of that money coming from governments. The rest was to be raised by private investors. Germany would be responsible for about 10 percent of the fund. "The developing nations are expecting us to provide reliable financing," says State Secretary Jochen Flasbarth, Germany's chief climate negotiator. "If we don't manage that in Paris, then there will be no treaty."

No real solution has been found at any of the other climate summits over the past 23 years. What if that happens again this time in Paris?

Two countries could prove decisive in the battle to improve the climate globally.

One is Germany. As controversial as it is domestically, the "German Energiewende," the shift away from nuclear power and fossil fuels to renewable energies, has become a term that has been picked up internationally. So far, the Germans have gone further than any other country in seeking to address the very existential question at hand: Can an industrialized nation succeed in entirely transforming its energy production within the scope of a few decades? And if so, at what price? Germany has begun this process, but the costs have proven enormous. German electricity customers are currently paying €23 billion a year in extra costs, billions that are the direct result of the expansion of alternative energies.

It is acknowledged globally that the Germans have led the pack in pushing ahead with the development of wind and solar energy. "You shouldered the development costs for everyone else with your Renewable Energies Act," an energy expert from the United States told a delegation from the German parliament attending the Lima conference.

Indeed, the rest of the world is directly profiting from Germany's shift. A study conducted by the Fraunhofer Institute for Wind Energy and Energy System Technology and the Berlin think tank Agora Energiewende found that wind and solar energy are becoming the "cheapest way of producing electricity in an increasing number of regions around the world."

Germany has also been more ambitious than all other countries in setting its goals for emissions reductions. The country is aiming to cut emissions of greenhouse gases by 40 percent compared to 1990 levels by 2020. It's an old target, set by the German government in 2007 and anchored anew in the coalition agreement for Chancellor Angela Merkel's current administration. Despite this, emissions grew considerably in Germany between 2008 and 2013.

This is largely due to the coal industry. In Germany, 80 percent of all energy consumed is still derived from coal, oil or gas. The country remains home to about 500 coal-fired power plants. Germany currently has plans to take 48 coal power stations offline by 2020, but it will need to shut down at least 50 additional plants in order to achieve its emissions target. As of today, there is still no law requiring such closures, and operators of power plans are firmly opposed.
And what about the other country that could provide a solution for climate change?

It turns out that there's an alternative narrative to China's coal-producing Hebei province and its oppressive pollution. In the western part of the country's Gansu province, the skies are upliftingly blue, and giant vehicles can be seen on the highway transporting the elegant white rotor blades of wind turbines.

The first wind park to be seen is located just outside of the city of Yumen and it stretches for as far as the eye can see. So far, around half of the planned 20,000 turbines at the Gansu Windfarm have been erected. Some 7,427 have already been connected to the grid, with a capacity of 8.1 gigawatts, or almost one-quarter of Germany's wind energy output.

A Bit of Hope
 
China's wind power capacity has quintupled over the past four years. Meanwhile, investments in coal, gas and oil power plants declined by 50 percent in China between 2008 and 2012, whereas those in non-fossil energies rose by 40 percent. In total, around one-third of the electricity produced in China today comes from renewable sources.

It is a telling indicator of the country's enormous hunger for energy that the world's greatest climate polluter is also the biggest user of hydro, wind, solar and bioenergy. China's capacity for renewable energies is greater than that of the United States, Germany, India and Spain combined.

"What we're looking at here is a long-term project," says Li Maolin of the Goldwind wind turbine factory. Pictures mounted on the staircase to his office are of visits from high-ranking party officials right up to President Xi Jinping, who declared the use of clean energy to be part of his "Chinese dream".

It's not necessarily even environmental concerns that are driving China's leaders to green energies. It's also due to their worry that, in their years of economic boom, they have become overly dependent on fossil fuel suppliers. In 1993, China became a net importer of crude oil, natural gas followed in 2007 and coal in 2011.

