On December 5, 2016, ASPI President and former Prime Minister of Australia Kevin Rudd delivered the opening keynote address on climate change at the launch of CDP's annual report. Rudd spoke about how the fight against climate change can and must continue in the face of political obstacles in the United States. Rudd told the audience, "whatever the political temperature is in Washington, and whatever the political season may be in terms of this question, the planet doesn't lie. Our forests don't lie. The data doesn't lie. And climate change is real." 

"When government policy settings change, it is a setback," Rudd said. "But the bottom line is there is such a fundamental individual, social, community-level and corporate-level, shareholder driven, consumer-driven revolt on this question across the world, that I don't believe significant policy settings—even by governments centrally, including in Washington and in Canberra, the capital of my country—will decisively change the equation. There is too much by way of fundamental view in the community that this is a serious agenda for our generation, if we are faintly concerned about the wellbeing of the generation that follows us." (19 min., 41 sec.)