    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1997, Book II)]
    [October 6, 1997]
    [Pages 1296-1301]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks During the White House Conference on Climate Change
    October 6, 1997

    [The first panel discussion on the science of global warming and climate
    change is joined in progress.]

        The President. Isn't there some evidence already that malaria in
    nations and areas where it presently exists is becoming more prevalent
    and moving to higher climates?

    [At this point, Diana Liverman, chair, National Academy of Sciences
    Committee on Human Dimensions of Climate Change, confirmed increases in
    malaria in developing countries and in the United States due to climate
    change and population mobility.]

        The President. Let me ask you one other question, because--let me go
    back to what I said in the beginning. This is one of the most difficult
    problems of democracy because we get 100 percent of the people to agree
    that it exists, and only 10 percent of the people have experienced it
    and another 10 percent of the people can imagine it and, therefore, are
    willing to deal with it. You still have to have 51 percent in order to
    develop any kind of political consensus for doing anything, I think,
    commensurate with the need.
        So would you say--I have--and I know this happens to a lot of
    people--but I had a number of people--I had a young Congressman in to
    see me the other day who was a member of the Republican Party, and he
    said, ``You know, in my State we've had three 100-year floods in 10
    years.'' I met a man over my vacation who said that he was moving away
    from the place he had lived for a decade because it was a completely
    different place than it had been just 10 years ago. It was hotter; there
    were more mosquitoes; it was a very different and difficult place. Do
    you believe that these anecdotal experiences are likely related to
    climate change, or are they just basically people's imagination?

    [Dr. Liverman cited surveys on perceptions of climate change which
    correlated with observed temperature changes.]

        The President. Dr. Karl, do you want to say anything?

    [Thomas Karl, senior scientist, National Climatic Data Center, National
    Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, mentioned statistics showing
    record precipitation in six States in 1996. The Vice President commented
    on budget increases related to flooding and other disasters, and then
    asked about the predicted heat index for Washington, DC, in the next
    century.]

        Dr. Karl. I think it's up to 105 or 110. I don't know the exact
    numbers, but----

    [[Page 1297]]

        Dr. Liverman. It's under 100 now, and it's going to go to about 105
    on average, they think, during the summer months.
        The Vice President. Well, we'll get some more on that. [Laughter]
        The President. We certainly will. [Laughter] One reason I believe
    this is occurring is that James Lee Witt is the only member of my
    Cabinet who is actually disappointed when his budget goes up. [Laughter]
    And he's had a lot of disappointments these last 5 years.
        I'd like to now call on Donald Wilhite to talk about the
    relationship--we've heard about increased precipitation, and I'd like to
    ask him to talk about drought and the apparent paradox in drought
    patterns and increased precipitation patterns and what implications this
    might have for American agriculture, which is a terribly important part
    of our economy. And we have all been counting on it being a very
    important part of our export economy for the indefinite future.

    [Donald Wilhite, director, National Drought Mitigation Center,
    University of Nebraska, discussed the impact of drought on U.S.
    agricultural production.]

        The President. I want to ask a question and try to make sure that we
    are all as clear as we can be based on what is known about two
    apparently contradictory things, that is that the total volume of
    precipitation has increased virtually everywhere and the number and
    severity of droughts has increased across the country.
        Now, Dr. Karl said earlier that part of the explanation is that the
    precipitation we're getting is coming in bigger bursts. But what I would
    like to do is have somebody offer basically a line of explanation that
    everyone in the audience, and hopefully those who will be following
    these proceedings, can understand. Why did it happen at the same time
    that we had more drought and more floods? How could we have more
    droughts when the aggregate amount of precipitation on an annual basis
    was increased? And I think it's important that people kind of get why
    that happens.

    [Dr. Wilhite explained that increased intense precipitation resulted in
    very high runoff, and increased temperatures resulted in increased
    evaporation and soil drying.]

        The President. So I think that's important. When the temperatures
    warm, they dry the soil and create the conditions for the floods
    simultaneously.
        Dr. Wilhite. That's correct.
        The President. And because these floods don't--wash away the soil,
    rather than sink down into the soil, you get very little benefit out of
    them, and farmers lose a lot of topsoil.

    [The discussion continued.]

