    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1993, Book I)]
    [April 21, 1993]
    [Pages 468-472]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    [[Page 468]]

    Remarks on Earth Day
    April 21, 1993

        Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen, for being here in the
    wonderful Botanical Gardens. I must say there's a lot I have to learn
    about this town, as you can tell if you follow events from day to day.
    And I didn't know that the Botanical Gardens was a branch of the
    Congress until I showed up here. [Laughter] Just one more thing I'm not
    responsible for. I'm glad to be here.
        I also think that we should introduce a guest from another country
    who is here with us, the Environmental Minister from Australia, Roz
    Kelly. Would you stand up? We're glad to have you here.
        Al Gore introduced Katie McGinty, and you were all good enough to
    clap. And I don't know if you could hear through the clapping that her
    parents are here. And what you may not know is that the real reason we
    appointed her is that she's one of 10 children, and we'd like to carry
    Pennsylvania in 1996. [Laughter] We think that there's a significant
    likelihood now because of that.
        I want to say a special word of thanks to the Vice President for two
    things: first of all, for the wonderful trip that he has just concluded,
    going to Poland to represent our country on the occasion of the 50th
    anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising, and the wonderful remarks he gave in
    New York on the eve of that departure and the way that he represented
    the United States in Poland. And secondly, notwithstanding what he said
    in the introduction, which was true, one of the reasons I did ask him to
    join the ticket is that he knew more about the subject of the
    environment than I did, and I thought I had something to learn from him.
    And I have learned a great deal, and it has been an immensely rewarding
    experience and one which I hope will benefit the United States in many
    ways over the course of the next 4 years. That's worth clapping for. I
    agree with that, Nancy, thank you. [Applause]
        It's a good thing to have this celebration in the springtime, a time
    when our spirits are renewed and we are reminded by nature of new
    beginnings and forgotten beauty. This has been an astonishingly
    beautiful spring in Washington, DC, and something for which I will
    always be grateful, my first springtime here that I see every morning as
    I go out and jog around in it and try to breath in it, something that is
    a continuing challenge. [Laughter]
        A little more than a week ago, most Americans celebrated holy days
    of freedom and renewal. Today, we still nurture the faith that helps us
    to understand more clearly that we can do better. This is a time of new
    beginnings, a time when there is anguish and anxiety all around us, but
    we still must yearn once again to succeed in our common purposes to
    reach our deepest goals.
        For all of our differences, I think there is an overwhelming
    determination to change our course, to offer more opportunity, to assume
    more responsibility, to restore the larger American community, and to
    achieve things that are larger than ourselves and more lasting than the
    present moment. We seek to set our course by the star of age-old values,
    not short-term expediencies; to waste less in the present and provide
    more for the future; to leave a legacy that keeps faith with those who
    left the Earth to us. That is the American spirit. It moves us not only
    in great gatherings but also when we stand silently all alone in the
    presence only of nature and our Creator.
        If there is one commitment that defines our people, it is our
    devotion to the rich and expansive land we have inherited. From the
    first Americans to the present day, our people have lived in awe of the
    power, the majesty, and the beauty of the forest, the rivers, and the
    streams of America. That love of the land, which flows like a mighty
    current through this land and through our character, burst into service
    on the first Earth Day in 1970.
        When I traveled the country last year, I saw and spoke of how much
    had been accomplished by the environmental movement since then and how
    much still remains to be done. For all that has been done to protect the
    air and the water, we haven't halted the destruction of wetlands at home
    and the rain forest abroad. For all that has been learned, we still
    struggle to comprehend such dangers to our planet's delicate environment
    as the shroud of greenhouse gases and the dangerous thinning of the
    ozone

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    layer. We haven't done nearly enough to protect our forest communities
    from the hazards, such as lead poisoning, which is believed to cause
    mental retardation, learning disabilities, and impaired growth.
        Unless we act and act now, we face a future where our planet will be
    home to 9 billion people within our lifetime, but its capacity to
    support and sustain our lives will be very much diminished. Unless we
    act, we face the extinction of untold numbers of species that might
    support our livelihoods and provide medication to save our very lives.
    Unless we act now, we face a future in which the sun may scorch us, not
    warm us; where the change of season may take on a dreadful new meaning;
    and where our children's children will inherit a planet far less
    hospitable than the world in which we came of age. I have a faith that
    we will act, not from fear but from hope and through vision.
