 Hello, everybody. I've just returned from two weeks at the UN Climate Conference, COP26 in Gloucisco, Scotland. COP, COP, stands for Conference of Parties. They occur annually, and the first one was held in 1995 in Berlin. COPs are conferences where nearly 200 nations work out agreements to stop climate change. Six years ago, countries came together in Paris for COP21. That meeting resulted in the Paris Climate Accord, which committed the nations to limit the global average temperature rise to well below 2 degrees Celsius or about 2.6 degrees Fahrenheit above pre-industrial levels. It also included language to push for a more ambitious goal, 1.5 degrees Celsius or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit. The difference between the two targets may seem small, but in fact, they represent vastly different levels of effort for countries seeking to limit their greenhouse gas emissions and strikingly divergent outcomes for the planet. For instance, a recent study by the United Kingdom Met Office, Britain's National Weather Service, found that 1 billion people could face heat stress, a potentially fatal combination of heat and humidity, if temperatures rise by 2 degrees Celsius. Some experts doubt that stopping warming at 1.5 degrees C remains achievable, and this may be true. In fact, a UN report recently concluded there is a 50-50 chance that global warming will exceed 1.5 degrees C in the next two decades. And unless there are immediate rapid and large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, limiting warming to 1.5 C or even 2 degrees C by the end of the century will be beyond reach. One study calculated that the pledges or promises made by the nations in the 2015 Paris Accord provided only an 8% probability of living warming to below 2 C and a 0% probability to below 1.5. But the Paris Accord included a mechanism for ratcheting up pledges and the most recent pledges at the time of the Glasgow meeting a few weeks ago increased the odds to 34% for keeping warming below 2 degrees C and 1.5% probability to keep warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius. Unfortunately, what is pledged and the actual policies followed by nations are two different things. Ledges made by the time of the Glasgow meeting, if followed, would provide a two-thirds probability of limiting warming to about 2 degrees C. But at a 90% probability, current pledges would yield 2.4 to 2.5 degrees C of warming. However, at a 66% probability, the actual policies which have been announced and legally put in place by individual nations and are followed put us on a path to 2.8 degrees Celsius and over 3 degrees Celsius if we look at a 90% probability. 3 degrees C of global warming would make one-fifth of the world's lands unlivable. Today, these lands host one-third of humanity. And at that level of warming would force the largest migration in human history with devastating consequences for global security, our socio-economic system, national sovereignty, and it would likely turn most border areas into conflict zones. Increasingly, at certain times and in certain places, Earth is already becoming unlivable. It has been said that 1.5 degrees C is not an arbitrary number. It is not a political number. It is, in fact, a planetary boundary that we must not cross if we wish to preserve a safe future for our children. Allowing temperatures to rise by more than 1.5 degrees C vastly increases the risk of irreversible changes. For instance, the Arctic Earth's refrigeration system will likely lose its summer sea ice with dire knock-on effects on the rest of the climate. As the loss of reflective ice increases the amount of water the heat absorbs in a feedback loop that would rapidly accelerate global warming, the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets and sea level rise could be tipped into a state of irreversible acceleration beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius. Already we see a set of global biophysical systems that have developed trajectories leading to severe impacts. These include loss of coral reefs and permafrost, changes in atmospheric circulation and the ocean conveyor belt system, increases in extreme weather including heat waves, drought, floods, and hurricane intensity, and increases in marine heat waves which are especially problematic here in Hawaii. Under current climate policy pledges, children born in 2020 will experience a two to seven fold increase in extreme events, particularly heat, compared with people born in 1960. Our world will heat up to a blistering 2.8 degrees Celsius by 2090, and for children born in 2020 versus those born a decade earlier, they will experience seven and a half times as many heat waves, about 30 heat waves in their lives, in other words roughly every other year or so, 3.6 times as many droughts, three times as many crop failures, 2.8 times as many river floods, and two times as many wildfires. These results highlight a severe threat to the safety of young generations and a call for drastic emissions reductions to safeguard their future. Achieving the 1.5 degrees Celsius target requires finding mechanisms of fossil fuel decline that far extend beyond historical experience or current pledges. Analysis of historical episodes of fossil fuel decline in 105 countries between 1960 and 2018 shows that there has been no precedent for the rate of coal and gas power decline needed to limit climate change to 1.5 degrees Celsius. The most rapid historical cases of fossil fuel decline occurred when oil was replaced by coal and gas or nuclear power in response to the energy security threats of the 1970s and the 1980s. But I am optimistic, in fact the word crisis has a second less well-known meaning from the original Greek, it means a turning point, an opportunity. There have never been as much innovation, investment, and interest in green technology. The revolution and renewables which have soared from a niche interest 30 years ago to a cheap global alternative energy source that provides more than one quarter of the world's electricity is one of humanity's most remarkable achievements. Positive technological trends are accelerating. Between 2009 and 2019, the cost of solar and wind power has declined by 89% and 70%. All over the past three decades, lithium ion battery prices have gone down about 97%. And thanks to clean energy and efficiency, it's now possible for countries to grow their economies without growing their carbon emissions. Heat pumps and hydrogen are becoming household words, if not quite yet household appliances. Technologies, zero carbon ships and aviation, meat free food and electric vehicles, and other emissions cutting technologies are all still in their infancy and full of potential. Businesses and consumers are showing a new willingness to transform the energy and transportation systems, agriculture, and community design. At Glasgow, 100 countries announced an agreement to cut methane emissions 30% by 2030 and close a glaring gap in climate policy. They also reached a broad agreement to end deforestation in the same time frame, including pledging funds to back it up. In fact, deforestation produces about 10% of the world's carbon emissions. The private sector has committed to align $130 trillion with the goal of net zero emissions in all of their investments by mid century. People take their cue from the government, from policy, from binding commitments. Now we need politicians to play their part too. In fact, the fate of billions rests in their hands. Thank you. I want everybody to have a wonderful holiday season. This is the pivotal decade of all of human history, and we have abundant reason to go into the holidays with a great deal of optimism. So I wish you all peace, happiness, and a safe new year. Take care. Thank you, Chip, for all your help. For your timely and important keynote remarks, and for all the work you are doing on this critical and existential threat to Hawaii and the planet.