    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1999, Book I)]
    [March 4, 1999]
    [Pages 308-311]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    [[Page 308]]

    Remarks on the 150th Anniversary of the Department of the Interior
    March 4, 1999

        Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, it's wonderful to be here
    today. I want to thank the great American Indian dancers. I got to watch
    on the screen, off the stage, and I thought they were wonderful. And I
    want to thank Dagmar and Mark for their presentations and for the employees they
    represent.
        Mark, that was a pretty shameless pander to Bruce Babbitt, though.
    [Laughter] If that doesn't get you a raise, nothing will. [Laughter]
        And I would like to say Secretary Babbitt
    has spent a lot of his time putting out fires, both figuratively and
    literally, some of which I lit. [Laughter] And I thank him for that and
    for his remarkable loyalty to this Department. I got kind of tickled
    when he said that talking to one of you reminded him of drinking water
    from a fire hydrant. Sometimes I feel like the fire hydrant looking at a
    pack of dogs. [Laughter]
        For 6 years I have declined to tell these kinds of jokes because I
    have been told repeatedly it is not Presidential. [Laughter] But I feel
    kind of outdoorsy today, you know. [Laughter]
        I would like to also say to all of you, I really appreciated the
    Secretary both featuring these two fine
    employees and talking
    about the other appointees. I know we have some previous administration
    appointees who have left to go on to other things here in the audience.
    I thank all of you who have served by my appointment and all of you who
    serve by choice in this Department.
        I have some remarks to make, but I hope that you will forgive me if
    I mention a few words about a great American citizen who deeply loved
    the natural beauty of his native Minnesota. Justice Harry
    Blackmun died this morning, at the age of
    90. In 24 years on the Supreme Court, he served with compassion,
    distinction, and honor. Every decision and every dissent was firmly
    grounded in the Constitution he revered, and his uncanny feel for the
    human element that lies just beneath the surface of all serious legal
    argument.
        You can see his mind and heart at work in the landmark decision he
    wrote protecting women's rights to reproductive freedom, and in his
    decisions to make the promise of civil rights actually come alive in the
    daily existence of the American people.
        Hillary and I were deeply privileged to know Justice Blackmun and
    his wonderful wife of 58 years, Dottie, for
    quite a long while. I saw up close Harry Blackmun's intense passion--his
    passion for the welfare of the American people, for defending our
    liberties and our institutions, for moving us forward together. We send
    our respect and our prayers to Dottie and to his three daughters.
        To the millions of Americans whose voices he heard and whose rights
    he defended, to the countless numbers of us who knew and loved him,
    Harry Blackmun's life embodied the admonition of the prophet Micah: He
    did justice, and he loved mercy. And now, he walks humbly with his God.
    Thank you very much.
        Now, let me say that I've been wanting to come over here to thank
    you for a long time. I don't know that there has ever been a President
    who has benefited more, in personal ways at important times of his life,
    from the Department of the Interior. I was raised in Hot Springs
    National Park, Arkansas, the first city in America to contain a national
    park. I spent my first 18 years in a State that is more than half-
    covered with pine and hardwood forests, which is why Mike
    Gauldin had a little trouble appreciating
    Arizona. [Laughter]
        When I finished law school, I went home to the hills of northwest
    Arkansas and spent some of the happiest days of my life on the Buffalo
    River, the very first river set aside under the National Wild and Scenic
    Rivers Act.
        Today, my family and I have the great honor of living in the most
    beautiful home under the care of the National Park System. Sometimes it
    feels more like a zoo than a park, but I love it. Now, my lease is up in
    one year, 10 months, and 16 days--[laughter]--but who's counting?
    [Laughter]
        Perhaps more than any other department of the Federal Government,
    the Interior Department really does embody the history of our country:
    the story of manifest destiny and the great western expansion; the story
    of fertile fields rising from arid desert, of people rising from the
    depths of the Great Depression, of

    [[Page 309]]

