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The following text is the transcript of the speech by London Mayor Ken Livingstone in New York on 15 May 2007.
I want to start by thanking Mayor Bloomberg, Deputy Mayor Doctoroff, and Katherine Wylde from the Partnership for New York City for organising this 2nd C40 summit.
I know it has been a huge task, but it has been done superbly and I look forward to three days in which we will make real progress in tackling climate change.
The C40 started small, when 18 cities met in London in October 2005.
We agreed that if our cities worked together we would make much faster progress in cutting carbon emissions.
We started out as the C20, but we have grown rapidly to the C40 and it is fantastic to see at this summit, over 30 Mayors and delegations from over 40 of the largest cities in the world.
I have no doubt that this summit is the most important event I will attend this year.
I say that for three reasons:
Climate change is undeniably the single biggest threat to the future of humanity. The reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, as Jean-Pascal will tell us in a moment, demonstrate that beyond all doubt
Second, as cities produce around three quarters of global carbon emissions, we can and must do something to prevent catastrophic climate change.
Thirdly, because we have come together in the C40 not just to talk but to take decisive action to reduce our carbon footprints and to help other cities to reduce theirs.
That is why the C40's partnership with the Clinton Climate Initiative is so important.
Last August, when I signed a memorandum of understanding with President Clinton on behalf of the C40, I could not have dreamt how much progress we would make in just 10 months.
Together, our cities have considerable purchasing clout and the C40, through the Clinton Climate Initiative, is seeking to unleash that power, driving down the price of the products and services that will enable us to rapidly improve energy efficiency and cut emissions.
The programmes which we are going to be able to announce this week and over the coming months are truly ground-breaking.
They will create the opportunity for cities to take decisive action to accelerate their emissions reductions and in so doing tilt the balance of the struggle against climate change.
The C40 also offers the opportunity for cities to learn from each other.
Every city here today is a leader in at least one aspect of the fight to tackle climate change.
Sometimes we can appear as competitors, but fundamentally this is not true. Particularly in a globalised economy, the whole planet, and every city, gains from sustainable economic development wherever it takes place. We are increasingly interconnected.
This is even more directly and essentially true when it comes to fighting global warming. In this struggle we are all bound together by inhabiting the same planet – and we don't have the option to swap it for another one!
No city can wall itself off from the consequences of climate change, and no city can prevent catastrophic climate change on its own.
We do not have to live less well but we do have to live less wastefully. We have to move from a system which wastes large amounts of energy to one that conserves energy.
Everyone likes to be a pioneer, but it is actually much easier to deliver effective improvements in a city if you are the second or third to introduce a policy and can learn from the mistakes and successes of others.
We could go it alone and each of us would find efficient ways of cutting greenhouse gases. But if we do so in isolation it will take much longer than if we co-operate.
Each city's presence here today demonstrates a willingness to work together towards a common cause.
That is what the C40 is all about.
Whatever the discussions between our national governments, as cities we are not waiting for anyone else to move first, and we are not going to sit around talking about what we could do, while the window of opportunity for preventing catastrophic climate change disappears.
Clearly, each city faces specific issues and are at different stages of development.
My own city has a large carbon footprint in a nation that gave birth to the industrial revolution. Along with other European, North American and Japanese cities over the last century we have produced the vast bulk of the emissions that have caused climate change.
We have a particular responsibility to take action to curb emissions now.
Other cities have made little contribution to carbon emissions in the past but are now expanding rapidly.
My approach to this is to call for carbon democracy.
Scientists are clear that our planet can only withstand a certain threshold of carbon emissions.
Every citizen in the world has the right to an equal share.
That means that some cities must drastically reduce their carbon emissions right away, while others need to plan for stabilising their emissions in the future.
As the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported this month, the battle to prevent catastrophic climate change is not lost. Humanity already has the tools it needs. All that has been lacking is the political will to use them.
National governments are starting to respond, but progress has been painfully slow.
That is why what we are doing is so important. It is in cities that the battle to tackle climate change will be won or lost.
In our cities you find the dynamism, the innovation and the drive to succeed where others have failed.
Cities have been the driving force in society throughout human history. Two and a half thousand years ago the first experiment in democracy was in Athens and Pericles, the first mayor of that city, developed an oath for civic leaders:
"We leave this city not less, but greater, better and more beautiful than it was left to us."
This oath has stood the test of time and as 21st century mayors we all have a duty to our citizens, and to all humanity, to be guided by that oath of ancient Athens and to put climate change at the top of our agendas.
If we fail all of the other improvements we are making to our cities will be in vain.
The purpose of this summit and of the ongoing work of the C40, is nothing less than to harness the power of the world's great cities to create a critical mass that puts the world on the path to avoid catastrophic climate change, the biggest threat to humanity's future.