        All across this country, there is a deep understanding rooted in our
    religious heritage and renewed in the spirit of this time that the
    bounty of nature is not ours to waste. It is a gift from God that we
    hold in trust for future generations. Preserving our heritage, enhancing
    it, and passing it along is a great purpose worthy of a great people. If
    we seize the opportunity and shoulder the responsibility, we can enrich
    the future and ennoble our own lives.
        Just as we yearn to come together as a people, we yearn to move
    beyond the false choices that the last few years have imposed upon us.
    For too long we have been told that we have to choose between the
    economy and the environment, between our jobs, between our obligations
    to our own people and our responsibilities to the future and to the rest
    of the world, between public action and private economy.
        I am here today in the hope that we can together take a different
    course of action, to offer a new set of challenges to our people. Our
    environmental program is based on three principles.
        First, we think you can't have a healthy economy without a healthy
    environment. We need not choose between breathing clean air and bringing
    home secure paychecks. The fact is, our environmental problems result
    not from robust growth but from reckless growth. The fact is that only a
    prosperous society can have the confidence and the means to protect its
    environment. And the fact is healthy communities and environmentally
    sound products and services do best in today's economic competition.
    That's why our policies must protect our environment, promote economic
    growth, and provide millions of new high-skill, high-wage jobs.
        Second, we want to protect the environment at home and abroad. In an
    era of global economics, global epidemics, and global environmental
    hazards, a central challenge of our time is to promote our national
    interest in the context of its connectedness with the rest of the world.
    We share our atmosphere, our planet, our destiny with all the peoples of
    this world. And the policies I outline today will protect all of us
    because that is the only way we can protect any of us.
        And third, we must move beyond the antagonisms among business,
    Government, and individual citizens. The policies I outlined today are
    part of our effort to reinvent Government, to make it your partner and
    not your overseer, to lead by example and not by bureaucratic fiat.
        In the face of great challenges, we need a Government that not only
    guards against the worst in us but helps to bring out the best in us. I
    know we can do this because our administration includes the best team of
    environmental policy makers who have ever served the United States: the
    Vice President, Interior Secretary Babbitt, EPA Administrator Browner--
    and I hope that the EPA will soon, by the grace of Congress, be a
    Cabinet-level Department--and Energy Secretary O'Leary, Commerce
    Secretary Brown, Transportation Secretary Pena, the Agriculture
    Secretary Mike Espy, our Environmental Policy Director Katie McGinty,
    and our Science and Technology Adviser Jack Gibbons. All of them share
    an unshakable commitment to a healthy environment, a growing economy,
    and a responsive Government.
        Our economic plan will create new job opportunities and new business
    opportunities, protecting our natural environment. The reductions in the
    interest rates which we have seen already will free up tens of billions
    of dollars for responsible investments in this year alone.
        The jobs package I have asked the Congress to pass contains--this
    has hardly been noticed, but it actually contains green jobs from waste
    water treatment to energy efficiency, to the restoration of our national
    parks, to investments in new technologies designed to create the means
    by which we can solve the problems of the future and create more jobs
    for Americans.
        Our long-term strategy invests more in pollu-

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    tion prevention, energy efficiency, in solar energy, in renewable
    energy, and environmental restoration, and water treatment, all of which
    can be found in the 5-year budget that we have presented to the
    Congress.
        These investments will create tens of thousands of new jobs, and
    they will save tens of thousands more. Because when we save energy and
    resources, we will have more to invest in creating new jobs and
    providing better living standards. Today every other advanced nation is
    more energy efficient than we are. That is one of the reasons why over
    the last couple of years, for example, the average German factory worker
    has come to make over 20 percent more than his American counterpart;
    that German workers, while having higher wages, also have more secure
    and better health care. That's because that economy uses one-half the
    energy we do to produce the same amount of goods. We can do better, and
    we will.
        I believe we can develop the know-how to out-conserve and out-
    compete anyone else on Earth. All over the world, people are buying
    products that help them to protect their environment. There's a $200
    billion market today for environmental technologies, and by the turn of
    the decade and the century, it will be $300 billion.
        Let me just share one example with you. Something we all know and
    use and something some of us are still trying to learn how to replace:
    light bulbs. Long-lasting, energy-saving light bulbs didn't even exist
    in 1985. Now American companies sell over $500 million worth of these
    products, with sales expected to reach $2 billion by 1995 and $10
    billion by the year 2000, creating thousands of new jobs. American
    scientists have taken the lead in developing these technologies, and
    it's time to help our companies take the lead in bringing our products
    and services to market.