    the nation marshaling the resources to win two World Wars; a story of
    scientific discovery and relentless exploration; a story of our
    country's struggles to recognize the dignity and independence and
    sovereignty and expand the opportunity of our first citizens, our Native
    Americans; a story of the efforts of this country to expand the horizons
    and make real the promise of America for all Americans, as Secretary
    Harold Ickes did when he invited the incomparable Marian Anderson to
    sing from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial 60 years ago, in 1939. Most
    of all, as Secretary Babbitt has proved every
    day, it is the story of our intensifying determination as a people to
    conserve and restore our precious natural resources.
        In 1849 when this Department was launched, with a headquarters staff
    of 10 and a budget of $14,200, it lacked a unifying purpose--hard to
    imagine you could do much more than one thing with that kind of money.
    [Laughter] Today, with a much larger staff and a considerably larger
    budget, the contrast is remarkable.
        Under Bruce Babbitt's leadership,
    everything this Department does is guided by the unifying purpose of
    stewardship. As wise and dedicated stewards, you act in the recognition
    that all of us are but brief visitors on this small planet. You
    understand that everything we want for our children depends on
    protecting the forests, the streams, the deserts that were here so very
    long before we came along. Today, the ``Department of Everything Else,''
    as it was once called, is and forever will be the ``Department of
    Stewardship.'' And for that, I thank you all.
        Using a skillful touch, but not a heavy hand, you have achieved
    remarkable things. Many have been mentioned today, but because they're
    so important to me, I want to thank you personally for them.
        Three years ago, we set out on a mission to preserve California's
    Headwaters Forest, the world's largest unprotected stand of old-growth
    redwoods. Three days ago, you did it. We did it. And aren't we glad?
    [Applause] Thanks to the tireless efforts of so many people here and at
    your sister agency NOAA, not one of the magnificent trees of Headwaters
    Forest will ever be logged. Anyone who has ever strolled through a grove
    of redwoods--and I have--who have seen the tangle of ferns at your feet
    and the living canopy reaching high overhead, knows that these ancient
    forests are as much a part of our legacy, as I said, as the world's
    great cathedrals. Thank you for making them safe for all time.
        We should also be proud that over the last 6 years we've set aside
    vast unspoiled areas of the Mojave Desert, designating three new
    national parks. We put a stop to a massive mining operation that
    threatened Yellowstone, the world's first national park.
        To protect Utah's stunning red rock canyons, we created the Grand
    Staircase-Escalante National Monument and completed the largest land
    exchange in the continental United States. And I have to tell you, I
    just returned from Utah, where the rest of my family went skiing and I
    thought about it. [Laughter] And I was so pleased that any number of
    people--after all the flak we took--any number of people came up to me,
    just on the street, and said, ``Mr. President, you might have been right
    about that. I think this is going to work out fine, and I'm glad we
    saved that land.'' [Applause]
        And in a project that has been particularly close to my heart
    because I have also been there, we are restoring the Florida Everglades,
    the largest restoration project ever undertaken in our Nation's history.
        That is quite a legacy. But we have much, much more to do. This
    year, the last of this century, we must dedicate ourselves not to
    resting on these accomplishments but to building on them.
        First, we must preserve more precious lands. I will soon send the
    Congress a plan to bestow the highest level of wilderness protection on
    more than 5 million acres of back-country lands within Yellowstone,
    Glacier, and other national parks. In these vast regions, the roar of
    bulldozers and chainsaws never again will drown out the call of the
    wild.
        I'm also proposing an unprecedented $1 billion Lands Legacy
    Initiative, which Secretary Babbitt mentioned, on which many of you
    worked. It will allow us to continue your efforts to protect natural and
    historic lands across our Nation, such as Civil War battlefields, remote
    stretches of the historic Lewis and Clark trail, and an additional
    450,000 acres in and around Mojave and Joshua Tree National Parks.
        It will also allow us to meet the stewardship challenges of a new
    century. It is no longer enough for our Nation to preserve its grandest
    natural wonders. As communities grow and expand, it has become every bit
    as important to preserve the small but sacred green and open

    [[Page 310]]