        The President. Let me ask you a follow-up question, and perhaps
    someone else would like to answer. But I think it's important again, and
    forgive--for those of you in the audience who know a lot more about this
    than I do, you will have to forgive me, but I'm also trying to imagine
    how this is going to be absorbed by our Nation and by people who will be
    following this.
        It appears that we are headed into a powerful El Nino, and I wonder
    if one of you would just simply very briefly explain what that is and
    whether you believe there is a link between the power of the El Nino and
    climate change.

    [Robert Watson, Director for Environment, World Bank, and Chair,
    Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, explained the effects of the
    El Nino phenomena on temperature and precipitation patterns throughout
    the world. The Vice President then noted the similarity between
    attitudes toward global warming and past skepticism concerning the
    detrimental effects of tobacco.]

        The President. We've got to wrap up the first panel and get on to
    the next one, but I'd like to ask--I think I'd like to ask, John, you to
    respond to this. If anyone else wishes to, you're welcome to. I think
    there is a more sophisticated question to be asked--although the Vice
    President is right, there still are some people who claim that this
    scientific case that I have been completely persuaded by has not been
    made. I think the more difficult argument, John, goes something like
    this: Look, you put all this stuff in the atmosphere and it stays there
    for 100 years at least, and maybe longer, and so what's the hurry? And
    in a democracy, it's very hard to artificially impose things on people
    they can't tangibly feel, and so why shouldn't we just keep on rocking
    along with the kind of technological progress we're making now until
    there really is both better scientific information and completely
    painless technological fixes that are apparent to all? Why shouldn't we
    just wait until

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    all doubt has been resolved and hopefully we have even better
    technology--and because, after all, the full impact of whatever we do if
    we start tomorrow won't be felt for decades and maybe even for a
    century?
        Number one, if that's true, how quickly could we lower the
    temperature of the planet below what it otherwise would be, and, number
    two, what about the argument on the merits?

    [John Holdren, member, President's Council of Advisors on Science and
    Technology, and professor, Harvard University, used graphs to
    demonstrate the need to reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions in
    the atmosphere as soon as possible in order to avoid unmanageable
    degrees of climate change in the future.]

        The President. But I do want to make the following points: Number
    one, we can't get to the green line unless there is a global agreement
    that involves both the developing and the developed countries. Number
    two, however, that's not an excuse for us to do nothing because if we do
    something, it will be better than it would have been otherwise, because
    we're still the biggest contributor and will be until sometime well into
    the next century. And number three, based on everything we know, it will
    be easier in some ways, particularly if they get the financial help they
    need, for developing countries to choose a different energy future in
    the first place than it will be for the developed countries to make the
    adjustments, which is not to say we don't have to make the adjustments
    but to say that--I have read a lot of the press coverage and people
    saying, oh, well, we're just using this for an excuse or we're not being
    fair to them or we don't want them to have a chance to grow. That is not
    true.
        The United States cannot maintain and enhance its own standard of
    living unless the developing nations grow and grow rapidly. We support
    that. But they can choose a different energy future, and that has to be
    a part of this. But it's not an excuse for us to do nothing, because
    whatever we do, we're going to make it better for ourselves and for the
    rest of the world than it otherwise would have been. But I think it's
    important to point out what John showed us there on the green line. The
    green line--it requires--to reach the green line, we have to have a
    worldwide action plan.

    [Following conclusion of the first panel discussion, the second panel
    discussion on the role of technology in reducing greenhouse gas
    emissions is joined in progress.]

        The President. Let me just say before we go on to the transportation
    sector, these presentations have been quite important. I remember 20
    years ago, more or less--maybe a little less now, I can't remember
    exactly when--the Congress voted, or the Federal Government at least
    required--it might have been a regulatory action--that the new
    powerplants not use natural gas anymore and that we phase out of them
    because we grossly underestimated how much natural gas we had. And we
    thought we could go to clean coal because we didn't want to build
    nuclear plants, for all the reasons that were clear.
        And one of the biggest problems we face now in trying to make a
    reasoned judgment about how quickly we can reduce greenhouse gas
    emissions, and by how much, is the need not to be unfair to electric
    utilities that have billions of dollars invested in Government-approved
    powerplants that they have not yet fully amortized. Therefore, insofar--
    and this applies both to buildings and to the utilities themselves,
    about which these two speakers have spoken. You can either conserve more
    in the production of electricity, or you can have the people who consume
    it conserve more, or you can change the basis on which the plants work,
    which is the most expensive way to do it. Therefore, insofar as we can
    do more in terms of how much electricity people use or how much waste
    heat you recover, either one of those things is a far preferable--far
    preferable--alternative than to change the basis on which plants that
    have already been built are being amortized and will generate huge
    amounts of saving at lower costs if we can do it.
        At the end of this session, we'll get around to sort of the
    skeptical economist's take on the technological fix. We'll get around to
    that later. But I just think it's important that we focus on this
    specific issue, because if our goal is to minimize economic dislocation,
    then having conservation by the end-users, the people who have the
    buildings, for example, whether they're manufacturers or residential
    buildings or otherwise business buildings, and having recovery of waste
    heat are clearly, I think, the preferable

