That’s why we are deepening our partnerships with the Pacific Island nations and others to meetimmediate threats and long-term development challenges. And we’re working through USAIDand other multilateral institutions to increase the resilience of communities. And we’reelevating our engagement through the Pacific Islands Forum. And we’ve signed maritimeboundaries, new maritime boundaries with Kiribati and the Federated States of Micronesia inorder to promote good governance of the Pacific Ocean and peaceful relations among islandnations. And we’re also working on a Pacific Pathway of marine protected areas that includesPresident Obama’s commitment to explore a protected area of more than a million squaremiles in size in the U.S. remote Pacific.
We just held a conference on the oceans in Washington the other day with nations all over theworld came to it – unbelievably productive. We produced $1.8 billion of commitments to helpwith fisheries enforcement, anti-pollution, dealing with acidification, and to protect theseareas as marine sanctuaries.
The good news is in the end – and this really – it really is good news. Sometimes you have anissue – Mr. Mayor, I know you know this. Governors, you know this. You’re looking at an issueand, man, you scratch your head and you’re not quite sure what the solution is, right? Andyou work through it. Well, the good news is the biggest challenge of all that we face right now,which is climate change in terms of international global effect, is an opportunity. It’s actuallyan extraordinary opportunity because it’s not a problem without a solution. The solutionto climate change is simple. It’s called energy policy. Energy policy. Make the right choicesabout how you produce your energy – without emissions, without coal-fired power plants thatdon’t have carbon capture and storage or aren’t burning clean – then you can begin toproduce clean energy.
And the new energy market that we’re looking at is the biggest market the world has ever seen.Think about that for a moment. The wealth that was generated in the 1990s – I don’t know ifyou know this, but most people think that America got the richest during the 1920s when youhad the so-called, even in the late 1800s, robber baron years, and then you had the greatnames of wealth – Carnegie, Mellon, Frick, Rockefeller, and so forth. And no income tax – wow,gonna make a lot of money.
Guess what. America made more wealth and more money for more people in the 1990s than atany other time in our history. And what it came from, the wealth that was generated then, wasthe high-tech computer revolution of the 1990s, and guess what. It came from a $1 trillionmarket with 1 billion users, 1 for 1. The energy market that we’re looking at in the world todayis six times bigger, by far more important. It’s a $6 trillion market today with 4 to 5 billionusers today, and it will go up to 7 to 9 billion users in the next 30 years. The fastest segmentby far of growth in that market is clean energy.
We need to build a grid in America. We need to – we could use solar thermal to produce heatin Massachusetts, in Minnesota, take wind power from our states, sell it somewhere else. Wecan’t even do that because we don’t have that grid in place.
So I want to emphasize to all of you: We’re not going to find a sustainable energy mix in the19th century or 20th century solutions. Those are the problems. We need a formula for 21stcentury that will sustainably power us into the 22nd century. And I believe that, workingtogether, the United States and countries across the Asia Pacific can make this leap. That’s anexciting opportunity and that’s what we’re working on with China today.
The bottom line is we don’t have time to waste. If we’re going to power a clean energyrevolution, we have to work together to dampen security competition and rivalry in theAsia Pacific and focus on these other constructive efforts. And so our third challenge is clear:We need to turn maritime conflicts into regional cooperation.
All of us in this room understand that these disputes in the South China Sea and elsewhere,they’re really about more than claims to islands and reefs and rocks and the economic intereststhat flow from them. They’re about whether might makes right or whether global rules andnorms and rule of law and international law will prevail. I want to be absolutely clear: TheUnited States of America takes no position on questions of sovereignty in the South and EastChina Sea, but we do care about how those questions are resolved. We care about behavior. Wefirmly oppose the use of intimidation and coercion or force to assert a territorial claim byanyone in the region. And we firmly oppose any suggestion that freedom of navigation andoverflight and other lawful uses of the sea and airspace are privileges granted by a big state toa small one. All claimants must work together to solve the claims through peaceful means, bigor small. And these principles bind all nations equally, and all nations have a responsibility touphold them.
Now, I just participated in the ASEAN Regional Forum, and we were encouraged there to – weencouraged the claimants there to defuse these tensions and to create the political space forresolution. We urged the claimants to voluntarily freeze steps that threatened to escalatethe disputes and to cause instability. And frankly, I think that’s common sense and I suspectyou share that. I’m pleased to say that ASEAN agreed that the time has come to seekconsensus on what some of those actions to be avoided might be, based on the commitmentsthat they’ve already made in the 2002 Declaration on Conduct.
Now, we cannot impose solutions on the claimants in the region, and we’re not seeking to dothat. But the recent settlement between Indonesia and the Philippines is an example of howthese disputes could be resolved through good-faith negotiations. Japan and Taiwan, likewise,showed last year that it’s possible to promote regional stability despite conflicting claims. Andwe support the Philippines’ taking steps to resolve its maritime dispute with China peacefully,including through the right to pursue arbitration under the UN Convention on the Law of theSea. And while we already live by its principles, the United States needs to finish the job andpass that Treaty once and for all.