The World of Computer Software/World_Of_Computer_Software-02-387-Vol-3of3.iso/c/clinspch.zip/CLINEART.TXT

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Article 4808 of alt.politics.clinton:
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Subject: CLINTON SPEECH TEXT: EARTH DAY! (DREXEL UNIVERSITY)
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Date: Wednesday, 19 Aug 1992 11:55:56 CDT
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========================================================================
REMARKS OF GOVERNOR BILL CLINTON
Drexel University
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Earth Day -- April 22, 1992

     Twenty-two years ago today, thousands of Americans marched
and met and spoke out across the country to raise a new concern
onto our nation's agenda:  the protection of America's environment.
That first Earth Day in 1970 awakened our nation to the ticking of a
different kind of biological clock -- a clock that measured the careless
degradation of America's air, water, land and natural resources.

     Many of you here were not even born yet.  And it's worth
recalling the whirlwind of change and progress that followed that
day.  Within two years, our nation created the Environmental
Protection Agency, passed the Clean Air, Clean Water, and
Endangered Species Acts, and banned DDT.  For my generation, it
was a heady, hopeful experience.

     Two decades later, all those efforts seem dwarfed by the enormity
of old and new threats to our communities, our resources, and our
planet.

     We restricted open dumping into our rivers, but now we see
used hypodermic needles washing up on our beaches.

     We banished lead from our gas tanks, but still find it
concentrated where the children of our cities live and play.

     We pinpointed the nation's toxic waste dumps, but have only
cleaned up a handful.

     We confronted the acid rain killing our trees, but not the rush of
development that is wiping out wetlands at home and rainforests
abroad.

     We stopped building nuclear power plants, but now see our
addiction to fossil fuels wrapping the earth in a deadly shroud of
greenhouse gasses.

     We opened our eyes to the threats posed by oil-soaked beaches,
smoggy skies, and burning rivers; yet we still struggle to comprehend
less apparent dangers, such as an invisible hole in a distant ozone
layer that allows unseen rays to plant the microscopic seeds of cancer.

     The question that falls to your generation is this:  will the march
that began 22 years ago move forward, or will we stand in place?

     Over the past generation, much has changed in our thinking.
Children now teach their parents to sort their garbage.  Colleges like
Drexel train young people in environmental engineering.  A Big Mac
at McDonald's comes in a recyclable cardboard container in a
recycled paper bag.

     Yet while the thinking of most Americans has changed, the
thinking of our recent leaders has not.  For more than a decade,
we've had no national energy strategy, no environmental strategy, no
economic strategy to capture the markets of the future with new
technologies that are energy-efficient and environmentally sound.

     Within the past decade, climate change, ozone depletion, and
other global environmental problems have emerged as threats to our
very survival.  Dependence on foreign oil has been the cornerstone of
our energy policy, and oil imports now make up half our trade
imbalance.  The collapse of communism and the end of the Cold
War have created new markets and a new urgency for environmental
cleanup.  We have an unprecedented opportunity to protect the
earth and make our economy grow.

     Too often, on the environment as on so many issues, the Bush
Administration has been reactive, rudderless, and expedient.  Under
George Bush and Ronald Reagan, presidential leadership on the
environment has become an endangered species.

     George Bush promised to be the Environment President, but a
photo op at the Grand Canyon is about all we have to show for it.

     He made Boston Harbor a prop in his negative campaign in
1988, but four years later has done precious little to help clean it up.

     He promised "no net loss" of America's precious wetlands, then
tried to hand half of them over to developers.

     He invoked Teddy Roosevelt's devotion to preserving our natural
heritage, then called for opening the Arctic wilderness to oil drilling.

     He talked about the need for an energy policy, then went to
Detroit on the eve of the Michigan primary to promise American
automakers that he wouldn't raise fuel efficiency standards for
American cars.

     He called for an international summit on the environment but
now is singlehandedly blocking an historic meeting in Rio de Janeiro
of a hundred nations to control global warming.

     And just yesterday, I read in the paper that he wants to make
another attack ad, this time about problems along the White River in
Arkansas.  We're fighting the battle to clean up the White River, and
I welcome the President's attention.

     So, Mr. President, when you return from Rio, I hope you'll visit
Northwest Arkansas and the White River.  I'll show you what the
problems are and what progress we've made.  I'll show you rivers
you can fish in, and streams kids can swim in.

     And if you really want to clean up the problem, I'll make an
agreement with you.  We'll outline federal and state responsibilities
-- and we'll get results.  Our people are tired of the politics of blame.
But this is no Boston Harbor.  If you want to place blame, you'll
have to shoulder some.

     Let me be clear.  I don't believe President Bush is bent on
destroying the environment.  But his views were shaped in another
era, when the world faced other threats, and economic growth and
environmental protection were seen as mutually exclusive.

