Transcript

JOHN THORNTON: For quite some time, I have been very, very interested in the question of how can the U.S.-China relationship get meaningfully closer, and personally I've come to the view that the single best way to do that was to focus on the issue of climate change, clean energy, where the two countries of -- on the one hand the United States has been responsible over history for the largest amount of greenhouse gas emissions, and China has only recently overtaken us on an annual basis, but between the two of us we're accounting for about 40 percent of the world's greenhouses gases, which any way you look at it is not good.

So, through that lens, saying to myself well, if U.S. and China on this issue can make very meaningful progress and that progress can be seen by the citizens of both countries in the world, then that would start to develop habits of behavior which could then be applied in other areas. So, I see this as kind of a template. And that's why I regard this as very, very important, and I'm particularly thrilled with the orientation of this particular report, which is, to my mind, focused very much on how to get things done, how to make things happen, and I regard that as a, needless to say, crucial, crucial question of life generally but particularly when it comes to getting things done in this country or in China or dare I say the two of them together.

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