*EPF310 02/02/00
Transcript: U.S. Energy Secretary Remarks at Nobel Institute, Oslo
(Richardson discusses dividends, responsibilities of science) (3810)

The dividends of scientific research and the responsibilities that come with scientific discovery were the themes of a speech by U.S. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson February 1 in Oslo, Norway.

"While science offers us so many solutions," Richardson told a gathering at the Nobel Institute, "it will never understand the protocol of our souls."

He said science has transformed the lives of many of the world's people, but that it cannot tell us everything we need to know, and so we must "keep our balance" when dealing with scientific issues.

Richardson said that when we consider how to employ the dividends we reap from discovery, "we must never retreat from our responsibility to human values, the good of society, our fundamental sense of what is right and what is wrong."

The U.S. Energy Secretary said one of the objectives of his trip to Norway was to find ways to increase scientific cooperation between Norway -- which he called "very, very strong in science and environment" -- and the United States. "In today's environment of scarce budgets," he said, "we need to cooperate more as an international community to address our common concerns."

Following is a transcript of Richardson's remarks:

[In the transcript, 1 billion = 1,000 million.]

(begin transcript)

REMARKS (AS DELIVERED) BY U.S. SECRETARY OF ENERGY BILL RICHARDSON
THE NOBEL INSTITUTE
OSLO, NORWAY
FEBRUARY 1, 2000

Thank you very much Bjarne, for that very gracious introduction, and to the Directors of the Nobel Institute, to Gunnar, and to the Research Director.

I'm very honored to be in these hallowed halls. I just was in the room where they decide who the Nobel Prize winner is, and I saw all the pictures of all the Nobel Prize laureates. Let me say to you, before I go into my prepared text, let me just explain the reason that I'm here in Norway. And the reason is that the United States has made a big mistake in not having had a Secretary of Energy come to Norway since 1987, when Norway is the world's second largest oil exporter, you're a key player in the oil market. But at the same time I know of Norway's great work on foreign policy, on behalf of the environment, of refugees, of peace, of ensuring whether it's the Middle East or on Cyprus issues. And having been at the United Nations, I know of Norway's very positive interventionist positions. I always used to say to my staff, "Why don't we always take positions like Norway? They're pure and good." And to be here at the Nobel Institute is a great honor for me.

I have to tell you something. I told this story to the Energy Minister about my first experience with Norway recently, although this is my first visit here. And she said it was all right that I tell you this story, but it kind of shows the gulf between the movement of people.

Several years ago when I was a Congressman from New Mexico, as Bjarne mentioned, I was very interested in Burma and Aung San Suu Kyi, and freedom and human rights in Burma. But so were a lot of other parliamentarians around the world, including many in Norway. In fact, the Energy Minister mentioned that she was one. And I remember when I was a Congressman, the Burmese government made a decision which they now regret, to let me in to Burma, to talk to Aung San Suu Kyi. I think they felt that they could convince me of the rightness of their position - which they don't have - but at the time they were also rejecting other parliamentarians from other parts of the world. Because especially from Norway, many had been very outspoken and criticized many of the Burmese policies. Well, there were times when before I left I got a lot of phone calls. Many came from Norway, from parliamentarians from Norway. And, because I wanted to get in, I did not want to jeopardize my visit. So I didn't always return the calls, I am now confessing, from parliamentarians here and in other parts, because I wanted to get in and after I got in, needless to say, I've never been allowed back.

But, recently in Istanbul, I was walking into one of the great halls there, the presidents were meeting President Clinton, the OSCE [Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe] meetings, and an individual came up to me and said, "Bill, we worked together on Burma issues when I was a parliamentarian from Norway. And you know, we worked well, and I remember all those days." And I said, "Well that's terrific, that's great." And I said "Well, what are you doing now?" And he said, "Well, I'm Prime Minister of Norway." (Laughter) Your Prime Minister. You know, which he did very well.

I'm delighted, because I wanted to talk to you today about science. Because this is something that in the Department of Energy is critically important.

