    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1998, Book I)]
    [April 22, 1998]
    [Pages 598-600]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    [[Page 598]]

    Remarks on Earth Day in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia
    April 22, 1998

        Thank you very much. Thank you for the welcome. I want to especially
    welcome all the young children and not-so-young children and all of you
    who feel childlike, even though you're not anymore, to this wonderful
    American celebration of Earth Day.
        I thank the Vice President for his
    steadfast, constant, and brilliant leadership to preserve our
    environment for future generations. I thank Congressman Bob Wise, who has been a good friend and an adviser and
    represents you so well. I want to thank our National Park
    superintendent, Bob Stanton. You know, I
    was sitting with Bob, and I said, ``You know something, you've got the
    best job in the whole Federal Government.'' And he said, ``I know, and
    they're foolish enough to pay me to do it every day.'' [Laughter]
        Mayor Stowell, thank you. Pam
    Underhill, thank you for your work at the
    Appalachian Trail Park; thank you for a lifetime of dedication to
    America's National Park System. And I'd like to ask all of you to give a
    round of applause to all the National Park employees who are here. They
    do a wonderful, wonderful job. [Applause]
        Finally, let me thank Sandi Marra and all
    the other volunteers who worked with the Vice President and me today to
    make sure we didn't mess up anything so badly. I walked away saying,
    ``Now, I wonder if they're going to have to go along behind us and undo
    all the stuff we just did and then do it right?'' [Laughter] I don't
    think so. I think we crossed the threshold of minimum competence as
    volunteers today.
        But let me say to you, Sandi, and to all the
    other volunteers that are here and those who will hear about what
    happens here today, the American people have utterly no idea how
    dependent not only the Appalachian Trail but the entire park system has
    been on citizen volunteers. And we who know need to do more to get out
    the word, but I hope you and all your fellow volunteers will continue to
    work. We need you; we honor you; and we're very grateful. Thank you very
    much.
        We came here today in part to highlight the work of the volunteers.
    Last year they gave over 8 million hours, the equivalent of $100
    million, in hard but loving labor to enhancing America's great outdoors.
        You know, the Appalachian Trail was conceived of 100 years ago by a
    teenager who was hiking among the sugar maples and spruce trees in New
    Hampshire, in the White Mountains. Benton MacKaye imagined connecting
    the country all the way from New England to Georgia with a hiking trail
    and, in the process, reconnecting Americans to the wonders of nature. As
    MacKaye said, ``Life for 2 weeks on a mountaintop would give renewed
    perspective to the other 50 weeks down below.'' Do you mind if I stay
    here another 13 days? [Laughter] That's pretty good.
        And so began the Appalachian Trail, the brainchild of a teenager;
    the product of generations of cooperation; one of our most precious
    national gems; the longest natural thoroughfare in the world passing
    through four of seven forested habitats of North America; a haven for
    rare plants and animals. And thanks to many of you here today, this
    Appalachian Trail surely has surpassed even Benton MacKaye's wildest
    dreams.
        Today, on our 28th annual Earth Day, we come here to the stunning
    confluence of the Shenandoah and the Potomac Rivers to celebrate the
    foresight of early conservationists and to commit ourselves to carry
    forth their abiding sense of responsibility to future generations in the
    new millennium.
        I'd like to take just a couple of minutes to tell you what the
    agenda the Vice President and I have adopted for the coming year is.
    First, we want to preserve even more of our natural wonders. In the
    historic balanced budget agreement, we have the means to save the
    ancient redwoods of the Headwaters Forest in California, to protect
    Yellowstone from the ravages of mining. And I am proposing to add 100
    new sites to our Nation's endowment of sacred places. We should begin by
    bringing the last remaining sections of the Appalachian Trail under
    public control, thereby making every inch a part of our children's
    birthright.
        Among other priorities of providing a critical winter range for elk
    and bison and restoring salmon runs in Washington's Elwha River, what

