[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1997, Book I)]
[June 26, 1997]
[Pages 826-828]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks to the United Nations Special Session on Environment and 
Development in New York City
June 26, 1997

    Thank you very much. Mr. President, Mr. Secretary-General, ladies 
and gentlemen: Five years ago in Rio, the nations of the world joined 
together around a simple but revolutionary

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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, not only on the people of that nation but all 
across the globe. Preserving the resources we share is crucial not only 
for the quality of our individual environments and health but also to 
maintain stability and peace within nations and among them. As the 
father of conservation in our Nation, 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 ocean and 
reduced marine pollution from sources on land. We're working to protect 
the precious coral reefs, to conserve threatened fish, to 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 worked to clean up a record number of our 
toxic dumps, and we intend to clean 500 more over the next 4 years. We 
passed new laws to better protect our water, created new national parks 
and monuments, and 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. It is now the 
single biggest reason our children are hospitalized. These measures will 
help to change that, to improve health of people of all ages, and to 
prevent as many as 15,000 premature deaths a year. Still, we here have 
much more to do, especially in reducing America's 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 levels in more than 200,000 years, and climbing 
sharply. If the trend is not changed, scientists expect the seas to rise 
2 feet or more over the next century. In America, that means 9,000 
square miles of Florida, Louisiana, and other coastal areas will be 
flooded. In Asia, 17 percent of Bangladesh, land on which 6 million 
people now live, will be lost. Island chains such as the Maldives will 
disappear from the map, unless we reverse the predictions.
    Climate changes will disrupt agriculture, cause severe droughts and 
floods and the spread of infectious diseases, which will be a big enough 
problem for us under the best of circumstances in the 21st century. 
There could be 50 million or more cases of malaria a year. We can expect 
more deaths from heat stress. Just 2 years ago, here in the United 
States in the city of Chicago, we saw the tragedy of more than 400 of 
our citizens dying during a severe heat wave.
    No nation can escape this danger. None can evade its responsibility 
to confront it. And we must all do our part, industrial nations that 
emit the largest quantities of greenhouse gases today and developing 
nations whose greenhouse gas 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 percent of the 
world's population, we already produce more than 20 percent of its 
greenhouse gases. Frankly, our record since Rio is not sufficient. We 
have been blessed with high rates of growth and millions of new jobs 
over the last few 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 on yesterday is a positive first step, 
but 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 years, indeed, over decades. As Vice President Gore said 
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

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economic growth. We owe that in the developed world to ourselves and, 
equally, to those in the developing nations. Many of the technologies 
that will help us to meet the new air quality standards can also help us 
to 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 have to first 
convince the American people and the Congress that the climate change 
problem is real and imminent. I will convene a White House Conference on 
Climate Change later this year to lay the scientific facts before our 
people, to understand that we must act, and to lay the economic facts 
there so that they understand the benefits and the costs. With the best 
ideas and strategies and new technologies and increased productivity and 
energy efficiency, we can turn the challenge to our advantage.
    We will work with our people, and we will bring to the Kyoto 
Conference a strong American commitment to realistic and binding limits 
that will significantly reduce our emissions of greenhouse gases.
    I want to mention three other initiatives briefly that 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, 
the United States will provide $1 billion in assistance over the next 5 
years to support energy efficiency, develop alternative energy sources, 
and improve resource management to promote growth that does not have an 
adverse effect on the climate.
    Second, we will do more to encourage private investment to meet 
environmental standards. The Overseas Private Investment Corporation 
will now require that its projects adhere to new and strengthened 
environmental guidelines, just as our Export-Import Bank already does 
and as I hope our allies and friends soon will. Common guidelines for 
responsible investment clearly would lead to more sustainable growth in 
developing nations.
    Third, we must increase our use of new technologies, even as we move 
to develop more new technologies. Already, we are working with our auto 
industry to produce cars by early in the next century that are 3 times 
as fuel-efficient as today's vehicles. Now we will work with businesses 
and communities to use the Sun's energy to reduce our reliance on fossil 
fuels by installing solar panels on one million more roofs around our 
Nation by 2010. Capturing the Sun's warmth can help us to turn down the 
Earth's temperature.
    Distinguished leaders, in all of our cultures we have been taught 
from time immemorial that, as Scripture says, ``One generation passes 
away and another comes, but the Earth abides forever.'' We must 
strengthen our stewardship of the environment to make that true and to 
ensure that when this generation passes, the young man who just spoke 
before me and all of those of his generation will inherit a rich and 
abundant Earth.
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 6:30 p.m. in the United Nations General 
Assembly. In his remarks, he referred to General Assembly President 
Razali Ismail and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.