    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (1999, Book II)]
    [August 12, 1999]
    [Pages 1436-1439]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks on Developing and Promoting Biobased Products and Bioenergy
    August 12, 1999

        Thank you. Well, if Amal Mansour gets tired
    of alternative energy, she might consider politics for a career.
    [Laughter] She gave quite a speech, and I thank her.

    Shootings at the North Valley Jewish Community Center

        Let me just say, before I begin, I would like to say just a few
    words about the latest developments in the shootings in Los Angeles. It
    now appears that they were motivated by racial and ethnic hatred. If so,
    that's the second such incident we've had in the last couple of weeks,
    along with the killings that occurred in the Midwest, which you all
    remember very well, and another compelling argument, in my judgment, for
    this country to renew its commitment to our common community, our common
    humanity; and another compelling argument for the passage of the hate
    crimes legislation and the commonsense gun legislation we have
    recommended.
        I know the Attorney General spoke about this
    earlier today, but I wanted to strongly support and associate myself
    with her comments on this.

    Biobased Products and Bioenergy

        Now, let me tell you, I may be the happiest person here today
    because I have been a supporter of bioenergy for more than 20 years now.
    When I was Governor, I tried to promote the use of wood waste. We opened
    a little ethanol factory in my home State. We worked on whether rice
    hulls could be used as energy. I've sort of been tapping my foot,
    waiting for 20 years for the moment to come when both the technology and
    the economics and the social awareness, all this stuff would kind of fit
    together.
        I want to thank Secretary Glickman,
    Secretary Richardson, Administrator
    Browner for their support of this. I want
    to say a special word of appreciation to Senator Dick Lugar, the chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee.
    He wrote a brilliant article with Jim Woolsey in the January-February edition of Foreign Affairs,
    called ``The New Petroleum.'' And I see some of you nodding your heads,
    and if you had read it, you had all read it, you would all be nodding
    your heads. It's not only brilliant, but a guy who is scientifically
    challenged like me can understand it, which is very important.
        I want to thank Senator Tom Harkin, who is
    not here today, couldn't be here today, but who has worked passionately
    on this issue. We have been talking about it for more than a decade now.
    And I want to thank Dr. Dale for your work and
    Amal Mansour for your work and your success,
    and all of the panelists who are here.
        This is one of those speeches that Presidents have to give, you
    know, where you're preaching to the choir, because you all agree with
    this. And you see this fine family over here. They were introduced
    earlier in a way that is bittersweet. The present, terrible crisis we
    have on our farms heightens all of our awareness that we can do this.
    And as many have said, as Senator Lugar and Mr. Woolsey argued in their
    piece, even in good agricultural times, when farm prices are high and
    the land is in use, there is more than enough land available at sound
    conservation practices for us to develop

    [[Page 1437]]

    this if we can develop the biocatalyst and the advance processing
    technologies necessary to make bioenergy work.
        So I am very, very pleased about this. I think we have to see this
    in a context of where we've come from and where we're going. One of the
    most important technological advances of this century came 90 years ago
    in a old farmhouse overlooking Lake Michigan, where William Meriam
    Burton, who was a chemist for Standard Oil, figured out how to launch
    the modern petrochemical industry. He understood that this new
    contraption called the automobile was about to create this huge demand
    for petroleum products, and he understood that he had to squeeze more
    power from every molecule of petroleum. And because he did that, we had
    the prosperity we enjoyed, and we have many of the challenges we face
    today, because of what he did in that small place, so long ago.
        This paved the way for the automobile era. It showed us the power of
    science to change the paradigms which govern our world. And on the verge
    of the 21st century, we may be nearing a similar breakthrough, a
    technological fix that can help us to meet our economic challenges,
    maintain our security, sustain our prosperity, and ease the threat of
    global warming. Science will be the key to our progress.
        If we can make the raw material of tomorrow's economy living,
    renewable resources instead of fossil fuels, which pollute the
    atmosphere and warm the planet, the future of our children and our
    grandchildren, the likelihood that there will be more prosperity and
    peace, the likelihood that all these sort of sci-fi, ``Road Warrior''
    movies about the 21st century will be nothing more than a figment of
    someone's imagination, all that will be far greater. One hundred years
    from now people will look back on this time and compare it to the time
    when Mr. Burton figured out how to get more out of every petroleum
    molecule, if we do our jobs.
        Now, if you look at what's going on with trees and plants today,
    it's very impressive. And it's already been discussed here at the
    podium, but once we used only a seed or a kernel, tossed away the rest.
    Now we're learning how to use entire plants. Microscopic cells are being
    put to work as tiny factories. They convert crops and even waste into a
    vast array of fuel and material, everything from paints to
    pharmaceuticals to new fibers. And our ability to use waste in these
    ways will also be critical to our future.
        We are best served by new technology when we ask what we hope to
    achieve. And again, at the risk of preaching to the choir, because this
    is an important--there's not a lot of controversy here; I don't know,
    therefore, if we can generate any news. [Laughter] But I can tell you,
    20, 30, 40 years from now people will look back on this meeting as an
    historic meeting if we do our job. Why? There are four reasons.
        First, the potential economic benefits are staggering, not only for
    farmers--they are obvious, because they can raise raw material--but for
    the timber industry, chemical manufacturers, power companies, and small
    entrepreneurs like Amal. And the Vice President is in Iowa today discussing how these technologies can
    help close the opportunity gap between urban and suburban and rural
    America by bringing new high-tech jobs to rural areas which have not yet
    participated fully in our prosperity.
        Second, by substituting domestic renewable resources for fossil
    fuels we ease our growing dependence on foreign oil, and because
    inflation has been low and growth has been high, no one is paying
    attention to this. But we are going to have--with the growth of
    population here and growth of population around the world, the
    increasing economic activity around the the world--you're going to have
    enormous competition for oil which will make its supply more
    problematical and its price much higher within a relatively short time
    unless we do something to ease our dependence. It's important for our
    economy, for our security, for our environment.
        Third, as the Council of Advisers on Science and Technology
    concluded in a recent report, we can help developing countries meet
    their own soaring needs for energy in ways that, again, improve the
    global environment and stabilize economies and societies.
        And fourth, as I've already said, this will help us to meet the
    challenge of climate change, which I am convinced will be the most
    formidable environmental challenge the world faces over the next 20 to
    30 years.
        Scientists tell us this decade is probably the warmest in a thousand
    years, but the heat and drought of this summer, the natural disasters of
    the last few years are probably only a taste of what is to come, unless
    we act now to deal with this challenge. Bioenergy is a means to achieve
    all of these objectives, to heat our

