COP 21 will be where the negotiators from countries all over the world get together
to decide on the action they are going to take against climate change.
People are starting to wake up to the fact that the value the ocean is not just a
a great day at the beach. The ocean is a valuable earth system ...
which is regulating the atmosphere, stabilising temperature,
providing food and employment for billions of people.
And it's a system we can't do without. One thing to know about the ocean is that ...
... it's very hard to get to change
but once it starts to change it almost impossible to stop.
And we're at that point in history where we can stop the changes that
will have a devastating effect on coastal
and marine societies across the planet. We've got to, at COP21, take this ...
and the other issues in the climate debate
very seriously because if we don't we're committing ...
future people to a planet which may not be that liveable.
Over the past year there's been an enormous evidence base that's built-up.
We've seen major studies on
non-climate factors and their influence on the ocean, and the
impact on fisheries of over-fishing, the pollution and so on.
We've also seen the IPCC deliver its report last year.
All that is on the table now. There is no excuse for negotiators to ignore that.
This is the best science; it's the consensus science ...
and it needs to be taken very seriously.