        I've asked the Energy Department, the Commerce Department, and the
    EPA to assess current environmental technologies and create a strategic
    plan to give our companies the trade development, promotional efforts,
    and technical assistance they need to turn these advances into jobs here
    in America, as well as to help promote a better environment. America can
    maintain our lead in the world economy by taking the lead to preserve
    the world environment.
        Last year, the nations of the world came together at the Earth
    Summit in Rio to try to find a way to protect the miraculous diversity
    of plant and animal life all across the planet. The biodiversity treaty
    which resulted had some flaws, and we all knew that. But instead of
    fixing them, the United States walked away from the treaty. That left us
    out of a treaty that is critically important not only to our future but
    to the future of the world, and not only because of what it will do to
    preserve species but because of opportunities it offers for cutting-edge
    companies whose research creates new medicines, new products, and new
    jobs.
        Again, just one recent example makes the point. A tree that was
    thought to have no value, the Pacific Yew, used to be bulldozed and
    burned. Now we know that that tree contains one of our most promising
    potential cures for ovarian cancer, breast cancer, and other forms of
    cancer. We cannot walk away from challenges like those presented by the
    biodiversity treaty. We must step up to them.
        Our administration has worked with business and environmental groups
    toward an agreement that protects both American interests and the world
    environment. And today, I am proud to announce the United States'
    intention  to  sign  the  biodiversity treaty.
        This is an example of what you can do by bringing business and
    environmentalists together, instead of pitting them against each other.
    We can move forward to protect critical natural resources and critical
    technologies. I'm also directing the State Department to move ahead with
    our talks with other countries which have signed the convention so that
    the United States can move as quickly as possible toward ratification.
        To learn more about where we stand in protecting all our biological
    resources here at home, I'm asking the Interior Department to create a
    national biological survey to help us protect endangered species and,
    just as importantly, to help the agricultural and biotechnical
    industries of our country identify new sources of food, fiber, and
    medication.
        We also must take the lead in addressing the challenge of global
    warming that could make our planet and its climate less hospitable and
    more hostile to human life. Today, I reaffirm my personal and announce
    our Nation's commitment to reducing our emissions of greenhouse gases to
    their 1990 levels by the year 2000.
        I am instructing my administration to produce a cost-effective plan
    by August that can continue

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    the trend of reduced emission. This must be a clarion call, not for more
    bureaucracy or regulation or unnecessary costs but, instead, for
    American ingenuity and creativity, to produce the best and most energy-
    efficient technology.
        After the cold war, we face the challenge of helping Russia achieve
    a healthy democracy, a healthy economy, and a healthy environment. Our
    Russian aid package includes $38 million to clean up pollution and
    promote better uses of energy. As with the full range of our investments
    in Russia, this is truly an investment not only in promoting our own
    values but in protecting our national security. To protect the
    environment at home and abroad, I am committed to a Government that
    leads by example, brings people together, and brings out the best in
    everyone. For too long our Government did more to inflame environmental
    issues than to solve them. Different Agencies pursued conflicting
    policies. National leaders polarized people. And problems wound up in
    the courts or in the streets instead of being solved.
        We seek to bring a new spirit to these difficult issues. Three weeks
    ago in Portland, Oregon, we brought together business people, timber
    workers, and environmentalists from throughout the Northwest to discuss
    how best to preserve jobs and to protect the old-growth forests and the
    species which inhabit them. People sat down in a conference room, not a
    court room, and in the words of Archbishop Thomas Murphy of Seattle, we
    tried to find common ground for a common good. At the close of that
    forest conference, I asked my Cabinet and our entire administration to
    begin work immediately to craft a balanced, comprehensive long-term
    policy that is also comprehensible.
        Before I ask our companies and our communities and our families to
    meet any challenge, it seems to me we have to set that standard for the
    Government. The American people are entitled to know where the United
    States stands on this issue and many other issues. And it is time to
    bring an end to the time when issues like this wind up in court and
    there are five different positions from the United States Government
    itself. We can never solve problems in that fashion. We can only
    undermine the security and stability of people's lives.
        That's one reason I am proud that yesterday the United States Army
    announced its plan to clean up a large number of sites where we learned
    recently that chemical weapons materials may be buried, in some places
    from as long ago as World War I. Working with the EPA, the Army will
    clean up this problem safely and in an environmentally sound manner.
        This is a legacy of America's efforts to defend our people and the
    community of free nations. Now, we are taking steps to defend our people
    and our environment and the environment of the world. In that same
    spirit, I plan to sign an Executive order requiring Federal facilities
    that manufacture, process, or use toxic chemicals, to comply with the
    Federal right-to-know laws and publicly report what they are doing.
