26 June 1997

President Clintons' Earth Summit +5 Remarks

Five years ago in Rio de Janeiro, the nations of the world joined together around a simple but revolutionary proposition: that today's progress must not come at tomorrow's expense.

In our era, the environment has moved to the top of the international agenda because how well a nation honors it will have an impact, for good or ill, felt across the globe. Preserving the resources we share is crucial not only for the quality of our environment and health, but to maintain stability and peace, within nations and among them. As the father of American conservation, John Muir, said, "When we try to pick anything out by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe."

In the years since Rio, there has been real progress in some areas. Nations have banned the dumping of radioactive wastes in the oceans...and reduced marine pollution from sources on land. We are working to protect the precious coral reefs...conserve threatened fish...and stop the advance of deserts. At the Cairo Conference on Population and Development, we reaffirmed the crucial importance of cooperative family planning efforts to long-term sustainable development.

Here in America, we have cleaned up a record number of toxic waste dumps...and we intend to clean up 500 more in the next four years. We have passed new laws to better protect our water and created new national parks and monuments. We have worked to harmonize our efforts for environmental protection, economic growth and social improvement, aided by a distinguished Council on Sustainable Development.

Yesterday, I announced the most far-reaching efforts to improve air quality in our nation in 20 years, cutting smog levels dramatically, and for the first time ever, setting standards to lower the levels of the fine particles in the atmosphere that form soot. In America, the incidence of childhood asthma has been increasing rapidly, and it is now the single biggest reason that children are hospitalized. These measures will help change that...improve health for people of all ages...and prevent as many as 15,000 premature deaths a year.

Still, we have much more to do, especially in reducing our contribution to global climate change.

The science is clear and compelling: we humans are changing the global climate. Concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are at their highest level in more than 200,000 years and climbing sharply. If the trend is not changed, scientists expect the seas to rise two feet or more in the next century. In America, that means 9,000 square miles of Florida, Louisiana and other coastal areas will be flooded...in Asia, 17% of Bangladesh, land on which six million people live, will be lost...island chains such as the Maldives will disappear from the map. Climate changes will disrupt agriculture, cause severe droughts, floods and the spread of infectious diseases, including 50 million or more cases a year of malaria. We can expect more deaths from heat stress -- just two years ago in Chicago, we saw the tragedy of more than 400 of our citizens dying during a severe heat wave.

No nation can escape this danger. No nation can evade its responsibility to confront it. We must all do our part -- industrial nations that emit the largest quantities of greenhouse gases and developing nations whose emissions are growing rapidly. I applaud the European Union for its strong focus on this issue and the World Bank for setting environmental standards for projects it will finance in the developing world.

Here in the United States, we must do better. With 4% of the world's population, we produce 20% of its greenhouse gases. Frankly, our record since Rio is not sufficient. We have been blessed with high growth for several years but that has led to an increase in greenhouse gas emissions in spite of the adoption of new conservation practices. So we must do better, and we will.

The air quality action I took yesterday is a positive first step, but many more must follow. In order to reduce greenhouse gases and grow the economy, we must invest more in the technologies of the future. I am directing my Cabinet to work to develop them. Government, universities, business and labor must work together. All these efforts must be sustained over decades. As Vice President Gore said on Monday, "Sustainable development requires sustained commitment." With that commitment, we can succeed.

We must create new technologies and develop new strategies like emissions trading that will both curtail pollution and support continued economic growth. Many of the technologies that will help us meet the new air quality standards can also help address climate change. This is a challenge we must undertake immediately and one in which I personally plan to play a critical role.

In the United States, in order to do our part, we must first convince the American people and the Congress that the climate change problem is real and imminent. At a White House Conference on Climate Change I am convening, we will lay out the scientific facts so that our people understand why we must act...and the economic facts so that they understand the benefits and the costs. With the best ideas and strategies, with new technologies...with increased productivity and energy efficiency...we can turn this challenge to our advantage.

We will work with our people -- and we will bring to the Kyoto conference in December a strong American commitment to realistic and binding limits that will significantly reduce our emissions of greenhouse gases.

Today, I want to discuss three other initiatives we are taking to deal with climate change and to advance sustainable development here and beyond our borders.

First: To help developing nations reduce greenhouse gas emissions, I am pleased to announce that the United States will provide them with $1,000 million in assistance over the next five years. These funds will go to programs that support energy efficiency, develop alternative energy sources and improve resource management to promote growth that does not adversely affect the climate.

Second: The United States will continue to encourage private investment that meets environmental standards. For example, the U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corporation will now require that its projects adhere to new and strengthened environmental guidelines, just as our Ex-Im Bank already does and as I hope our allies and friends soon will. Common guidelines for responsible investment can greatly strengthen sustainable growth in developing countries.

Third: At home, we must unleash more of the creative power of our people to meet the challenge of climate change. Already, we are working with our auto industry to produce cars by early in the next century that are three times as fuel efficient as today's models. But we can do more. The sun's energy can reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. We will work with businesses and communities to install solar panels on one million roofs around our nation by 2010. By capturing the sun's warmth, we can help turn down the earth's temperature.

Distinguished leaders: In all of our cultures, the thought has been handed down that, as Scripture says, "One generation passes away and another comes, but the earth abides forever." We must strengthen our stewardship of the environment so that when this generation passes, it will be a rich and abundant earth that abides -- and the coming generation will inherit a world as full and as good as the one we have known.

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