“China alone invested more than 100 billion dollars. Ultimately, clean energy is expected to be a multi-trillion dollar market—the largest market the world has ever known. And no nation will do well if it sits on the sidelines, handicapping its new businesses from reaping the benefits of the clean-tech explosion,” he said in his speech. Noting that world is already changing at an increasingly alarming rate with increasingly alarming consequences, he said the impacts of global warming are now evident across the world with record-breaking droughts, rising sea levels, unusual storms and millions of people displaced by weather events.

“We have seen record-breaking droughts everywhere—from India to Brazil to the west coast of the US. Storms that used to happen once every 500 years are becoming relatively normal. In recent years, an average of 22.5 million people have been displaced by extreme weather events annually. We never saw that in the 20th Century,” he said. He made a stirring appeal to all countries including his own to press ahead with the fight against climate change, saying a failure to do so would be a “betrayal of devastating consequences”.

Without mentioning US president-elect Donald Trump by name in his speech, he said “At some point even the strongest skeptic has to acknowledge that something disturbing is happening.” Republican president-elect has called global warming a “hoax” and has pledged to “cancel” the Paris deal limiting greenhouse gas emissions. PTI