We are the science agency of the federal government. And if you look at it, science holds the answer to life's most simple and complex questions. You could have seen me this weekend interviewed on CNN, because as the Secretary of Energy, we deal with nuclear weapons. And one of the things I have done as Secretary is reverse the policy that basically says in the past, U.S. nuclear workers, that manufactured our weapons, the government said if you got radiation from this work, we're not going to compensate you, you're on your own. There's not a linkage between the illness and the exposure. I reversed that policy and acknowledged for the first time that there may have been this connection and therefore that if that is the case, that we should pay.

We won the Cold War with many of these weapons, but somehow if you forget the workers and you forget the objectives and your humanity, it strikes me that that is wrong. So potentially, the United States could be liable for many millions of dollars from our own workers, and it's the only right way to do it. The reason I raise that is that it is critically important that we not have workers, not just in the United States but anywhere in the world, exposed to similar hazards. The answer really is through science, and its alternatives to disposal and alternatives to geologic waste. The answer again is science.

If you look at the major problems related to spent fuel, what do we do with nuclear waste, low-level waste, this is a growing international problem. The way to do it is through science. It could be that underground storage is not the most effective way to do this.

Similarly, during my tenure as Ambassador to the United Nations, we launched an initiative to focus on the problems facing Africa. While I was trying to negotiate a peace between President Mobutu and Kabila in Zaire -- that was not easy -- it became clear to me that the biggest problems facing the region were not just the security reasons, but were humanitarian. AIDS, refugees, hunger. Again, if you look at the AIDS crisis in Africa, it's massive. You're talking about possibly one out of every five human beings in Africa having the HIV virus. How will we overcome this problem? Again, through science and international cooperation.

Finally, as I speak here, I'm reminded that Dr. Norman Borlaug, an American, was awarded a Nobel Prize, for his discovery of the Green Revolution, which if you look at it, is a scientific response to hunger. And it's made enormous strides not just in Asia, but in Africa and Latin America as well. The environment is another key area where we face enormous challenges -- with more evidence emerging every day.

Just ten days ago, scientists at America's Jet Propulsion Laboratory issued new satellite pictures, showing a giant horseshoe pattern of higher than normal sea-surface levels developing over the entire western Pacific region. And if we study data from the planet, you will see that an international group of scientists basically concluded that in the last twenty years, the temperature of the earth moved one half of a degree. So the planet is saying to us, "You are generating too many greenhouse gas emissions. And you have to do something about it."

Global warming and climate change concerns cannot and should not be ignored. How can we protect our planet from the effects of our own success? Once again -- through science.

And why do I place, and why should we all place, such an emphasis on science? I don't think anyone can argue with the assertion that science was the author of the 20th century. And what a story it was.

In the 20th century, polio raged in the United States, crippling tens of thousands of children and leaving America begging for a miracle solution. Our 32nd President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was confined to a wheelchair because of it. But the science of the Salk vaccine helped us to beat polio, and in the 21st century, the World Health Organization will ensure that all nations share in that victory. You know Roosevelt probably would not have been elected if the American people saw him in a wheelchair. In those days, the media would protect politicians. That is hardly the case right now. (Laughter)

In the 20th century, we struggled to come into a closer harmony with nature, and it took the science of people like the Norwegian physicist Kristian Birkeland to allow us to understand some of the world's more obscure natural melodies.

And in the 20th century, scientists at America's laboratories in Los Alamos, New Mexico, unleashed the awesome power of the atom, developing a weapon that would change the nature of warfare and threaten our very existence.

In its ubiquity, science has fundamentally altered how we think of the universe, of the forces that bind it together, and, ultimately, of ourselves.

In my present position, one of my objectives, and one of the joys I have as Secretary of Energy, is to be in charge of all of America's national laboratories -- Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore, Stanford Linear Accelerator, [Bates Lab at] MIT -- many other of our crown jewels recognize that nature and science are keys in the research that they do.

Today, the Department of Energy funds scientific advances of enormous range. Our scientists are unlocking the mysteries of the quark, the building block of matter. We are mapping the labyrinth of the Human Genome, the building block of life. We are probing the far limits of space, where scientists at Department of Energy labs -- and elsewhere -- may have discovered that Einstein's cosmological constant could be right after all. Just don't ask me to explain that to you.