    space closer to home. So my Lands Legacy Initiative will also help
    communities protect meadows and seashores, where children play; streams
    where sportsmen and women can fish; farmlands that produce the fresh
    harvest we often take for granted.
        We believe this Lands Legacy Initiative must be a permanent legacy.
    So today I promise to work with Congress to create for the very first
    time a guaranteed fund for protecting and restoring priceless land all
    across America.
        There are many good legislative ideas for achieving this goal. We
    think any solution must provide at least $1 billion annually, with at
    least half dedicated to helping communities protect local green spaces.
    It also must recognize the unique environmental challenges of coastal
    States, without creating any new incentives for offshore oil drilling.
    Working together, we can ensure that not only our generation, but each
    generation to come, will have the resources to leave an even better land
    for those who follow.
        Second, as we help preserve more open spaces, we have a great
    opportunity to help create more livable communities, healthy communities
    where people don't have to waste a gallon of gasoline driving to get a
    gallon of milk, where employers have no trouble recruiting workers
    interested in a high quality of life. The Vice President and I have
    proposed record funding for public transit and Better American bonds to
    help communities grow in ways that ensure a clean environment and
    strong, sustainable economic development.
        Third, we must clean up the 40 percent of our waterways that still
    are too polluted for fishing and swimming. Most Americans don't know
    that, and many are surprised to hear it. I call on Congress to fully
    fund my clean water action plan and to reauthorize and strengthen the
    Clean Water Act.
        Fourth, we must do more to meet our most profound, common global
    environmental challenge, the challenge of global warming. I have
    proposed a clean air partnership fund to help communities reduce both
    greenhouse pollution and smog, as well as tax and research incentives to
    spur clean energy technologies. I want to work with Members of Congress
    in both parties to reward companies that take early, voluntary action to
    reduce greenhouse gases.
        Let me say just one thing here that's not in the script. A lot of
    you clapped and a lot of you were smiling, when I said I'd been to Utah
    and people came up to me and said this Grand Staircase idea wasn't such
    a bad idea after all, and you nodded your head because you knew it all
    along. One of the biggest impediments to human progress in any free
    society is the persistence, buried deep in the brains of the people at
    large or people in decisionmaking positions, of old ideas that aren't
    right any longer. The biggest impediment we have to dealing with the
    challenge of climate change is not cheap oil. It is the old idea that we
    simply cannot have economic growth without industrial age patterns of
    energy use.
        And I see it all over the world. I see it here in the United States.
    I see it in the United States Congress, where one subcommittee forced us
    to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars last year trying to defend our
    climate change plan, which had no new taxes, no big new regulations, was
    solely devoted to tax incentives and new research and development for
    new technologies.
        Now, the fact is that things we do today to reduce greenhouse gas
    pollution--with available technologies, not to mention those that are
    just ahead and almost within our reach--will lower greenhouse gas
    emissions, will reduce the threat of global warming, and will create
    more jobs at higher incomes. The old idea is wrong. I ask the employees
    of the Interior Department to help the American people get rid of an
    old, wrong idea so that we can do this.
        These are the things that we have to do: setting aside more lands;
    making more livable communities; cleaning up our waterways; dealing with
    the challenge of climate change. We can do it. I say to the Members of
    Congress in both parties, please join this crusade. I say to the
    majority party, the preservation of our natural resources, the
    stewardship of this great land, should not be a partisan issue.
        This country never had a better conservation President than Theodore
    Roosevelt. For 12 years, I was a Governor. The first Governors'
    Conference in history was called by Theodore Roosevelt in 1908 to talk
    about conservation of our resources.
        When I was out in Utah, I was looking through Roosevelt's four-
    volume history of the American West, and thinking to myself, why don't
    we have two parties equally committed to fulfilling his vision? So I
    implore the Congress: Let us not waste precious time battling over these
    bad antienvironmental riders, which

    [[Page 311]]

    I am going to veto anyway; instead, let's go on with the work of
    America.
        Let me say in closing one very personal thing. As I have already
    explained, I am as deeply indebted to the work of the Department of the
    Interior as any President could possibly be--to the visionaries like
    John Wesley Powell and Harold Ickes and Rachel Carson, to the park
    rangers that I've seen in Yellowstone and Grand Teton and other parks,
    to the people that were kind to me as a boy when I roamed the trails and
    the mountains of the national park which was my home.
        In one way or the other, almost all of us have come to see nature as
    a precious but fragile gift and an important part of the fabric of our
    lives. Probably every one of us could cite one particular example where
    that came home to us as never before. I remember once in 1971, when I
    was driving to California to visit Hillary--we had just started seeing
    each other--and I stopped at the Grand Canyon. And I crawled out on a
    ledge about an hour-and-a-half or two before sunset, and I just sat
    there for 2 hours, and I watched the Sun set on Grand Canyon. If you've
    never done it, you ought to do it. And because of the way the rocks are
    layered over millions of years, it's like a kaleidoscope. And the colors
    change over and over and over again, layer by layer by layer as the Sun
    goes down. It is a stunning, stunning thing to see the interplay of
    light and stone and realize how it happened over the ages. I never got
    over it. I think about it all the time, now, nearly 30 years later.
        That kind of moment can't be captured in the words I have shared
    with you, or even photographed, because the important thing is the
    interaction of human nature with nature. But we've all felt it. And we
    all know that part of our essential humanity is paying respect to what
    God gave us and what will be here a long time after we're gone.
        That is what the Interior Department means to me. And after 150
    years, it's what it means to all of America's past and to America's
    great future.
        Thank you, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 2:50 p.m. in the Sidney B. Yates Auditorium
    at the Department of Interior. In his remarks, he referred to Interior
    Department employees Dagmar C. Fertl and Mark Oliver, winners of the
    Unsung Hero Award. The related proclamation on the death of Harry A.
    Blackmun is listed in Appendix D at the end of this volume.