    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (1999, Book II)]
    [November 21, 1999]
    [Pages 2136-2138]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at the Closing Session of the Conference on Progressive
    Governance for the 21st Century in Florence
    November 21, 1999

        First of all, Prime Minister, I want to
    thank you and the Government and the people of Italy for hosting us here
    in the city of Florence and all the people who have done so much to make
    this a wonderful stay.
        I don't know that I can add anything to what I have said and what
    the others have said. I would like to begin by saying I feel deeply
    privileged to have been here. I respect and admire the other leaders who
    are here on this panel and those who are in the audience who have
    participated. And I think we are all fortunate to serve at this moment
    in history when, really for the only time in my lifetime we have the
    chance in the absence of external threat and dramatic internal turmoil,
    to forge the future of our dreams for our children and to give people in
    less fortunate parts of the world the chance to live out their God-given
    capacities. So I think we should come here with gratitude and humility.
        Now, let me also say that for--at a certain level, this is about
    politics. What we want to do is to find a way to, first, explain the
    world

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    in which we live in a way that makes sense to the people we represent
    and the people we would like to reach; and then to propose a course of
    action that will draw people together, move people forward and touch
    their hearts, so that elections will be one and decisions can be
    implemented; and so that we can work together to actually change the
    things that we're concerned about and maximize the opportunities that
    are manifestly there.
        Now, we have called this the Third Way or--in Lionel
    Jospin's wonderful characterization--we'll say
    yes to the market economy but no to the market society or--in the
    shorthand usage in America--we say we're for opportunity,
    responsibility, and community. But at bottom, what we're striving for is
    to replace a divided way of looking at politics and talking about our
    common life with a unifying theory.
        For up to the present moment, mostly you were for the economy or for
    protecting the environment; you were for business or you were for labor;
    you were for promoting work or for promoting family life; you were for
    preventing crime or for punishing criminals; you were for cultural
    diversity or for universal identity; you were for the market society or
    for social values. We come and say, ``Well, we're for fiscal
    responsibility and full employment; we're for personal responsibility
    and social justice; we're for individual and group identity and the
    national community.''
        Now, let me just say that I don't think these are just words. I
    think life is more satisfying when people are animated by personal and
    civic philosophies that are unifying, that give us a chance to strive
    for true integrity, putting our minds and our bodies and our spirits in
    the same place, and treating other people in the way we would like to be
    treated, and giving other people those opportunities and shouldering
    those responsibilities.
        So if I might, let me just comment briefly on three things that were
    mentioned earlier: first, the representative of the green movement and
    then the question you posed to Tony Blair. I have
    been very convinced for years that it is no longer necessary to choose
    between growing the economy and preserving, and even improving, the
    environment. But it is quite necessary to abandon the industrial age
    energy use patterns.
        The reason I am for the broadest possible use of energy emission-
    trading permits is not so the United States--the world's worst emitter
    of greenhouse gases--can get out of cutting our own emissions but
    because I want to spare the Indians and the Chinese and others of the
    burden of growing rich in the way we did. Because global warming means
    we can't afford for people to do what we have done, which is you pollute
    and you get rich--Japan, the United States, Europe--and then you turn
    around when you're rich and you get richer by cleaning up your
    pollution. That would work, except with global warming you keep making
    the greenhouse gas factor worse.
        So I urge you to all read a book--I'll hawk a book here--``Natural
    Capitalism,'' by Paul Hawken and Amory and Hunter Lovins. It
    basically proves beyond any argument that there are presently available
    technologies, and those just on horizon, which will permit us to get
    richer by cleaning, not by spoiling, the environment. So we can have a
    unifying vision here.
        The second issue you raised, about the genetically modified
    organisms and food production and all these food fights we see--food
    fights between Britain and France, food fights between America and the
    European Union--I think there what we have to do is to try to give
    people the choice of pursuing their prejudices, even if they're blind,
    by having absolute honest and full labeling. And then we have to have
    complete--no one should have an interest in keeping anyone ignorant of
    the source of food or how it was grown.
        And then whether it comes to whether the food should be admitted to
    the market in the first place, I think it's important that the
    Europeans--and Tony mentioned this--develop sort of the equivalent of
    the American Food and Drug Administration on a European-wide basis, so
    that you actually have confidence when someone says to you, this food is
    safe; you don't think that the people who did the analysis and voiced
    the opinion were either incompetent or in the back pocket of the
    economic interest who benefit from the decision. And I think that's very
    important, so that you can have safe food and open trade.
        The third thing I would like to mention is the lady who talked about
    cultural diversity. I think we think about culture in two different
    ways. One is popular culture, you know, not just art and theater, but
    movies and music. My view is that countries should preserve their
    popular culture but not shut out other countries'

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    culture. But in the deeper sense that you mentioned, it seems to me that
    we're not seeing the abolition of culture, but what we are in danger of
    is either people losing their culture or protecting it in an exclusive
    way that leads them into hostility with others. That's what you see in
    Kosovo or Bosnia.
        And what I think we have to find a way to do is to actually preserve
    in multiethnic, multiracial settings the language, the culture, the
    history, the uniqueness of people in a way that is unifying, not
    divisive. I said this last night. I will close with this: People crave
    coherence in life. We want to believe that we can work hard and provide
    in a material sense for our families and still be animated by higher
    impulses. We want to believe we can be proud of being Irish or Brazilian
    or French or whatever and still know it's more important that we're
    members of the human race.
        And I think the answer is not to get rid of cultural diversity but
    to extol it, to protect it, to preserve it, to celebrate it as a
    particular manifestation of our common humanity. I still think--and I
    will end with this--that's our most important responsibility.
        We haven't talked much about that, but it seems to me that the real
    essence of what we're saying is if you want a unifying approach to
    politics, then every person who advocates that has a far higher level of
    personal responsibility for citizenship than we on the left of the
    political equation have traditionally acknowledged. And the good news is
    that we'll have more fulfilling lives if we can pull it off.
        Thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 4:05 p.m. in the Room of Five Hundred at
    the Palazzo Vecchio. In his remarks, he referred to Prime Minister
    Massimo D'Alema of Italy; Prime Minister Lionel Jospin of France; and
    Prime Minister Tony Blair of the United Kingdom.