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    alternatives and clearly the less expensive alternatives.
        I'd like to call on Mary Good now, who was the Under Secretary of
    Commerce for Technology in our administration for 4 years and now is the
    managing member of Venture Capital Investors. I want her to talk a
    little bit about the potential for technological advances to reduce
    emissions in the transportation sector and to focus particularly on the
    partnership for new generation vehicles that we've been working on with
    the auto companies and the UAW since this administration took office.
    And Mary had a lot to do with it.
        There is also a huge debate here about how much we can do how
    quickly. And we have to make the best judgment about this in determining
    what to say about where we are in Kyoto, because transportation, as
    Secretary Pena said, occupies such a large part of this whole equation.
    So, Mary, have at it. Tell me what I should say in Japan on my visit.

    [The discussion continued.]

        The President. I just wanted to make two brief points. The leaders
    of the Big Three auto companies and the UAW came in to see us last week,
    and they said they're going to meet their partnership for the next
    generation vehicle goal. The real problem is, once they develop a
    prototype, how quickly can it be mass-produced, and how will people buy
    it, and will they buy it at present fuel prices? We'll come back to that
    at the end. But one related question to that is, given Americans' buying
    habits and consumer preferences, don't we have to include these light
    trucks and even heavy trucks in this partnership for the next generation
    vehicle? Don't we have to achieve significant fuel efficiencies there as
    well, if we have any hope of succeeding here?
        The only other point I want to make, Mary, is, you know I'm big on
    all kinds of fast-rail research, but I hope tomorrow's headline isn't
    ``Clinton Advocates More Research on Levitation.'' [Laughter] I don't
    need that.
        Ms. Good. We'll have to explain it to them better.
        The President. I'd like to call on Michael Bonsignore now to talk
    about the energy savings available through the use of more high-
    efficiency products and systems, and also the potential for
    environmental technology exports. What he has to say and how applicable
    and expandable you believe it is has a lot to do with whether this
    transition we're going through will be an economic plus, a drag, or a
    wash. I personally have always believed it would be a plus if we did it
    right. But I'd like to ask Michael to talk about that.

    [The discussion continued.]

        The President. We need to wrap up; we're running a little bit late.
    But I wanted to just give everyone an opportunity to comment on this.
    Mason was the only person, I think, who explicitly said that in order to
    make this transition we need to raise the price of carbon-based
    products. One of the difficulties we're having within the administration
    in reaching a proper judgment about what position to stake out in Kyoto
    relates to how various people are responding, frankly, to the
    recommendations and the findings of the people coming out of the energy
    labs, because they say, hey, look, what we know already shows you that
    we have readily available technologies and courses of action which would
    take a huge hunk out of--right now, with no great increased cost--a huge
    hunk out of any attempt to, let's say, flatten our greenhouse gas
    emissions at 1990 levels. We just heard about it today. Look what you
    could do with powerplants. You can recapture the waste heat, two-thirds
    of that. You can make buildings and manufacturing facilities and
    residences much more energy efficient. You can make transportation much
    more energy efficient. Besides that, we've got all these alternative
    sources of fuel for electricity and transportation. I mean, it's all out
    there; this is what we know now. And then sooner or later, we're going
    to have the partnership for the next generation vehicle.
        So the question is always, though, who will buy this stuff? Right
    now, you can buy light bulbs--every one of us could have every light
    bulb in our home, right now, every single one of them--we'd have to pay
    60 percent more for the light bulb, but it would have 3 times the useful
    life. Therefore, you just work it out; we'd pay more up front, we'd save
    more money in the long run, and we'd use a whole lot less carbon. And
    why don't we do it? Why do we have any other kind of light bulbs in our
    homes?
        And that is the simplest example of the nature of the debate we are
    now having. That is, in order to get from here to where we want to go,
    do we have to either raise the price of