     I've spent the last decade as Governor of a poor state, fighting to
keep jobs and make up for lost time.  I know how much our people
are hurting after the longest recession and slowest economic growth
in the last 50 years.

     In the '80s, I also faced the old short-term tradeoffs between
jobs and the environment, made tougher by cutbacks in federal aid
and the lack of clear policies in some areas which allowed states to be
played off against one another.  In this context, I've made the choice
for jobs in a poor state without enough jobs or federal help for
environmental protection and cleanup.

     But over the years I've learned something that George Bush and
his advisers still don't understand, to reject the false choice between
economic growth and environmental protection.  Today, you can't
have a healthy economy without a healthy environment, and you
don't have to sacrifice environmental protection to get economic
growth.

     Our competitors know that you can't have one without the
other.  One of the reasons German workers make 25% more than
the average American worker is that their economy uses half the
energy to produce the same amount of goods.  Japanese companies
enjoy a 5% competitive advantage in the global marketplace because
of higher energy efficiency.  Our competitors are rushing to develop
new environmental technologies that will enable them to capture the
markets of the future.  Only the United States is heading toward the
21st Century without a long-term strategy to achieve sustainable
economic growth.

     The Bush Administration doesn't understand that perpetuating
the false choice between environmental protection and economic
growth is bad for the environment and bad for the economy.  Our
lakes will be dirtier and our air will be more dangerous because
George Bush put Dan Quayle in charge of the Competitiveness
Council, a group which lets major polluters in through the back
door at the White House to kill environmental regulations they
don't like.  And the most disturbing thing is, they call that
competitiveness.

     Over the long run, the Bush Administration isn't doing
American business any favors by pretending that energy efficiency
and improved environmental protection are at odds with economic
growth.  If we're going to compete and win in the world economy,
if we want to improve our quality of life as well as our standard of
living, we need to learn to use environmental protection as a tool for
economic growth.

     That is what I've tried to do in Arkansas.  As Governor, I've
worked hard to pursue both environmental quality and economic
growth.  In my first term, I took on one of my state's strongest
special interests when I tried to focus our utilities more on
conservation than construction of new power plants.  Today that
approach is called "least cost planning," and nearly half the states use
it to conserve resources and save ratepayers money.  Back then, the
name didn't exist and the utilities fought it tooth and nail.  By the
end of the '80s they had come around, and Arkansas consumers and
businesses will save lots of money in future.

     We did other things, too.  We set up one of the nation's first
state-level paper recycling programs, helped establish nearly 40 new
wildlife preserves and parks to protect our rivers, forests, wetlands,
and prairies, and created a new statewide reforestation program that
has planted 25 million trees in the last two years.  We've provided
Arkansas business a 30% tax credit for installing waste reduction and
recycling facilities -- a measure that is protecting Arkansas's
environment and creating Arkansas jobs.

     There was a time in this country when environmental protection
was viewed as at best a necessary burden for industry to bear.  Today
that idea just isn't true.  Technology has changed; the stakes have
changed; and it's time for our thinking to change, too.  In today's
economy, there doesn't have to be a tradeoff between growth and
environmental protection.  We now have the tools and the need to
choose both.

     Wha What we need today is a New Covenant for Environmental
Progress.  That covenant is built on a renewed commitment to leave
our children a better nation -- a nation whose air, water, and land
are unspoiled; whose natural beauty is undimmed; and whose
leadership for sustainable global growth is unsurpassed.  This new
covenant will challenge Americans and demand responsibility at every
level -- from individuals, families, communities, corporations, and
government agencies -- to do more to preserve the quality of our
environment and our world.    A new covenant for environmental
progress will have three priorities:  exerting new American leadership
to protect the global environment; preserving the quality of our
environment here at home; and finding ways to promote innovation
and growth consistent with firm environmental goals.

     The first part of a new covenant for environmental progress must
be for the U.S. to exert international leadership for the health of the
planet.  The Cold War is over, and we have entered a new era in
which threats to our security are less evident, but no less dangerous,
than before.  As Senator Gore has dramatized in his recent book,
Earth in the Balance, if we do not find the vision and leadership to
defeat the unprecedented new threats of global climate change,
ozone depletion, and unsustainable population growth, then those
threats may defeat us instead.

     This June, the nations of the world will meet in Rio to negotiate
reductions in their output of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse
gasses; to end the destruction of the ozone layer; and to find rules
for sustainable development to ensure that our species does not
outlive its welcome on this planet.  Nearly a hundred heads of state
have firmly committed to attend.  But yesterday, the President said
he can't decide whether or not to go.