Ironically, it is China's boundless pursuit of growth that is now contributing to its efforts to make green energy more affordable and thus competitive. In order to secure its energy supplies, China has increased manufacturing of solar panels one hundred fold in the past 10 years. That's one reason that prices for photovoltaic cells have fallen by 80 percent since 2008. A similar development is happening in the wind industry. Recently, Australian economists John Mathews and Hao Tan concluded in the science magazine Nature that, in this manner, China is "contributing more than any other country to a climate-change solution."

Whatever the reason or motive behind Beijing's move to reduce coal consumption and increase the share of renewable energies, the rest of the world should accept it because China is officially planning to double both economic output and the per-capita income during each of the next two decades.

Can China succeed, almost as a byproduct of its growth, in saving the climate? Or will it be the Germans, with their more deliberate efforts? Perhaps one should seek to think a bit more daringly here: Maybe humankind will pull off a miracle in the end. After all, destroying the things we love is by no means a law of nature.

President Barack Obama Weekly Address February 28, 2015 (Video/Trascript )

President Barack Obama
Weekly Address
The White House
February 28, 2015

 

Hi everybody.  In America, we believe that a lifetime of hard work and responsibility should be rewarded with a shot at a secure, dignified retirement.  It’s one of the critical components of middle-class life – and this week, I took new steps to protect it.

Six years after the crisis that shook a lot of people’s faith in a secure retirement, our economy is steadily growing.  Last year was the best year for job growth since the 1990s.  All told, over the past five years, the private sector has added nearly 12 million new jobs.  And since I took office, the stock market has more than doubled, replenishing the 401(k)s of millions of families.

But while we’ve come a long way, we’ve got more work to do to make sure that our recovery reaches more Americans, not just those at the top.  That’s what middle-class economics is all about—the idea that this country does best when everyone gets their fair shot, everybody does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules.

That last part—making sure everyone plays by the same set of rules—is why we passed historic Wall Street Reform and a Credit Card Bill of Rights.   It’s why we created a new consumer watchdog agency.  And it’s why we’re taking new action to protect hardworking families’ retirement security. If you’re working hard and putting away money, you should have the peace of mind that the financial advice you’re getting is sound and that your investments are protected.

But right now, there are no rules of the road.  Many financial advisers put their clients’ interest first – but some financial advisers get backdoor payments and hidden fees in exchange for steering people into bad investments.  All told, bad advice that results from these conflicts of interest costs middle-class and working families about $17 billion every year.

This week, I called on the Department of Labor to change that – to update the rules and require that retirement advisers put the best interests of their clients above their own financial interests.  Middle-class families cannot afford to lose their hard earned savings after a lifetime of work.  They deserve to be treated with fairness and respect.  And that’s what this rule would do.

While many financial advisers support these basic safeguards to prevent abuse, I know some special interests will fight this with everything they’ve got.  But while we welcome different perspectives and ideas on how to move forward, what I won’t accept is the notion that there’s nothing we can do to make sure that hard-working, responsible Americans who scrimp and save can retire with security and dignity.

We’re going to keep pushing for this rule, because it’s the right thing to do for our workers and for our country.  The strength of our economy rests on whether hard-working families can not only share in America’s success, but can also contribute to America’s success.  And that’s what I will never stop fighting for – an economy where everyone who works hard has the chance to get ahead.

Thanks, and have a great weekend.

President Barack Obama Weekly Address February 7, 2015 (Video/Trascript )

President Barack Obama
Weekly Address
Indianapolis, Indiana
February 7, 2015

Hi everybody. I’m talking with you today from Ivy Tech Community College in Indianapolis, where I just held a town hall and heard from everyday Americans about what we can do, together, to make their lives a little better.

This week, we got news that confirms what we already know -- that our businesses continue to create jobs for hardworking folks all across the country. Last month, America’s businesses added another 267,000 jobs. In 2014, our economy created more than 3.1 million jobs in all -- the best year for job growth since the late 1990s. All told, over the past 59 months, the private sector has added 11.8 million new jobs—the longest streak on record. And in the single most hopeful sign for middle class families, wages are rising again.

America is poised for another good year – as long as Washington works to keep this progress going. We have to choose -- will we accept an economy where only a few of us do spectacularly well, or will we build an economy where everyone who works hard can get ahead?