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    I want to say to you today is that the money has been authorized and
    appropriated for all 100 of these projects but not yet released. As a
    courtesy and a practice of long standing, administrations notify
    Congress of the intended project target. And sometimes there is an
    objection, sometimes a legitimate one, to one or two of them. We have
    put together a great list of 100; none of the money for any of the
    projects have been released because of actual or potential disputes on
    other issues.
        So if you can do anything, if any of you live in congressional
    districts--aside from Congressman Wise,
    he's not the problem--I hope you'll do it, because we need to get about
    the work and do it now. The money is there, the economy is in good
    shape, the budget is going to be balanced. We have made this commitment
    to our future, and I'd like to see us get it done. So I'd like to ask
    you to encourage your Congress to support the release of this fund.
        Second, as part of our celebration of the millennium in which we
    will both honor our past and imagine our future, we have to expand our
    efforts to preserve our places richest in cultural and historic values,
    sites that echo with America's most important stories. That's what we
    see here in Harpers Ferry--the other part of Harpers Ferry: the story of
    John Brown, the story of pre-Civil War America. And we have just
    unveiled an initiative to preserve the homes, the churches, the other
    sanctuaries all along the route of the Underground Railroad, the route
    to freedom for Harriet Tubman and thousands of other fleeing slaves. It
    also includes part of the Appalachian Trail.
        Third, as the Vice President said, we want to improve our ability to
    encourage and support better stewardship on our private lands, through
    voluntary partnerships to help private landowners preserve their own
    land. Of the more than 100 million acres we have protected during the
    last 5 years, more than three-quarters are privately owned. It's a real
    tribute to the American people that they want to manage their property
    properly, and I believe it's the right thing for our Government to do,
    to get out there and create the incentives and the partnership and the
    support for them to do so.
        For example, right here in the Appalachian region, acid drainage
    from abandoned coal mines have polluted streams severely, endangering
    plant and animal life. But now we're working with mining companies to
    create natural buffers to stop pollution from flowing in the streams.
    Citizens already are reporting that fish stocks are recovering, for the
    first time since the early part of this century.
        Successful local models like this are at the core of the clean water
    initiative I announced in February. We must do more of this. Wherever
    people are willing to help us with private property to restore
    biodiversity, we need to support it. And I thank you for your support.
        Fourth, we want to change and broaden the focus of how we manage our
    national forests, putting greater emphasis on recreation, wildlife, and
    water quality--forest values too long ignored. We're reforming logging
    practices to ensure sustainable supplies of timber and jobs.
        Our national forests are more than mere paper plantations. They are
    the source of the vast majority of our fresh water and as places where
    far more families experience the outdoors than anywhere else in America.
    So I urge Congress today on Earth Day: Let's make our national forests a
    common ground, not a political battleground.
        Fifth, we must commit to healing the wear and tear in our
    magnificent but often quite overextended national parks. Many parks,
    refuges, and monuments are in dire need of repair, ironically, because
    the American people love them so much. Countless Americans set off for
    their vacations every year knowing they can have the best and most
    economical vacation in the world at a national park. Often it may be the
    only one they can afford and still might be the best one money can buy.
    We have to continue to honor this pact with the American people. And
    therefore, I have proposed an increase of nearly $1 billion over the
    next 5 years to carry on the work of repairing our National Park System.
        Finally, as the Vice President told us
    in his remarkable book, ``Earth In The Balance,'' years ago, we have to
    broaden our notion of stewardship of the environment to embrace our
    entire planet. The greatest environmental challenge we face today is
    that of global climate change. If we are growing more interdependent
    economically, if we are growing more interdependent socially, surely our
    interdependence environmentally is apparent to every thinking person.
    The world's leading climate scientists have warned that if we do not
    reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases, the Earth will warm, the seas
    will rise, severe weather events will intensify and increase in number.

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        Fortunately, we know how to avert these dangers. We know we can make
    great progress in reducing greenhouse gas emissions through innovative
    technological, market-related solutions all around the world. We have
    made an unprecedented commitment here of more than $6 billion for
    research and development and tax incentives to promote new green
    technologies that will dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emission. I
    hope you will all support that. And I hope you will tell your elected
    representatives it is a great investment in our children's future.
        You know, the Vice President mentioned Teddy Roosevelt, who is a
    particular favorite of mine among our past Presidents. Ever since Teddy
    Roosevelt started talking about conserving our natural resources, for
    100 years now, every time someone has said it, someone else says, ``If
    you do that, it will ruin the economy.'' And we now have 100 years of
    experience. They have uniformly been wrong every time they have said it
    for 100 years.
        And since 1970 and Earth Day and the Clean Air Act, we have heard it
    with repeated intensity. It has always been wrong. Every time we have
    taken a sensible, reasoned, but strong step to protect the environment,
    we have actually increased the diversity of our economy, the breadth and
    width of it, and increased jobs and strengthened the long-term economic
    prospects of our country.
        That is a lesson the whole world has to embrace now. We can only
    sustain economic growth if we can improve the environment, if we can
    reduce greenhouse gas emissions, if we can build a balanced future
    together.
        So I hope that all of you, as you leave here on this Earth Day, will
    honor the great gifts God has given us, will honor our National Park
    employees and others who preserve our treasured resources with their
    careers, will honor these volunteers, but most of all, will promise
    yourselves to be the best possible citizen stewards of our resources.
        That is the ethic that inspired Americans to preserve Harpers Ferry,
    the landscape that President Jefferson said was worth a voyage across
    the Atlantic. That is the ethic that will enable us to honor our
    responsibilities as Americans well into the 21st century.
        Thank you, and happy Earth Day.

    Note: The President spoke at 12:12 p.m. at the Point in Harpers Ferry
    National Historical Park. In his remarks, he referred to Robert G.
    Stanton, Director, National Park Service; Mayor Walton (Kip) Stowell of
    Harpers Ferry; Pamela Underhill, Park Manager, Appalachian National
    Scenic Trail, and volunteer Sandi Marra, member, Potomac Appalachian
    Trail Club. The National Volunteer Week proclamation of April 21 and the
    National Park Week proclamation of April 22 are listed in Appendix D at
    the end of this volume.