While it hasn’t always been the case, the United States has taken important strides to tackle the climate crisis. As you know in August, President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act, which is going to invest $369 billion in addressing the climate crisis – the single largest climate investment in American history that is going to help us achieve a 40 percent cut in climate emissions by 2030.
But climate change – again, it’s just a great example of how connected we all are now, climate change cannot be curbed by U.S. cuts to emissions alone. And that’s why USAID is actively engaged around the world, reducing other country’s dependence on fossil fuels. We’re helping countries from India to Colombia install solar panels, modernize power grids, and access cutting-edge research and innovation in renewable energy. We’re working with governments to pass laws to bring about a just energy transition, so it’s not just working people who pay the price of that transition to a cleaner form of energy. In Southeast Asia alone, in the past five years, we’ve helped prevent the release of 93 million tons of CO2 – the equivalent of pulling every car off the road in Australia. These are the kind of opportunities that exist for you to make a difference in the world, a difference that will have bearing here, in the communities you've come from, at home.
In order to advance their economic development, and cognizant of our responsibility for such a large share of global emissions, we’re also helping those communities most impacted by climate change adapt and build resilience. In the Amazon and the Congo Basin rainforest, we’re working with governments so that local communities actually retain control over land that they’ve inhabited for generations, but that often others dictate what happens on that land. And this, it turns out, giving them that control, giving them those land rights, has proven one of the best ways to fight deforestation and pull carbon out of the atmosphere.
And in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where the mining of cobalt and lithium is critical to our planet’s green energy transition, we are working with the government to implement and enforce legal protections for environmental and human rights advocates, to counter human rights abuses and corruption, and to connect small-scale miners directly with buyers so that local communities, not just big foreign companies, benefit from the energy transition.
So, whether you’re fighting the climate crisis or helping build peace in the world’s most conflict-ridden regions, at USAID, you Morehouse Men can apply your studies, your experience, and your fierce belief in social change to helping achieve Dr. King’s global vision of justice. And when you graduate from Morehouse as part of that newest, greatest generation, you will find a world immensely grateful for your contributions and for your leadership.
As you choose your job, build your career, find your field, I urge you to remember the lesson Dr. King wished to impart – that the American struggle for justice is essential, but it is also a small piece of a global struggle for the same. At USAID, we are proud to be a part of that global struggle. And today, this historic partnership between USAID and Morehouse represents our call to you to join us, and our commitment to support you along the way.
Thank you so much.
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