Because while we’ve come a long way, we’ve got more work to do to make sure that our recovery reaches more Americans, not just those at the top. That’s what middle-class economics is all about -- the idea that this country does best when everyone gets their fair shot, does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules.

This week, I sent Congress a budget built on middle-class economics. It helps families afford childcare, health care, college, paid leave at work, homeownership, and saving for retirement, and it could put thousands of dollars back into the pockets of a working family each year. It helps more Americans learn new skills to earn higher wages, including by making two years of community college free for responsible students all across the country. It invests in the research and infrastructure our businesses need to compete and create high-paying jobs. And it pays for this with smart spending cuts and by fixing a tax code that’s riddled with special-interest loopholes for folks who don’t need them, allowing us to offer tax breaks to students and families who do need them.
I believe this is where we need to go to give working families more security in a time of constant economic change. And I’ll work with anyone—Republican or Democrat—who wants to get to “yes” on these issues. We won’t agree on everything, and that’s natural -- but we should stop refighting old battles, and start working together to help you succeed in the new economy.

That’s what you elected us to do -- not to turn everything into another Washington food fight, but to have debates that are worthy of this country, and to build an economy not just where everyone can share in America’s success, but where everyone can contribute to America’s success.

Thanks, and have a great weekend.

President Barack Obama Speaks at the National Prayer Breakfast (Video/Transcript)

THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you.  Well, good morning. 

Giving all praise and honor to God.  It is wonderful to be back with you here.  I want to thank our co-chairs, Bob and Roger.  These two don’t always agree in the Senate, but in coming together and uniting us all in prayer, they embody the spirit of our gathering today.

I also want to thank everybody who helped organize this breakfast.  It’s wonderful to see so many friends and faith leaders and dignitaries.  And Michelle and I are truly honored to be joining you here today.

I want to offer a special welcome to a good friend, His Holiness the Dalai Lama -- who is a powerful example of what it means to practice compassion, who inspires us to speak up for the freedom and dignity of all human beings.  (Applause.)  I’ve been pleased to welcome him to the White House on many occasions, and we’re grateful that he’s able to join us here today.  (Applause.)

There aren’t that many occasions that bring His Holiness under the same roof as NASCAR.  (Laughter.)  This may be the first.  (Laughter.)  But God works in mysterious ways.  (Laughter.)   And so I want to thank Darrell for that wonderful presentation.  Darrell knows that when you’re going 200 miles an hour, a little prayer cannot hurt.  (Laughter.)  I suspect that more than once, Darrell has had the same thought as many of us have in our own lives -- Jesus, take the wheel.  (Laughter.) Although I hope that you kept your hands on the wheel when you were thinking that.  (Laughter.)

He and I obviously share something in having married up.  And we are so grateful to Stevie for the incredible work that they’ve done together to build a ministry where the fastest drivers can slow down a little bit, and spend some time in prayer and reflection and thanks.  And we certainly want to wish Darrell a happy birthday.  (Applause.)  Happy birthday.

I will note, though, Darrell, when you were reading that list of things folks were saying about you, I was thinking, well, you're a piker.  I mean, that -- (laughter.)

 I mean, if you really want a list, come talk to me.  (Laughter.)  Because that ain’t nothing.  (Laughter.)  That's the best they can do in NASCAR?  (Laughter.)
 
Slowing down and pausing for fellowship and prayer -- that's what this breakfast is about.  I think it's fair to say Washington moves a lot slower than NASCAR.  Certainly my agenda does sometimes.  (Laughter.)  But still, it’s easier to get caught up in the rush of our lives, and in the political back-and-forth that can take over this city.  We get sidetracked with distractions, large and small.  We can’t go 10 minutes without checking our smartphones -- and for my staff, that's every 10 seconds.  And so for 63 years, this prayer tradition has brought us together, giving us the opportunity to come together in humility before the Almighty and to be reminded of what it is that we share as children of God.

