[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1993, Book II)]
[October 19, 1993]
[Pages 1773-1775]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks at the White House Conference on Climate Change
October 19, 1993

    Ladies and gentlemen, first let me thank you all for being here and 
thank the Vice President, the Cabinet, our Science Adviser, Katie 
McGinty, and others who worked so hard on this policy. If I might begin 
by just observing, I was looking at the clouds hoping we didn't have too 
much of a climate change this morning before the event could unfold.
    This is an issue which has been of great concern to me for a long 
time. When I decided to seek this office back in 1991, I did it after 
having spent more than a decade as a Governor deeply frustrated by what 
seemed to me too often to be inevitable, persistent, aggravating 
conflicts between the impulse to promote economic opportunity for the 
people that I represented and the clear obligation, the moral 
obligation, on all of us to try to preserve this planet that we all 
share. And anyone with eyes to see could look down the road and 
recognize that, even with imperfect scientific knowledge, at some point 
the impulse to give people something to do would have to be reconciled 
with the obligation to preserve the planet we all share and that if 
there were ways through the use of technology and partnerships and 
ingenuity to actually enhance economic opportunities while preserving 
the planet, how much better off we would all be.
    That is what we have sought to do in this administration. The Vice 
President outlined the number of things that we have tried to do to move 
the environmental agenda forward and at the same time move our economy 
forward. I

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remember so well the sort of shocking but bracing and reinforcing 
feeling I had the first time I began to go to New Hampshire, which is 
what you have to do in this country if you want to ultimately become 
President, to find that people just living their own lives in what was 
in a very economically depressed State also believed that we could find 
a way and that we had to find a way to pursue our economic objectives 
and fulfill our moral responsibilities to have an aggressive and 
responsible program about the environment.
    That cannot be done unless we change our attitude about what we put 
into our atmosphere and how we respect the air we breathe. That requires 
us to meet head-on the serious threat of global warming. I made a 
commitment to do that on Earth Day this year, to make a commitment to an 
approach that would draw on the most innovative people we could find in 
this country, whether they were in business, labor, government, or the 
environmental movement, to turn this challenge into an opportunity. And 
that's what this report seeks to do. It seeks to give the American 
people the ability to compete and win in the global economy while 
meeting our most deep and profound environmental challenges.
    We have begun the task of linking our economy to the environment 
today in what I believe is a truly extraordinary fashion. And I think if 
all of you read the plan in its exquisite and sometimes mind-bending 
detail, you will see that it is a very aggressive and very specific 
first step; I would argue, the most aggressive and the most specific 
first step that any nation on this planet has taken in the face of 
perhaps the biggest environmental threat to this planet.
    The task is accomplished primarily by harnessing private market 
forces, by leveraging modest Government expenditures to create a much 
larger set of private sector investments, and by establishing new 
public-private partnerships to bring out our best research and our best 
technologies. This plan takes the environmental debate where it should 
have been years ago, beyond a confrontation over ideology to a 
conversation about ideas, beyond polemics to real progress.
    On Earth Day I made a commitment to reduce our emissions of 
greenhouse gases to 1990 levels by the year 2000. And I asked for a 
blueprint on how to achieve this goal. In concert with all other 
nations, we simply must halt global warming. It is a threat to our 
health, to our ecology, and to our economy. I know that the precise 
magnitude and patterns of climate change cannot be fully predicted. But 
global warming clearly is a growing, long-term threat with profound 
consequences. And make no mistake about it, it will take decades to 
reverse. But the first step is before us today. And because most of our 
recommendations do not require legislation, something which will 
doubtless please the Congress with all the burdens they have already on 
their plate, we can take action on our plan beginning today.
    This plan is the result, as the Vice President has said, of genuine 
collaboration based on solid scientific and economic analysis, including 
funding to back up each and every proposal it contains. Like the 
announcement of our clean car initiative last month, this approach to 
global warming encourages public-private cooperation across a spectrum 
of economic, technological, and environmental questions. There are 50 
separate initiatives in this plan, touching every sector of our economy 
because the problem, frankly, affects every sector of the economy. There 
are measures to improve energy efficiencies in commercial buildings and 
to make better household appliances. There are new agreements with 
public utilities to reduce greenhouse gases and new public-private 
ventures to increase the efficiency of industrial motors.
    The plan will make it possible for all Americans to purchase 
appliances unlike any we own today. When your furnace dies or your 
washer breaks, you'll be able to go to a local store and buy a new 
appliance much more efficient than any you can buy today, and one that 
will save money in its operation. The energy savings we achieve will 
lower the cost of doing business in America and make us more competitive 
on the world market and more prosperous here at home. And the 
investments generated by this plan will create jobs in the sectors that 
make, install, and use energy efficient and pollution-cutting 
technologies.
    Finally, to meet the challenge of global warming, as I have said 
with regard to cutting the deficit and reforming health care and in so 
many other areas, we frankly must all take some more personal 
responsibility. We will all benefit environmental and economically from 
the actions we are proposing today, and it will take all of us to make 
this plan work. So I say to all the American people: If your utility 
offers you help

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in conserving energy in your own home, seize it. If you own a business 
and the EPA offers you a chance to join the Green Lights program, do it. 
If you run a factory and the Department of Energy offers you a plan to 
help install an efficient motor system, use it. You will save money, and 
you will help your country and your fellow citizens.
    This plan isn't designed for an archive. It's designed for action, 
for rapid implementation, constant monitoring, and for adjustments as 
necessary to meet our goals. It's part of a long-range strategy that 
includes the establishment of a team here in the White House to identify 
and implement those policies which will continue the trend of reduced 
emissions.
    The action plan reestablishes the United States as a world leader in 
protecting the global climate. I urge other industrial countries to move 
rapidly to produce plans as detailed, as realistic, and as achievable as 
ours. This initiative gives us a chance, a very, very good chance to 
reduce greenhouse gases, grow our economy, and create a new high-skill, 
high-wage job base in America.
    We take pride here in this country in the love we have for our land, 
in our leadership among nations, in our ability to set new goals and 
solve new challenges. Today we have given life to those values again. 
And through them, we will help to build a healthier environment and a 
stronger economy for decades to come. We also will help to meet our 
moral obligation to ourselves, our neighbors around the world, and most 
important, to our children.
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 12:27 p.m. on the South Lawn at the White 
House. In his remarks, he referred to John H. Gibbons, Assistant to the 
President for Science and Technology.