I stand before you / not as an expert / but as a concerned citizen. // One of the 400,000 people / who marched in the streets of New York / on Sunday, / and the billions of others / around the world / who want to solve our climate crisis. // As an actor, / I pretend for a living. // I play fictitious characters / often solving fictitious problems. // I believe mankind / has looked at climate change / in that same way, / as if it were a fiction. // As if pretending that climate change / wasn't real would somehow / make it go away. // But I think / we all know better than that now. // Every week, / we're seeing new / and undeniable climate events, / evidence that accelerated climate change / is here, / right now. // Our oceans are acidifying, / with methane plumes / rising up from the ocean floor. // We are seeing extreme weather events, / and the West Antarctic / and Greenland ice sheets / melting at unprecedented rates, / decades ahead of scientific projections. // None of this is rhetoric / and none of it is hysteria. // It is fact. // The scientific community knows it, / industry knows it, / governments know it, / even the United States military knows it. // The chief of the US navy's Pacific command, / Admiral Samuel Locklear, / recently said / that climate change / is our single greatest security threat. // My friends, / this body / perhaps / more than any other gathering / in human history, / now faces this difficult, / but achievable task. // You can make history / or you will be vilified by it. // To be clear, / this is not about just / telling people to change their light bulbs / or to buy a hybrid car. // This disaster / has grown beyond the choices / that individuals make. // This is now about our industries / and our governments around the world // taking decisive, / large-scale action. // Now must be our moment / for action. // We need to put a price tag / on carbon emissions / and eliminate government subsidies / for all oil, / coal, / and gas companies. // We need to end the free ride / that industrial polluters have been given / in the name of a free-market economy. // They do not deserve our tax dollars, / they deserve our scrutiny. / For the economy itself will die / if our ecosystems collapse. //