    [[Page 1300]]

    the product--there are only three or four things you can do: You can
    raise the price of the product to the consumers; you can lower the price
    of the alternative thing you wish to be bought by the consumers; you can
    create some new business opportunity through some market permit trading,
    other market option, or otherwise change the business environment the
    way we do electric deregulation, for example; or you can somehow
    increase the awareness of consumers of what their options are and the
    consequences of that and hope that they will behave in a different way.
    I think those are the four categories of possibilities.
        And if you choose an ambitious target, then, if the requirement is
    more--to reach the target is almost exclusively on the front end--that
    is, you have to raise the price to the consumer or to the business
    involved--the businesses may be a consumer--if it happens too quickly,
    you're going to do economic damage on the one hand. And on the other
    hand, there is no way in the world this Senate will ratify our
    participation in Kyoto, so we'll be out there--it will be a grand
    gesture, but it won't happen.
        Therefore, we have got to know how much we can do through a
    combination of price--you might be able to get some price changes,
    particularly going back--Mike said this, too, on the real price of
    energy--particularly if it was not a net tax increase, you wouldn't have
    to have a net--there are a lot of other ways to do this. But we have to
    be able to get something out of either lowering the cost of the
    alternative, creating new business markets, or increasing consumer
    awareness of what is right there for them now and what the consequences
    are. We can't do it all on the front end and expect realistically--if
    all we do on the Consumer Price Index, raising the price of coal,
    raising price of oil to the real consumer, and that's all we do, we are
    not going to get what we want to do in the time allotted to get it
    because it either won't pass the Senate or it won't pass muster with the
    American people.
        So we have to be able to access what the Energy Department tells us
    is there for all to see in other ways. And I don't know if any of you
    want to comment on that, but this is not a question of whether you're
    brave or not or all that, it's really a question of what we can get done
    and what realistically is going to happen in America.
        But I'm plagued by the example of the light bulb I have in my living
    room at the White House that I read under at night, and I ask myself,
    why isn't every light bulb in the White House like this? I use this
    when--I get so tickled--I go in and turn it on and I measure how much
    longer it takes to really light up, but I know it's going to be there
    long, you know? [Laughter] And I say, why am I so irresponsible that I
    have not put this in every light bulb? Why are we not all doing this?
        So when you get right down to it, now, this is where the rubber
    meets the road. We have to make a decision, a commitment; it has to be
    meaningful. I'm convinced that the Energy Department lab people are
    absolutely right, but the skeptics on my economic team said, there will
    not be perfect substitution, they're not going to do it.
        So if you want to say anything about that, you can. But when you get
    right down to it, that's where--all the decisions are going to be made
    based on our best judgment about what kind of markets we can create for
    the private sector, what kind of substitution there is, and whether we
    can--how quickly we can move to alternative energy sources that people
    will actually access.

    [The discussion continued.]

        The President. I strongly agree with that, pushing that. And again,
    I say that does not let us off the hook to do things here at home, it
    just makes good sense. It's easier for--we should give these other
    countries a chance to choose an alternative path.
        I never will forget a couple of years ago--I know we've got to wrap
    up--but I had a fascinating conversation with the President of China a
    couple of years ago, and we were discussing what our future would be and
    whether we wished to contain China. And I said, ``I don't wish to
    contain China.'' I said, ``The biggest security threat China presents
    the United States is that you will insist on getting rich the same way
    we did.'' And he looked at me, and I could tell he had never thought of
    that. And I said, ``You have to choose a different future, and we have
    to help. We have to support you. And that does not in any way let us off
    the hook. But it just means that we have to do this together.''
        Well, this has been fascinating. You guys have been great, and I
    thank you a lot.

    [[Page 1301]]

    Note: The President spoke at approximately 11 a.m. in Gaston Hall. In
    his remarks, he referred to Michael Bonsignore, chairman and chief
    executive officer, Honeywell, Inc.; Mason Willrich, chairman of the
    board, EnergyWorks, L.L.C.; and President Jiang Zemin of China.