Thank you, Mindy [Lubber]. Good afternoon. On behalf of the 56 unions and the 10 million working men and women of the AFL-CIO, I am deeply honored to be here at the United Nations. Since its founding, the UN has meant hope for peace and progress for the people of the world. I would like to recognize the United Nations Foundation, CERES, and the Investor Network on Climate Change for your leadership. The labor movement has been part of CERES’ groundbreaking work since its inception, and the urgency of that work has never been greater.

We are here following the historic UN meeting on climate change in Bali. The global labor movement is proud to have been among those who called for decisive action at Bali. The results of Bali, while only a beginning, show the world can come together to take action on climate change.

Of course, it is daunting to follow in the footsteps of Vice President Al Gore. In this century, Al Gore has embodied America’s better self. His service to his country and the world community shows what a positive force American leaders can be.

I want to talk with you today about how the labor movement views the challenge of global warming and the opportunity presented by investments in clean and efficient energy.

Let me begin with this: We hear again and again that we must choose between having a stable climate and having a strong global economy. This is a false choice.

The global economy cannot prosper unless we secure a stable climate and sustainable sources of energy. Global warming means global Depression, food and water shortages and drowned cities. I have stood in New Orleans’ Ninth Ward and seen that future.

How serious is the economic threat from global warming? The British government’s Stern Report in 2006 concluded that unless human behavior changes, global warming will lead to a reduction of global economic activity on the level of 10 to 20 percent by 2100. That’s economic damage on the scale of the Great Depression. One can only imagine the social and political problems bestowed upon our children and grandchildren.

On the other hand, we can only take on climate change because of the wealth—the human and political capital – that comes from a broad based and prosperous global economy. Mobilizing that investment capital to meet the challenge of climate change is what brings us together today.

But global warming is hardly our only challenge.

Since 1850, cheap energy – largely due to oil – has made the world rich beyond the dreams of our ancestors. But the era of cheap, easily accessible oil is coming to an end. Global oil production is reaching its limits just as growth in China, India and other developing nations intensifies the world’s appetite for oil. Just how quickly it is ending is a matter of debate. But by any measure, we have the makings of a disaster if we do nothing.

Yet the colossal challenge of dealing with energy scarcity means opportunity. Enormous economic opportunities for developed and developing countries. Opportunities for investors across every asset class. And opportunities for workers--potentially high quality job opportunities for millions of workers.

This crisis and these opportunities are what I want to discuss over the next few minutes.

The crisis of securing a sustainable, clean energy future is global. Energy markets are global. So is our atmosphere. Everyone knows the disproportionate share of global carbon emissions generated by the United States’ economy. Yet today, 25 percent of particulate matter in the skies over Los Angeles comes from China.

This global economy and the dire threat of a globally unstable climate requires global rules. We need common rules for all of us—worker protections, investor protections and environmental protections.

Sixty years ago, the United Nations declared that workers around the world must be guaranteed core labor rights. The right to an independent voice in our workplaces, made real through the right of workers to organize and bargain for a better life. And the right for all people to be free of the curses of child labor, forced labor and discrimination. More than ever, these standards must be enforced throughout the global economy. They must apply to the millions of new jobs that will be created as the global economy changes.

But for working people to prosper in the global economy, we need more than rules. We need thoughtful strategies at the national level—strategies that work for all of us, that create wealth and share that wealth broadly, combined with a global strategy for combating climate change.

This approach – rules plus strategies – is precisely the approach the global community must pursue in combating global warming. And this is the approach the International Trade Union Confederation – the labor movements of 153 countries representing 168 million workers – brought to the talks in Bali. Now, working together with the UN and the International Labor Organization, the ITUC is carrying on that work – tracking the growth of green jobs globally in an effort to move governments and private sector actors worldwide.

Our strategies must recognize that we have a window of opportunity. But the window is closing. If we act today, the petroleum-based wealth of the developed world can be deployed to take on these threats while we are prosperous. And if we act, the benefits can go far beyond addressing our energy and climate problems.

