One of the most important technological advances of this century came 90 years ago in an old farmhouse overlooking Lake Michigan, where William Merriam Burton, who was a chemist for Standard Oil, figured out how to launch the modern petrochemical industry. He understood that this new contraption called the automobile was about to create this huge demand for petroleum products, and he understood that he had to squeeze more power from every molecule of petroleum. And because he did that, we had the prosperity we enjoyed, and we have many of the challenges we face today — because of what he did in that small place, so long ago.

This paved the way for the automobile era. It showed us the power of science to change the paradigms which govern our world. And on the verge of the 21st century, we may be nearing a similar breakthrough — a technological fix that can help us to meet our economic challenges, maintain our security, sustain our prosperity, and ease the threat of global warming. Science will be the key to our progress.

If we can make the raw material of tomorrow's economy living, renewable resources, instead of fossil fuels, which pollute the atmosphere and warm the planet, the future of our children and our grandchildren will be far greater.

One hundred years from now, people will look back on this time and compare it to the time when Mr. Burton figured out how to get more out of every petroleum molecule — if we do our jobs.

Now, if you look at what's going on with [bio-energy derived from] trees and plants today, it's very impressive. [For this purpose] once we used only a seed or a kernel, tossed away the rest — now we're learning how to use entire plants. Microscopic cells are being put to work as tiny factories — they convert crops and even waste into a vast array of fuel and material — everything from paints to pharmaceuticals to new fibers. And our ability to use waste in these ways will also be critical to our future.

We are best served by new technology when we ask what we hope to achieve. I can tell you, 20, 30, 40 years from now people will look back on this meeting as an historic meeting if we do our job. Why? There are four reasons.

First, the potential economic benefits are staggering, not only for farmers, but for the timber industry, chemical manufacturers, power companies, and small entrepreneurs. And the vice president is in Iowa today discussing how these technologies can help close the opportunity gap between urban and suburban and rural America by bringing new high-tech jobs to rural areas which have not yet participated fully in our prosperity.

Second, by substituting domestic renewable resources for fossil fuels we ease our growing dependence on foreign oil. We are going to have with the growth of population here and growth of population around the world, [and] the increasing economic activity around the world, competition for oil which will make its supply more problematical and its price much higher within a relatively short time unless we do something to ease our dependence. It's important for our economy, for our security, for our environment.

Third, as the Council of Advisors on Science and Technology concluded in a recent report, we can help developing countries meet their own soaring needs for energy in ways that, again, improve the global environment and stabilize economies and societies. And, fourth, as I've already said, this will help us to meet the challenge of climate change, which I am convinced will be the most formidable environmental challenge the world faces over the next 20 to 30 years.

Scientists tell us this decade is probably the warmest in a thousand years, but the heat and drought of this summer, the natural disasters of the last few years, are probably only a taste of what is to come, unless we act now to deal with this challenge. Bio-energy is a means to achieve all of these objectives — to heat our homes, to fuel our vehicles, to power our factories while producing virtually no greenhouse gas pollution.

To make the most of these opportunities, government and industry must work together, as partners. In "industry" I include agriculture and small and big business, government and everyone in the private sector who is involved in this. The government provided critical leadership in developing the semiconductor and the Internet. And we must also nurture these fledgling bio-industries in the same way.

In addition, I am setting a goal of tripling America's use of bio-energy and bio-based products by 2010. That would generate as much as $20 billion [thousand million] a year in new income for farmers and rural communities, while reducing greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 100 million tons a year — the equivalent of taking more than 70 million cars off the road.

And believe me, if the technology develops fast enough, it would be easy to beat this goal. In this way, we plant the seeds of a new technology for a new century, to sustain both our prosperity and our environment.

In addition to exploring the further use of bio-energy, I just want to say there are other things we need to do as well. I'm sure you all would agree. We need to do more to accelerate the development of flexible-fuel vehicles.

We also must recognize that there are available today, at prices which are attractive today, and will grow increasingly attractive tomorrow as oil prices go up, elemental technologies that promote conservation and cut costs — so you save energy and money, in homes, in farms, in factories today — elemental technologies that are still not being maximized.

Last year, I am very grateful that the Congress voted for another billion dollars to research and develop clean, energy-efficient technologies, including bio-energy. In my present balanced budget, I have proposed further investments in these technologies, as well as tax credits for businesses and consumers who choose energy-efficient cars, homes, and appliances.

I can hardly tell you how strongly I believe that this can happen. And when it does happen, we will look back and be amazed, number one, that we took as long as we did to do it and, number two, how cheap it was to do it for the benefits we got out of it.

[We need to] break the mind-set that exists among too many both here and around the world that you cannot have economic development without burning more fossil fuel and, therefore, [that] "burning up" the planet is just the inevitable consequence of getting ahead. Anything [we] can do to roll back those problems and to create opportunities will be profoundly important to the kind of world our children live in. It's hard to think of a greater gift we could give at the turn of the century or a new millennium than a clean energy future.

ON CLIMATE CHANGE

From "Remarks by the President to the People of New Zealand," Christchurch, New Zealand, September 15, 1999

The overwhelming consensus of world scientific opinion is that greenhouse gases from human activity are raising the Earth's temperature in a rapid and unsustainable way. The five warmest years since the 15th century have all been in the 1990s; 1998 was the warmest year ever recorded, eclipsing the record set just the year before, in 1997.

Unless we change course, most scientists believe the seas will rise so high they will swallow whole islands and coastal areas. Hurricanes and droughts both will intensify. Diseases like malaria will be borne by mosquitoes to higher and higher altitudes, and across borders, threatening more lives.

In 1992, the nations of the world began to address this challenge at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. Five years later, 150 nations made more progress toward that goal in Kyoto, Japan. But we still have so much more to do.

We have a big responsibility because America produces more greenhouse gases than any other country in the world. I have offered an aggressive program to reduce that production in every area. We are also mindful that emissions are growing in the developing world even more rapidly than in the developed world, and we have a responsibility there.

But I wanted to say today [that] the largest obstacle to meeting the challenge of climate change is not the huge array of wealthy vested interests and the tens of thousands of ordinary people around the world who work in the oil and coal industries, the burning of which produce these greenhouse gases.

The largest obstacle is the continued clinging of people in wealthy countries and developing countries to a "big idea" that is no longer true — the idea that the only way a country can become wealthy and remain wealthy is to have the patterns of energy use that brought us the Industrial Age. In other words, if you're not burning more oil and coal this year than you were last year, you're not getting richer; you're not creating more jobs; you're not lifting more children out of poverty. That is no longer true.

We now know that technologies that permit breathtaking advances in energy conservation, and the use of alternative forms of energy, make it possible to grow the economy faster while healing the environment, and that, thank God, it is no longer necessary to "burn up" the atmosphere to create economic opportunity.