     We've seen eight of the hottest years in history in the last
decade.  The world's rainforests are disappearing at the rate of one
football field a minute.  An ozone hole is growing over
Kennebunkport.  And the leaders of nearly every nation on earth are
waiting while the President of the United States makes up his mind
whether to act.

     I say this is one foreign trip George Bush can't afford to miss.

     If the President does decide to go, simply showing up in Rio is
not enough.  Unless he makes the U.S. a leader against global
warming and removes the obstacles he has thrown in the way of a
climate change treaty, nothing will come of the Rio meeting.
President Bush should commit the U.S. to limit U.S. carbon dioxide
emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2000; and to join in new efforts
to protect the planet's biodiversity and preserve its forests.  As
Senator Gore says, this is now are most important global
environmental challenge.

     In a Clinton Administration, the U.S. will take the lead in
promoting sustainable development.  We'll call on major banks and
multilateral institutions like the IMF and the World Bank to
negotiate debt-for-nature swaps that allow developing nations to
reduce their crippling international debt burden by setting aside
precious lands.  We should explore establishing the international
equivalent of the Nature Conservancy, a fund contributed to by
developed nations and pharmaceutical companies to purchase
easements in the rainforests for medical research.  These easements
and the profits from new drugs could make not developing the
forests more profitable than tearing them down.

     We can also lead the quest for sustainable development by
supporting efforts to stem global population growth.  As Al Gore has
noted, it took mankind 10,000 generations to reach a population of
2 billion.  Yet we will likely see that number triple in my lifetime.
The earth's resources and delicate eco-systems are straining and
breaking under this unsustainable burden.  President Bush was once
a strong supporter of efforts to limit global population growth, and it
is shameful that he blocked our contributions to those efforts to
appease the anti-choice wing of his party.  A Clinton Administration
will restore U.S. funding for the U.N.'s population stabilization
efforts, and allow U.S. foreign aid to support Planned Parenthood.

     But we cannot lead the fight for environmental progress abroad
unless we do more here at home.  The U.S. constitutes just five
percent of the world's population, yet we consume over a quarter of
its oil.  We need to reduce our oil consumption and increase our
energy efficiency dramatically if we are to lead the fight against global
warming, sharpen our competitive edge in trade, and reduce our
vulnerability to cutoffs in the availability of foreign oil.

     For the past 11 years, we have had no national energy policy.  In
a Clinton Administration, we'll have an energy policy the day I take
office:

*  We'll accelerate our progress toward more fuel-efficient cars,
     and seek to raise the average goal for automakers to 45 miles
     per gallon.

*    We'll increase our reliance on natural gas, which is
     inexpensive, clean-burning and abundant, and can reduce our
     carbon dioxide emissions.  I'll start with an executive order
     to purchase natural gas powered vehicles for the federal
     fleet, following the lead of Gov. Ann Richards in Texas.

*    We'll push for revenue-neutral incentives that reward
     conservation and make polluters and energy-wasters pay.
     California, for example, has proposed giving purchasers of
     fuel-efficient cars rebates paid for by a special fee on those
     who buy gas-guzzlers.

*   We'll invest more in the development of renewable energy
     sources.  Federal funding for renewables has dropped from $850
     million to $114 million in the last decade.  There's no reason
     why 60 percent of the Department of Energy's money should
     still be going to nuclear weapons, with nuclear power and
     fossil fuels getting most of the rest.  We'll encourage the
     use of new energy sources like wind and solar, and new ways to
     get better results out of the sources we already have.  In a
     Clinton Administration, we will designate as wilderness the
     Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and stop the crusade for new
     drilling off our coasts.

*    As part of an effort to convert some of our Cold War military
     spending to civilian purposes, we'll use research and
     development funds to develop light rail, which can speed
     travel, save fuel, and provide transportation for people less
     able to afford it.

*    Finally, we'll make energy conservation and efficiency central
     goals in every field of policy -- in designing our offices,
     planning our communities, designing our transportation systems
     and regulating our utilities.  My goal is to improve America's
     overall energy efficiency by 20 percent by the year 2000.

     We also need a policy to prevent pollution.  Since 1970, we've
made great strides in controlling pollution "at the pipe" -- regulating
how much could be dumped and where.  Now we need to expand
our efforts earlier in the process and move from control to
prevention.

     One of our most urgent challenges is to reduce the amount of
solid waste we generate.  A Clinton Administration will find new
ways to prevent pollution in the first place:

*    We'll create a system of tradeable credits that will reward
     companies that recover a greater portion of their waste and
     penalize those that don't.

*   We'll create incentives for firms and government to recycle,
     and use federal purchasing power to create markets in recycled
     materials.

*    We'll pass a national bottle bill to encourage recycling by
     creating small deposits on all glass and plastic bottles.