Here’s what I mean. I have the honor of chairing the Trade Union Advisory Committee to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the OECD. The OECD countries are the nations of the developed world. All these nations are struggling to maintain broad, middle class societies as billions of new workers from India and China and other countries enter the global labor market.

In the United States, inequality is soaring. We are the wealthiest society the world has ever seen. Yet tens of millions have no health care, and a secure retirement is becoming a luxury only the rich can hope for.

We need a new economic strategy and it cannot be, “Let our corporations make money and the rest will take care of itself.” Our head start in accumulating capital will not let us live off profits from economic activity in other countries forever. The role sovereign wealth funds have played in bailing out U.S. financial institutions shows how quickly these patterns can change.

We cannot hide from the world or build walls. Rather, we need a new economic strategy that recognizes our interdependence on developing nations.

And I believe a key part of the answer – for the U.S. and other developed countries – lies in meeting the critical worldwide need for a solution to the energy and environmental crisis.

Successfully executing this new economic strategy opens enormous opportunities. It means opportunities for developed countries like the U.S., Japan and Europe, where millions of new jobs can result. And it means deliverance from an economic and environmental crisis for developing countries like India and China. Without solutions to these crises, the developing economies of Asia will hit a wall of skyrocketing energy costs and environmental limits. The consequences for those countries and for the world would be devastating.

Executing this strategy requires deploying our current human and financial capital to secure a future we want to live in. Much of that capital is workers’ retirement funds. Trillions of dollars around the world are invested to provide retirement security and education to billions of people. In the U.S., $5 trillion is invested on behalf of union members.

These deferred wages of working people are the capital that can fuel the energy economy of the future.

This is not an issue of trading off investment returns for environmental protection. If we want healthy long term investment returns, we must solve the energy and the environmental crisis.

If we do nothing, the foundations of successful investing will come under increasing pressure. What are those foundations? They are the absolute basics of civilization -- reliable food supplies and reliable energy.

Looked at another way, for investors, the development and deployment of new energy technology that does not emit carbon is a fantastic old fashioned opportunity to make money – to be in on the ground floor of the future.

Now some will say this is really a problem for governments. And it is true that government must act. But the global investment community must not wait for governments.

Investors need to step forward in two ways. First, investors need to look at investments in new clean energy ventures and projects. Second, investors need to demand the information necessary to hold corporations accountable. Investors should ask the companies you invest in – first, are you taking responsibility for addressing the crisis? And second and most importantly, are companies taking steps to seize the opportunities created by this crisis?

Last year, a group of U.S. public pension funds asked the Securities and Exchange Commission for new rules requiring disclosures of business risk related to global warming. I applaud those who led this effort, many of whom are here today. Of course, the response has been silence from the SEC. But while we wait for an SEC ready to act, investors can use our power, our voice, to get companies to make these disclosures. That is of course what CERES is all about.

Investors should be looking at new technologies for generating usable energy. New technologies like solar, wind, and geothermal. And if we are serious about dealing with carbon emissions, we must expand our use of older carbon free energy sources. Older sources like hydro and nuclear power. But we can’t stop there. We must pursue reengineering old energy sources such as carbon capture and sequestration for coal fired electrical generation plants.

Consider investments in renewable energy. A 10 year program to bring 18,500 megawatts of renewable energy on line annually could generate 2 million full-time equivalent jobs. And there are over 70,000 firms active in industries that could supply the components. The result? Twenty percent of our power capacity would come free of carbon emissions.

The same dynamics exist for nuclear and capturing coal emissions. These technologies require capital and developing them will create jobs—lots of jobs.

Each possible clean energy technology has its advocates and its detractors. But the urgency of the crisis requires that every solution that genuinely holds out the hope of reducing carbon emissions must be explored.

As important as energy generation is, it’s not the whole story. A very big piece of the puzzle can be found in the area of increasing energy efficiency. More than one third of our energy goes to heat, cool and power buildings. Ten percent is for lighting. So dramatic cuts in carbon emissions can be as simple as compact fluorescent bulbs and more energy efficient building materials.

