CHAPEL HILL - Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., called students to action to address environmental concerns in a speech at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Friday.
Kerry focused on global climate change and citizen engagement during the Weil Lecture on American Citizenship at Hill Hall Auditorium. The 2004 Democratic presidential candidate said he considered global climate change to be this generation's primary challenge.
"I believe we have to make this the new civil rights movement, it's that important," Kerry said. "I believe people have to be prepared to go out and organize in their communities and hold congressmen and senators accountable."
Kerry said this challenge was equivalent to his generation's concern regarding the Soviet Union and the Cold War.
UNC senior Catherine Cranfill said Kerry's speech inspired her to engage in the movement.
"When he called us all to action, it really spoke to me because I never really do anything, and this makes me want to," she said.
Fighting climate change also could be part of the solution to the financial crisis, Kerry said. Investing in renewable and sustainable energy sources would create jobs and encourage economic growth, he added.
Steering clear of this issue would be like a "suicide pact," he said.
"Common sense says to us that as public people, as citizens, we've got a big responsibility here to make judgments," he said. "All we are doing right now, folks, is procrastinating, ignoring it, avoiding it and complaining."
Some members of Congress are still in denial of the "life or death proposition" of climate change, Kerry noted.
"We still have a flat earth caucus in the United States Senate and we have people who doubt science and theory," he said. "We have people who question whether it's really happening, despite all the consensus and everything that has been built."
Kerry singled out former President George W. Bush's skepticism of global climate change. Speaking on the first day of spring, he jokingly said this season was what Bush would call proof that global warming is not caused by humans because of the warmer weather that it annually brings.
He pointed out that the science-based solutions needed for climate change could be developed in the Research Triangle area.
"We can solve this-the Research Triangle here at North Carolina frankly knows how to do this, wants to do it, would be willing to put in the effort to do it," he said.
Donald Hughes, a senior at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, said he appreciated that Kerry focused on personal responsibility to address energy efficiency concerns and global climate change.
"It is the wave of the future, and so much of our ability to sustain is going to depend on our understanding of the environment we live in," he said. "I look forward to some of the policies that are going to come forward from Congress this year."
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