    [[Page 1438]]

    homes, to fuel our vehicles, to power our factories, while producing
    virtually no greenhouse gas pollution.
        To make the most of these opportunities, Government and industry
    must work together, as partners. In industry I include agriculture and
    small and big business, government and everyone in the private sector
    who is involved in this. The Government provided critical leadership in
    developing the semiconductor and the Internet. And we must also nurture
    these fledgling bio-industries in the same way.
        In a few moments, I will sign an Executive order to accelerate
    development of these 21st century technologies, to strengthen our
    economy, and protect our environment. I'm establishing a Cabinet-level
    council to develop strategic plans to help to bring bio-based
    technologies from farms, forests, and labs to the marketplace.
        In addition, I am setting a goal of tripling America's use of
    bioenergy and biobased products by 2010. That would generate as much as
    $20 billion a year in new income for farmers and rural communities,
    while reducing greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 100 million tons a
    year, the equivalent of taking more than 70 million cars off the road.
    And believe me, if the technology develops fast enough, it would be easy
    to beat this goal. In this way, we plant the seeds of a new technology
    for a new century, to sustain both our prosperity and our environment.
        In addition to exploring the further use of bioenergy, I just want
    to say there are other things we need to do as well. I'm sure you all
    would agree. We need to do more to accelerate the development of
    flexible-fuel vehicles. If we develop these energy sources, there must
    be something to receive them. So we need to do more of that, and we've
    got a couple of them outside that everybody ought to see.
        We also must recognize that there are available today, at prices
    which are attractive today and will grow increasingly attractive
    tomorrow as oil prices go up, elemental technologies that promote
    conservation and cut costs so you save energy and money, in homes, in
    farms, in factories today, elemental technologies that are still not
    being maximized.
        We just had a big announcement a couple days ago on a new light bulb
    that I believe will be much more attractive than the lighting systems,
    the conservation lighting systems that have been developed so far, and
    will save people millions and millions of dollars and an awful lot of
    energy. So we have to be sensitive to all these things if we expect to
    have the world we want for our children.
        Last year--I am very grateful that the Congress voted for another
    billion dollars to research and develop clean, energy-efficient
    technologies, including bioenergy. In my present balanced budget, I have
    proposed further investments in these technologies, as well as tax
    credits for businesses and consumers who choose energy-efficient cars,
    homes, and appliances. I know that Senator Lugar has a specific piece of legislation which would
    dramatically increase our investment in bioenergy research.
        Anything we can do in this area, in my judgment, will have huge
    paybacks. And so, to all of you, I ask that you do what you can during
    this August period and when the Congress comes back to put this issue
    beyond partisan politics, to put it beyond the debate. We're talking
    about a tiny fraction of the budget for the combined recommendations we
    have made that can change the whole future of this country and this
    world, in the way that the automobile and the perfection of the
    petroleum processing did at the beginning of this century.
        I can hardly tell you how strongly I believe that this can happen.
    And when it does happen, we will look back and be amazed, number one,
    that we took as long as we did to do it and, number two, how cheap it
    was to do it for the benefits we got out of it. We will all be amazed.
        So anything any of you can do to make sure that 100 years from now
    somebody can talk about people like these two fine people who just spoke
    in the same way we talk about the people that perfected petroleum and
    developed the automobile: to ensure that more of our farm families get
    to stay on the farm and people can make a decent living in rural America
    in an environmentally sustainable way; to liberate America and other
    countries from their dependence on unstable sources of petroleum; to
    break the mindset that exists among too many both here and around the
    world that you cannot have economic development without burning more
    fossil fuel and, therefore, burning up the planet is just the inevitable
    consequence of getting ahead; anything you can do to roll back those
    problems and to create opportunities will be profoundly important to the
    kind of world our

    [[Page 1439]]

    children live in and what people say about you and our generation 100
    years from now. It's hard to think of a greater gift we could give at
    the turn of the century or a new millennium than a clean energy future.
        Thank you all, and God bless you for your work.

    Note: The President spoke at 2:26 p.m. on the Whitten Patio at the
    Department of Agriculture. In his remarks, he referred to Amal Mansour,
    chair of the board of directors and chief executive officer,
    Manufacturing and Technology Conversion International, Inc.; R. James
    Woolsey, former Director, Central Intelligence Agency; and Professor
    Bruce E. Dale, chair, Department of Chemical Engineering, Michigan State
    University.