But to really begin to address this crisis, we must think big. A new strategy for the global economy has to mean speed and scale.

Consider just some aspects of what a greening of our entire energy system could include.

First, today we know how to build new buildings and retrofit existing buildings to save energy. That’s what union pension dollars are doing at the $239 million Octagon apartment development on Roosevelt Island, right off the East Side of Manhattan, not far from where we are meeting today. All that’s missing is the financing and project management to do it at scale across our real estate landscape.

Here’s another example: We have the technology to build a highly energy efficient smart power grid — with digital high performance lines that recapture up to 30 percent of electrical energy generation that is currently lost over old tech low performance transmission lines.

But that’s just the beginning. The savings from a smart grid could be used to power plug-in hybrid cars, and to manage the ups and downs in wind and solar power generation that come from rainy days and still nights. The result would be a dramatic reduction in carbon emissions.

So investors looking at real estate should be asking, how can we unlock the value in retrofitting commercial buildings to be energy efficient?

Investors looking at the utility sector should be asking companies, what are your plans for conversion to a smart grid?

The labor movement is an enthusiastic supporter of General Motors’ commitment to plug-in hybrids by 2010. Investors should be pressing the auto sector to meet or exceed that timetable for advanced engine and battery technology.

In every area, the need is for scale and speed. Many talk about the need for massive government led investment – about superfunds and Manhattan projects. We support that line of thinking. But scale and speed should also come from private capital.

In November the AFL-CIO -- together with the Apollo Alliance – convened a meeting of workers’ pension trustees and money managers to discuss opportunities in all these new and clean energy technologies. The AFL-CIO is committed to a continuing effort to inform the stewards of our members’ money about the investment opportunities in energy transformation. We plan to have further meetings this spring to follow up on the progress we hope all of you will make.

Finally, at every juncture, investors should be thinking about how labor and government fit into this picture. The labor movement is the primary source of advanced training for construction workers. We’re ready to ramp up, but we need business and government partners. Together we need to train workers in the poorest and most marginalized parts of our country to take part in the great task ahead. And together we need to improve our public schools, so that young people leave school ready to take part in advanced job training programs.

More broadly, investors should join with labor and environmentalists to demand that government act to accelerate the pace of change. We all win when government finally puts the needed public investment into mass transit, advanced automotive technology and carbon emissions control technology.

We are a big society and a big economy. We need a new economic strategy that puts us at the center of the world’s economy – but not as a borrower of money or a center for investment banking or a holder of patent rights.

We must be a provider of critical goods and services to what will likely be the mega-economies of the future in India and China. If we lead a transformation in how we generate and use energy we will be at the heart of building construction and transportation and manufacturing processes, as well as the energy industries themselves.

How far do we have to go? Though China has or soon will pass us as the world’s largest emitter of carbon, the US remains the most energy intensive economy in the world.

In the United States today, approximately $3 billion is invested in alternative energy venture capital. That sounds like a big number until you realize that Americans put $9 billion a year into computer games and somewhere north of $100 billion annually on the war in Iraq.

The labor movement cannot accept the status quo – a status quo of no rules and no strategy.

We know where doing nothing leads. It leads to a planet of radical inequalities of wealth and power. It leads to global economic instability. To governments each looking to their armies to pursue the hopeless mission of seizing the world’s dwindling supplies of energy. And all the while all of us will face the unstoppable, unknowable consequences of radical, accelerating global climate change.

But this need not be so.

We can build a better world. A world with a stable climate. A future built on sustainable sources of energy for both developed and developing countries. In that future our children will not die in futile wars over oil.

We can build a world of an expanding middle class globally. We will require the skills and labor of millions, trillions of dollars of investment capital, and real political leadership—and not someday or soon, but now.

Investors can lead, and make money by leading. The labor movement expects those who have been entrusted with our members’ money to do just that.

Thank you.