We're able to do this because we put our money behind it. Next year, our Department will spend over $3.1 billion dollars -- the highest science budget ever in American history -- on our science programs alone. We are America's laboratory for research into renewable energy, nuclear waste cleanup, supercomputers that can predict weather patterns, nuclear medicine that gives us an eye into the nature of cancerous cells, and so much more.

And one of our objectives in this trip is to increase the cooperation with Norway, a country very, very strong in science and environment, and ways that we the United States can be enhanced with this cooperation.

We also oversee the nation's nuclear weapons laboratories -- like Los Alamos -- where we safely harbor America's nuclear deterrent.

But as science helps us do these things -- as it cured polio, gave us a new perspective on the Northern Lights, and helped us end World War II -- do we dare imagine what science might offer us tomorrow?

One month into the year 2000, I know that America -- indeed, the world -- of tomorrow will be carried on the shoulders of new science and new scientists.

We are breaking new ground in health and medicines. And look at our stock market -- exploding upward on the fuel of high-tech issues that were unimaginable just a few years ago. I was just at the Davos conference, the whole topic there was the Internet, the whole topic was technology. All these great leaders around the world talking just about the stock market and the Internet. It was an incredible sight. As if nothing else mattered, especially energy, which is what I went to talk about. You would think that E-bay and Amazon.com and Yahoo -- you would be thinking that I had had too much Aquavit if I were saying these words ten years ago. I don't know if my speechwriter is very good -- that was supposed to be funny (Laughter). But today these words are now companies, employing tens of thousands of Americans and many more around the world. In fact, Norway is Yahoo's northernmost outpost. And I just came from where as I said the discussion at Davos addressed major aspects of the Internet revolution.

The way we communicate has also been transformed by science. In fact, Dagsavisen reports that 80 percent of Norwegian teenagers are using cellular telephones. That is a record -- I've never heard that before. That is incredible. I haven't seen that, although I suspect that this is something that is going to transform the world.

How did this happen? It was through a commitment to science. This America of today and the world of tomorrow benefit from the investments in science and technology that all of us have made together.

What we want to do is continue our commitment to science, but we have not in the United States. And the fact that I am mentioning to you very proudly that this is the highest scientific budget that we've had is something that I consider a major policy change that will reverse the years of neglect of science and research in our body politic. In today's environment of scarce budgets, we need to cooperate more as an international community to address our common concerns. We have dozens of cooperative agreements with our global neighbors in science and technology. In fact, we have one with Norway that we hope to expand on, involving some of our technology ventures in the United States.

We are working cooperatively with Europe, Japan, Korea, and others on particle accelerators that will help us to answer fundamental questions about ourselves -- how we got here, and where we are going. We are working with scientists in marine research institutes around the Black Sea to make pollution research available worldwide to other scientists, NGOs, and regional policymakers.

We are working with the rest of the world to model how the climate is changing on a global basis. And we are working with Europe in research and development into neutron sources. We are an "Observer State" of CERN -- the European Organization for Nuclear Research -- which is a brilliant example of international collaboration. Such cooperation on the nature of matter will help to offer us better materials, more potent drugs, and safer automobiles in the future.

But even in progress, we cannot ignore our attendant responsibilities. As we -- and by "we," I mean the United States, Europe, all of us -- consider how to employ the dividends we reap from discovery, we must never retreat from our responsibility to human values, the good of society, our fundamental sense of what is right and what is wrong. In other words, the essence of your great nation, and your approach to values, and democracy, and human rights. Just as science offers us so many solutions, it also can frequently leave us more baffled than ever before.

For example, in Scotland, someone can clone sheep in the quest to develop more advanced therapeutics, but what of those who look to use similar technology to clone humans, in the quest for beauty, etc.?

Many years ago, Nobel Prize-winner Fridtjof Nansen dreamed of consolidating people all over the planet to achieve world peace and prosperity. Today, what would Nansen think of the Internet, an application that offers double-edged opportunities?

Today, the Internet can be the new shop around the corner -- a merchant of best-selling books for children or a distributor of diagrams on how to build bombs. And one of our biggest concerns has been to ensure that in this new era of cyber-security and the Internet, the secrets of your nation, and ours, cannot be stolen. It is up to us to ensure that for all science's power, that power is used in the service of goodness. That was the objective of Alfred Nobel.