And certainly for me, this is always a chance to reflect on my own faith journey.  Many times as President, I’ve been reminded of a line of prayer that Eleanor Roosevelt was fond of. She said, “Keep us at tasks too hard for us that we may be driven to Thee for strength.”  Keep us at tasks too hard for us that we may be driven to Thee for strength.  I’ve wondered at times if maybe God was answering that prayer a little too literally.  But no matter the challenge, He has been there for all of us.  He’s certainly strengthened me “with the power through his Spirit,” as I’ve sought His guidance not just in my own life but in the life of our nation.

Now, over the last few months, we’ve seen a number of challenges -- certainly over the last six years.  But part of what I want to touch on today is the degree to which we've seen professions of faith used both as an instrument of great good, but also twisted and misused in the name of evil.

As we speak, around the world, we see faith inspiring people to lift up one another -- to feed the hungry and care for the poor, and comfort the afflicted and make peace where there is strife.  We heard the good work that Sister has done in Philadelphia, and the incredible work that Dr. Brantly and his colleagues have done.  We see faith driving us to do right.

But we also see faith being twisted and distorted, used as a wedge -- or, worse, sometimes used as a weapon.  From a school in Pakistan to the streets of Paris, we have seen violence and terror perpetrated by those who profess to stand up for faith, their faith, professed to stand up for Islam, but, in fact, are betraying it.  We see ISIL, a brutal, vicious death cult that, in the name of religion, carries out unspeakable acts of barbarism  -- terrorizing religious minorities like the Yezidis, subjecting women to rape as a weapon of war, and claiming the mantle of religious authority for such actions.

We see sectarian war in Syria, the murder of Muslims and Christians in Nigeria, religious war in the Central African Republic, a rising tide of anti-Semitism and hate crimes in Europe, so often perpetrated in the name of religion.

So how do we, as people of faith, reconcile these realities -- the profound good, the strength, the tenacity, the compassion and love that can flow from all of our faiths, operating alongside those who seek to hijack religious for their own murderous ends?

Humanity has been grappling with these questions throughout human history.  And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ.  In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.  Michelle and I returned from India -- an incredible, beautiful country, full of magnificent diversity -- but a place where, in past years, religious faiths of all types have, on occasion, been targeted by other peoples of faith, simply due to their heritage and their beliefs -- acts of intolerance that would have shocked Gandhiji, the person who helped to liberate that nation.

So this is not unique to one group or one religion.  There is a tendency in us, a sinful tendency that can pervert and distort our faith.  In today’s world, when hate groups have their own Twitter accounts and bigotry can fester in hidden places in cyberspace, it can be even harder to counteract such intolerance. But God compels us to try.  And in this mission, I believe there are a few principles that can guide us, particularly those of us who profess to believe.

And, first, we should start with some basic humility.  I believe that the starting point of faith is some doubt -- not being so full of yourself and so confident that you are right and that God speaks only to us, and doesn’t speak to others, that God only cares about us and doesn’t care about others, that somehow we alone are in possession of the truth.

Our job is not to ask that God respond to our notion of truth -- our job is to be true to Him, His word, and His commandments.  And we should assume humbly that we’re confused and don’t always know what we’re doing and we’re staggering and stumbling towards Him, and have some humility in that process.  And that means we have to speak up against those who would misuse His name to justify oppression, or violence, or hatred with that fierce certainty.  No God condones terror.  No grievance justifies the taking of innocent lives, or the oppression of those who are weaker or fewer in number.

And so, as people of faith, we are summoned to push back against those who try to distort our religion -- any religion -- for their own nihilistic ends.  And here at home and around the world, we will constantly reaffirm that fundamental freedom -- freedom of religion -- the right to practice our faith how we choose, to change our faith if we choose, to practice no faith at all if we choose, and to do so free of persecution and fear and discrimination.

There’s wisdom in our founders writing in those documents that help found this nation the notion of freedom of religion, because they understood the need for humility.  They also understood the need to uphold freedom of speech, that there was a connection between freedom of speech and freedom of religion.  For to infringe on one right under the pretext of protecting another is a betrayal of both.