        I might add that it is time that the United States Government begins
    to live under the laws it makes for other people. With this Executive
    order, I ask all Federal facilities to set a voluntary goal to reducing
    their release of toxic pollutants by 50 percent by 1999. This will
    reduce toxic releases, control costs associated with cleanups, and
    promote clean technologies. And it will help make our Government what it
    should be, a positive example for the rest of the country.
        Poor neighborhoods in our cities suffer most often from toxic
    pollution. Cleaning up the toxic wastes will create new jobs in these
    neighborhoods for those people and make them safer places to live, to
    work, and to do business.
        Today I am also signing an Executive order that directs Federal
    agencies to make preliminary changes in their purchasing policies, to
    use fewer substances harmful to the ozone layer. Here, too, we must put
    our actions where our values are. Our Government is a leading purchaser
    of goods and services. And it's time to stop not only the waste of
    taxpayers' money but the waste of our natural resources.
        Today I am signing an Executive order which commits the Federal
    Government to buy thousands more American made vehicles, using clean,
    domestic fuels such as natural gas, ethanol, methanol, and electric
    power. This will reduce our demand for foreign oil, reduce air
    pollution, promote promising technologies, promote American companies,
    create American jobs, and save American tax dollars. To demonstrate my
    commitment to this issue, Energy Secretary O'Leary is creating a task
    force led by the land commissioner of Texas, Garry Mauro, who is here in
    the audience today, who has headed a successful effort in his own State.
    I hope we can do as well in America as they have done in Texas.

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        In that same spirit, I plan to sign an Executive order committing
    every agency of the National Government to do more than ever to buy and
    use recycled products. This will provide a market for new technologies,
    make better use of recycled materials, and encourage the creation of new
    products that can be offered to the Government, to private companies,
    and to consumers. And again, it will create jobs through the recycling
    process.
        We must keep finding new ways to be a force for positive change. For
    example, the Federal Government is the largest purchaser of computer
    equipment in the world, and computers are the fastest growing area of
    electricity use. That's why I am also signing an Executive order today
    requiring the Federal Government to purchase energy-efficient computers.
    We're going to expand the market for a technology where America
    pioneered and still leads the world, and we'll save energy, saving the
    taxpayers $40 million a year, and set an example for our country and for
    the world.
        For as long as I live and work in the White House, I want Americans
    to see it not only as a symbol of clean Government but also a clean
    environment. That's why I'm announcing an energy and environmental audit
    of the White House. We're going to identify what it takes to make the
    White House a model for efficiency and waste reduction. It might mean
    fewer memos and less paper. [Laughter] And then we're going to get the
    job done. I want to make the White House a model for other Federal
    agencies, for State and local governments, for business, and for
    families in their homes. Before I ask you to do the best you can in your
    house, I ought to make sure I'm doing the best I can in my house.
        I ask that all of us today reaffirm our willingness to assume
    responsibility for our common environment and to do it willingly,
    hopefully, and joyously. We are challenged here today not so much to
    sacrifice as to celebrate and create. I've challenged Americans who are
    young in years or young in spirit to offer their time and their talent
    to serve their communities and their country. I've asked them to help in
    teaching our children, healing the sick, policing our streets. But
    equally important are efforts to protect our environment, from our
    largest cities to our smallest towns to our suburbs. Our national
    service plan will ask thousands of Americans to do their part, from
    leading recycling drives to preventing lead poisoning.
        The challenge to shoulder responsibility and seize opportunity
    extends to each of us in businesses, communities, and homes. In our own
    lives, in our own ways, each of us has something to offer to the work of
    cleaning up America's environment. And each of us surely has something
    very personal to gain.
        On a colder day in the middle of winter, just 3 months ago, a poet
    asked us to celebrate not only the marvelous diversity of our people but
    the miraculous bounty of our land. ``Here on the pulse of this new
    day,'' Maya Angelou challenged us to look at ``the rock, the river, the
    tree, your country.'' Now, it is a season of new hope and new
    beginnings. And as we look anew at our neighbors, our children, and our
    own communities, as well as the world around us, we must seize the
    possibilities inherent in this exhilarating moment, to face our
    challenges, to exercise our responsibilities, and to rejoice in them.
        Thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 11:50 a.m. at the U.S. Botanic Gardens. The
    Executive orders of April 21 on ozone-depleting substances, alternative
    fueled vehicles, and energy efficient computer equipment are listed in
    Appendix D at the end of this volume. Later in the year, the President
    signed Executive orders on compliance with right-to-know laws (August 3,
    58 FR 41981) and recycling (October 20, 58 FR 54911).