We must ensure that science and its dividends are directed toward making life and the environment better for all persons -- not just the wealthy, first world countries. In the field in which we share so much interest -- energy -- opportunities abound. And I just offer you one statistic, and that statistic is that for the 80 percent of Norwegian teenagers using that cellular phone, if you look at Africa, 67 percent of all Africans have never seen a telephone -- seen, much less used. That's a startling statistic.

Energy Minister Arnstad said in a 1998 speech that "We should realize that poverty is our most important environmental problem [and] that poverty cannot be fought without, among others, the use of energy." I agree -- and we have been working together throughout our tenure to ensure that we improve the global lot through energy.

We are right now on the verge of doing some positive advances in a program that is called the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles, where through fuel cells we make automobiles more efficient, through natural gas, through hybrid vehicles. Through these fuel cells we can operate a car that is less polluting, and more efficient.

We are developing new technologies that will find uses in countries like China and India -- where greenhouse gas emissions are at dangerous levels. With these systems in place, we can make a difference. And as you know, it has been the Chinas and the Indias that have said to the developing [sic] world, "Now you want to put clamps on our technology now that we're developing, but your record on pollution has not been very good." And they're basically right. But that doesn't mean that we tell them to repeat the mistakes that we made.

This is an issue, the issue of the environment, where Norway is an acknowledged global leader, and as we take more aggressive steps to address the issue of climate change around the world, we look to your technological advances to inform our own work.

One superb example of Norway's leadership is the recent announcement that Aker Maritime -- with a hand from BP Amoco -- may have an environmentally-friendly gas power plant in place in another three years. BP Amoco is also building a non-polluting gas-fired power plant in Alaska, based on technology Statoil helped to develop. Another example is the Norwegian TH!NK [sic] electric car - an idea so good, the original American automaker, Ford, will be selling it soon.

We must also ensure that science and its dividends are never used to discriminate against any group or individual. We must ensure that science and its dividends are not used to infringe on the public's privacy and the autonomy that free citizens are certified in a free society. I also want to say to you that I was very impressed this morning when I met with America and Norway's energy company representatives. They all were strong environmentalists. They talked about environmental issues in a very positive way. The reason why I find this noteworthy is that this is not always the case when I meet with American and other energy people around the world. There was a real consciousness, I sensed that, and I think that it's because they are in this very, very good environment. Let me also say to you that we have to keep the balance between science and values. And we must ensure that science and its dividends are not used to coerce or hold hostage the other, third world nations of the world.

We must, ultimately, govern science with a firm hand.

And while we must all do this, we must also remember one fundamental premise: that while science offers us so many solutions, it will never understand the protocol of our souls. Science cannot tell us to protect the workers who risk their lives to make our countries great. Science cannot tell us to feed the hungry and heal the sick in Africa. Science cannot tell us all to save our environment. We need to keep our balance.

The United States and Europe must invest in science. We must all invest. If we do so, we will follow nobly in the wake of Seaborg and Einstein, the Curies, Bohr, and Heisenberg. If we do so, perhaps the accomplishments of the 21st century will eclipse those of the century of science, which was the 20th century.

Next week, as I mentioned, February 7, I will join President Clinton to announce America's budget for the year 2001, when we will address America's goal of maintaining that balance. In science and technology, the President's proposal -- by the way, a great fan of Norway; you gave him a welcome that he is still talking about. I don't know what you did to him, but you made him very, very happy. And when I told him I was coming here... Well, I'm not going to tell you what he said, because (Laughter)... my hope is that he comes back before the term ends.

It's been a great honor for me; I understand that there may be some questions. I do appreciate once again the American Chamber of Commerce that I understand was helpful in arranging this meeting, along with the Norwegian Industrial Group. Again, to the Nobel Institute, to Gunnar, to the Norwegian Foreign Ministry that has arranged my trip and has been very helpful, to the Research Director. To all of you, I'm most grateful and honored. Let me mention a guy that we're very proud of, our Charge' over here. He's a Norwegian too, you know, and I also want to mention my deputy chief of staff, Rebecca Gaghen, who is a Norwegian, via Montana, in the American West. At least she tells everyone she's Norwegian...

Thank you all very much.

(end transcript)

(Distributed by the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State)
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