     To improve the quality of our water, we need to turn greater
attention to the polluting effect of water running off our agricultural
fields, city streets, and suburban developments.  We need a new
Clean Water Act with standards for non-point-source pollution and
incentives that will unleash the creative and technological potential of
our firms, farmers, and families to reduce and prevent polluted
run-off at the source.

     We also need to strengthen our efforts on toxic wastes.  The
Superfund program has been disastrously mismanaged.  We've spent
$13 billion to clean up only 80 of the 1200 deadliest dump sites --
with much of the money squandered on legal fees and cost overruns
to contractors who bought Rolex watches and art for their walls.

     The Superfund program was a historic breakthrough in 1980.  In
my first term, Arkansas was the first state in the country to have an
EPA-approved hazardous waste management program.  Superfund
enabled us to contain the most immediate risks, and provided a
powerful deterrent against toxic dumping.  Now those of us who
care about the environment must take the lead to explore every
possible improvement that might get more sites cleaned up sooner
for less, without letting responsible parties off the hook.

     We also need to improve America's resources by preserving our
natural heritage for future generations.  As President, I will protect
our old growth forests and other vital habitats, and make the "no
net loss" promise on wetlands a reality.  I'll rededicate the agencies
that manage our national parks and wilderness lands to a true
conservation ethic.  And I'll expand our efforts to acquire new
parklands and recreational sites with the funds already available under
the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund.  Every year, millions
of American families vacation in national parks, from Yosemite to
Yellowstone.  They deserve an administration that cares about
America's parks as much as they do.

     All of our efforts to improve the nation's resources ultimately
depend on enforcement and public awareness.  In a Clinton
Administration, we'll stop shortchanging EPA's enforcement efforts,
and ensure that we hold companies and polluters responsible for
their behavior.  When corporate executives deliberately violate
environmental laws, they must pay the price.

     The third priority I want to speak about today is the need to
bring powerful market forces to bear on America's pollution
problems.  Many of our environmental efforts in the past were based
on a "command and control" approach to regulation that told firms
how much pollution to produce and what kind of technology to
use.  While that approach produced important successes, it
sometimes stifled innovation by locking firms into a specific kind of
equipment, and increased regulatory costs and burdens by taking
such a detailed and inflexible approach.

     I believe it is time for a new era in environmental protection
which uses the market to help us get our environment back on track
-- to recognize that Adam Smith's invisible hand can have a green
thumb.  While we need to maintain tough guidelines and goals for
reducing pollution, charging companies for their pollution would
give them a daily incentive to find progressively cleaner technologies
and manufacturing processes.  In certain settings, this results-oriented
approach can cut compliance costs, shrink regulatory bureaucracies,
enlist corporate support, take environmental policy away from the
specialists and lobbyists, and open it up more to the general public.

     But freeing up our companies to find cost-effective pollution
control methods is not the only step we need to take.  It is time we
recognized that environmental technology will be one of the most
vital and profitable economic sectors of the 21st Century.  The
market for environmental technology and services is already around
$200 billion a year, and developing nations will need to install a
trillion dollars' worth of energy technology over the next 15 years.

     Unfortunately, we're losing that battle.  In 1980, the U.S. had
three quarters of the world sales of solar technology.  By 1990,
German and Japanese competition had cut our share to 30 percent.
We need to recognize that green economics is a booming business.
And as President, I'll ensure that the nation that pioneered the
environmental movement will be the world's foremost producer and
exporter of environmental technology and services by the end of this
decade.

* * *

     As I have travelled across this country campaigning for President,
I have been struck by the yearning I see among Americans of all
backgrounds, incomes, and colors to be united again in common
purpose.  If there is one thing that has united Americans across
dozens of generations, it is the feeling we have for this rich and
expansive land.  Our forebears were passionate about it.  They were
farmers and pioneers, who made these two billion acres we call
America the canvas of their dreams.

     That stubborn, protective love of the land, which flows like a
mighty underground current through our national character, is what
burst to the surface of American life on April 22, 1970.  And it was
the well-spring for one of the most important marches for progress
we have known in our time.


      For over a decade, that progress has been arrested.  And for too
many of those years, we have walked backwards.  Too many times
we w  For over a decade, that progress has been arrested.  And for
too many of those years, we have walked backwards.  Too many
times we were told that trees cause pollution and that sunglasses are
the best answer to the ozone problem.  And far too many times we
were divided against ourselves, falsely told to choose between our
quality of life and our standard of living.  I believe now it is time to
move past the false choices, unite our nation again, and resume our
progress for the land we cherish, the values we share, and the only
earth we have.  int, to which man returns again and again to
organize yet another search for a durable set of values."  One of the
starting points for America will always be our devotion to our natural
heritage.  And today I ask you to join me in beginning an excursion
from that starting point anew.  Thank you.


End of prepared remarks