But part of humility is also recognizing in modern, complicated, diverse societies, the functioning of these rights, the concern for the protection of these rights calls for each of us to exercise civility and restraint and judgment.  And if, in fact, we defend the legal right of a person to insult another’s religion, we’re equally obligated to use our free speech to condemn such insults -- (applause) -- and stand shoulder-to-shoulder with religious communities, particularly religious minorities who are the targets of such attacks.  Just because you have the right to say something doesn’t mean the rest of us shouldn’t question those who would insult others in the name of free speech.  Because we know that our nations are stronger when people of all faiths feel that they are welcome, that they, too, are full and equal members of our countries.

So humility I think is needed.  And the second thing we need is to uphold the distinction between our faith and our governments.  Between church and between state.  The United States is one of the most religious countries in the world -- far more religious than most Western developed countries.  And one of the reasons is that our founders wisely embraced the separation of church and state.  Our government does not sponsor a religion, nor does it pressure anyone to practice a particular faith, or any faith at all.  And the result is a culture where people of all backgrounds and beliefs can freely and proudly worship, without fear, or coercion -- so that when you listen to Darrell talk about his faith journey you know it's real.  You know he’s not saying it because it helps him advance, or because somebody told him to.  It's from the heart.

That’s not the case in theocracies that restrict people’s choice of faith.  It's not the case in authoritarian governments that elevate an individual leader or a political party above the people, or in some cases, above the concept of God Himself.  So the freedom of religion is a value we will continue to protect here at home and stand up for around the world, and is one that we guard vigilantly here in the United States.

Last year, we joined together to pray for the release of Christian missionary Kenneth Bae, held in North Korea for two years.  And today, we give thanks that Kenneth is finally back where he belongs -- home, with his family.  (Applause.)
Last year, we prayed together for Pastor Saeed Abedini, detained in Iran since 2012.  And I was recently in Boise, Idaho, and had the opportunity to meet with Pastor Abedini’s beautiful wife and wonderful children and to convey to them that our country has not forgotten brother Saeed and that we’re doing everything we can to bring him home.  (Applause.)  And then, I received an extraordinary letter from Pastor Abedini.  And in it, he describes his captivity, and expressed his gratitude for my visit with his family, and thanked us all for standing in solidarity with him during his captivity.

And Pastor Abedini wrote, “Nothing is more valuable to the Body of Christ than to see how the Lord is in control, and moves ahead of countries and leadership through united prayer.”  And he closed his letter by describing himself as “prisoner for Christ, who is proud to be part of this great nation of the United States of America that cares for religious freedom around the world.”  (Applause.)
We’re going to keep up this work -- for Pastor Abedini and all those around the world who are unjustly held or persecuted because of their faith.   And we’re grateful to our new Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom, Rabbi David Saperstein -- who has hit the ground running, and is heading to Iraq in a few days to help religious communities there address some of those challenges.  Where’s David?  I know he’s here somewhere.  Thank you, David, for the great work you’re doing.  (Applause.)

Humility; a suspicion of government getting between us and our faiths, or trying to dictate our faiths, or elevate one faith over another.  And, finally, let’s remember that if there is one law that we can all be most certain of that seems to bind people of all faiths, and people who are still finding their way towards faith but have a sense of ethics and morality in them -- that one law, that Golden Rule that we should treat one another as we wish to be treated.  The Torah says “Love thy neighbor as yourself.”  In Islam, there is a Hadith that states: "None of you truly believes until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself.”  The Holy Bible tells us to “put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.”  Put on love.

Whatever our beliefs, whatever our traditions, we must seek to be instruments of peace, and bringing light where there is darkness, and sowing love where there is hatred.  And this is the loving message of His Holiness, Pope Francis.  And like so many people around the world, I’ve been touched by his call to relieve suffering, and to show justice and mercy and compassion to the most vulnerable; to walk with The Lord and ask “Who am I to judge?”  He challenges us to press on in what he calls our “march of living hope.”  And like millions of Americans, I am very much looking forward to welcoming Pope Francis to the United States later this year.  (Applause.)

His Holiness expresses that basic law:  Treat thy neighbor as yourself.  The Dalai Lama -- anybody who’s had an opportunity to be with him senses that same spirit.  Kent Brantly expresses that same spirit.  Kent was with Samaritan’s Purse, treating Ebola patients in Liberia, when he contracted the virus himself. And with world-class medical care and a deep reliance on faith -- with God’s help, Kent survived.  (Applause.)

And then by donating his plasma, he helped others survive as well.  And he continues to advocate for a global response in West Africa, reminding us that “our efforts needs to be on loving the people there.”  And I could not have been prouder to welcome Kent and his wonderful wife Amber to the Oval Office.  We are blessed to have him here today -- because he reminds us of what it means to really “love thy neighbor as thyself.”  Not just words, but deeds.

Each of us has a role in fulfilling our common, greater purpose -- not merely to seek high position, but to plumb greater depths so that we may find the strength to love more fully.  And this is perhaps our greatest challenge -- to see our own reflection in each other; to be our brother’s keepers and sister’s keepers, and to keep faith with one another.  As children of God, let’s make that our work, together.

As children of God, let’s work to end injustice -- injustice of poverty and hunger.  No one should ever suffer from such want amidst such plenty.  As children of God, let’s work to eliminate the scourge of homelessness, because, as Sister Mary says, “None of us are home until all of us are home.”  None of us are home until all of us are home.

As children of God, let’s stand up for the dignity and value of every woman, and man, and child, because we are all equal in His eyes, and work to send the scourge and the sin of modern-day slavery and human trafficking, and “set the oppressed free.”  (Applause.)

If we are properly humble, if we drop to our knees on occasion, we will acknowledge that we never fully know God’s purpose.  We can never fully fathom His amazing grace.  “We see through a glass, darkly” -- grappling with the expanse of His awesome love.  But even with our limits, we can heed that which is required:  To do justice, and love kindness, and walk humbly with our God.
I pray that we will.  And as we journey together on this “march of living hope,” I pray that, in His name, we will run and not be weary, and walk and not be faint, and we’ll heed those words and “put on love.”

May the Lord bless you and keep you, and may He bless this precious country that we love.

Thank you all very much.  (Applause.)

President Barack Obama Weekly Address January 31, 2015 (Video/Trascript )

President Barack Obama
Weekly Address
The White House
January 31, 2015

Hi, everybody.  At a moment when our economy is growing, our businesses are creating jobs at the fastest pace since the 1990s, and wages are starting to rise again, we have to make some choices about the kind of country we want to be.
Will we accept an economy where only a few of us do spectacularly well?  Or will we build an economy where everyone who works hard has a chance to get ahead?
That was the focus of my State of the Union Address – middle-class economics.  The idea that this country does best when everyone gets their fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules.

This week, I will send a budget to Congress that’s built on those values.

We’ll help working families’ paychecks go farther by treating things like paid leave and child care like the economic priorities that they are.  We’ll offer Americans of every age the chance to upgrade their skills so they can earn higher wages, with plans like making two years of community college free for every responsible student.  And we’ll keep building the world’s most attractive economy for high-wage jobs, with new investments in research, infrastructure, manufacturing, and expanded access to faster internet and new markets.

We can afford to make these investments.  Since I took office, we’ve cut our deficits by about two-thirds – the fastest sustained deficit reduction since just after the end of World War II.  We just have to be smarter about how we pay for our priorities, and that’s what my budget does.  It proposes getting rid of special interest loopholes in our tax code, and using those savings to cut taxes for middle-class families and reward businesses that invest in America.  It refuses to play politics with our homeland security, and funds our national security priorities at home and abroad.  And it undoes the arbitrary, across-the-board budget cuts known as “the sequester” for our domestic priorities, and matches those investments dollar-for-dollar in resources our troops need to get the job done.

Now, I know that there are Republicans in Congress who disagree with my approach.  And like I said in my State of the Union Address, if they have ideas that will help middle-class families feel some economic security, I’m all in to work with them.  But I will keep doing everything I can to help more working families make ends meet and get ahead.  Not just because we want everyone to share in America’s success – but because we want everyone to contribute to America’s success.

That’s the way the middle class thrived in the last century – and that’s how it will thrive again.

Thanks, and have a great weekend.