[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (1999, Book II)]
[September 15, 1999]
[Pages 1537-1540]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks on Antarctica and Climate Change, in Christchurch, New Zealand
September 15, 1999

    Thank you very much. Good afternoon. Prime Minister 
Shipley, Burton 
and Anna and Ben; and 
Sir Edmund Hillary and Lady Hillary; Ambassadors Beeman and 
Bolger, and their wives; to Mayor Moore: Dr. Erb, Dr. Benton, Mr. Mace, Dr. 
Colwell; to all of those who have made our 
visit here so memorable: Let me begin on behalf of my family and my 
party by thanking the officials and the people of New Zealand for giving 
us 5 absolutely glorious days in one of the most beautiful places on 
Earth. We are very grateful.

Hurricane Floyd

    I hope you will all indulge me just one moment. This is my only 
chance to speak not only to you but to the people of the United States 
today. And since we're here to talk about the weather, you should know 
that my country is facing one of the most serious hurricanes ever to 
threaten the United States, if the predictions of its force and scope 
hold true.
    This morning I signed an emergency declaration for the States of 
Florida and Georgia to provide for assistance for emergency protective 
and preventive measures. I have been in close contact with our Vice 
President, Al Gore, and our Director of 
Emergency Management, James Lee Witt. They 
are working around the clock to prepare for the storm. I ask all of you 
here to remember my fellow Americans, and after we finish the state 
dinner tonight, I am going to fly home, and we will make the best job of 
it we can.

Antarctica and Climate Change

    Let me say I am particularly honored to be here with Sir Edmund 
Hillary, referred to in our family as my 
second favorite Hillary. [Laughter] I read that, when Sir Edmund turned 
50, he resolved to do three things: to build a house on the cliffs above 
the Tasman Sea; to become a better skier; to do a grand traverse up the 
peaks of Mt. Cook. I'm wondering what he resolved to do when he turned 
80. I hear the All Blacks may have a new fullback. [Laughter] I wish you 
a happy 80th birthday, sir, and I wish all of us might lead lives half 
so full and productive as yours.
    I come here to this beautiful city and to this place to deepen a 
partnership between the United States and New Zealand that is already 
long and strong. In this century, young Americans and New Zealanders 
have fought again and again side by side to turn back tyranny and to 
defend democracy. We have worked together on peacekeeping missions. We 
have stood together for expanded opportunity for our people through 
trade. We even let you borrow the America's Cup from time to time. 
[Laughter] We hope to reverse our generosity shortly. [Laughter] We are 
grateful for your friendship, and we thank you for it.

[[Page 1538]]

    This magnificent center stands as a symbol of what we can accomplish 
when we work together, and I would argue is a symbol of what will be 
most important about our cooperation in the 21st century.
    You heard Sir Edmund talk about his trip 
across Antarctica. When he started it, some people called it the last 
great journey on Earth. As I was reading about it, I understand that he 
actually overheard one farmer ask another, ``That there Antarctica, how 
many sheep do they run to the acre?'' [Laughter]
    But America believed in his mission and 
has long been fascinated with Antarctica. Way back in 1820, Nathaniel 
Brown Palmer was one of the first people to sight it. A few years later, 
an American exploring expedition mapped more than 1,500 miles of the 
Antarctic coast, ending a centuries-old debate over whether a big land 
mass, in fact, existed around the South Pole.
    Forty years ago, inspired in part by Sir Edmund's expedition, the United States convened a meeting in 
Washington to preserve the Antarctic forever as a haven for peace and 
scientific cooperation. Today, we can all be proud that not a single 
provision of the Antarctic Treaty has ever been violated. Forty-three 
nations, representing two-thirds of the world's population, adhere to 
the treaty. And the Antarctic is what it should be, a treasure held in 
trust for every person on the planet.
    We are working together to preserve the pristine waters surrounding 
the continent, and fighting illegal fishing that threatens to destroy 
species in the southern ocean.
    For the United States and New Zealand, our commitments to Antarctica 
are based right here in Christchurch. Nearly 7 out of 10 United States 
expeditions to the Antarctic are staged from here. And let me say, the 
only disappointment I have about this trip is that I didn't stage an 
expedition from here. [Laughter] So I want you to know, I expect that 
you will let me come back one more time, so I can fulfill my lifelong 
desire to go to Antarctica.
    I think, of all the work being done here, perhaps the most important 
to us and to the young people here, particularly, over the next 20 years 
will be the work that tells us about the nature of climate change and 
what it is doing to the ice cap here, to the water levels around the 
world, and to the way of life that we want for our children and our 
grandchildren.
    The overwhelming consensus of world scientific opinion is that 
greenhouse gases from human activity are raising the Earth's temperature 
in a rapid and unsustainable way. The 5 warmest years since the 15th 
century have all been in the 1990's; 1998 was the warmest year ever 
recorded, eclipsing the record set just the year before, in 1997.
    Unless we change course, most scientists believe the seas will rise 
so high they will swallow whole islands and coastal areas. Storms, like 
hurricanes and droughts, both will intensify. Diseases like malaria will 
be borne by mosquitoes to higher and higher altitudes, and across 
borders, threatening more lives, a phenomenon we already see today in 
Africa.
    A few years ago, hikers discovered a 5,000-year-old man in the 
Italian Alps. You might think someone would have noticed him before. 
They didn't because the ice hadn't melted where he was before--in 5,000 
years. If the same thing were to happen to the west Antarctic ice sheet, 
God forbid--it's a remote threat now, but it could occur one day; and if 
it did, sea levels worldwide would rise by as much as 20 feet. If that 
happens, not even Augie Auer will be able to save 
us from the weather. [Laughter] Now, I want you to laugh about it 
because I figure when people laugh, they listen. But this is a very 
serious thing.
    In 1992, the nations of the world began to address this challenge at 
the Earth Summit in Rio. Five years later, 150 nations made more 
progress toward that goal in Kyoto, Japan. But we still have so much 
more to do. America and New Zealand, in no small measure because of our 
understanding, which the Prime Minister so eloquently articulated a few 
moments ago, because of our understanding of the significance of 
Antarctica and the work we have done here to make this a refuge of 
scientific inquiry, have special responsibilities in this area.
    Of course, we have a big responsibility because America produces 
more greenhouse gases than any other country in the world. I have 
offered an aggressive program to reduce that production in every area. 
We are also mindful that emissions are growing in the developing world 
even more rapidly than in the developed world, and we have a 
responsibility there.
    But I wanted to say today--and if you don't remember anything else I 
say, I hope you will remember this--the largest obstacle to meeting the 
challenge of climate change is not the huge

[[Page 1539]]

array of wealthy vested interests and the tens of thousands of ordinary 
people around the world who work in the oil and the coal industries, the 
burning of which produce these greenhouse gases. The largest obstacle is 
the continued clinging of people in wealthy countries and developing 
countries to a big idea that is no longer true, the idea that the only 
way a country can become wealthy and remain wealthy is to have the 
patterns of energy use that brought us the industrial age. In other 
words, if you're not burning more oil and coal this year than you were 
last year, you're not getting richer; you're not creating more jobs; 
you're not lifting more children out of poverty. That is no longer true.
    We now know that technologies that permit breathtaking advances in 
energy conservation and the use of alternative forms of energy make it 
possible to grow the economy faster while healing the environment and 
that--thank God--it is no longer necessary to burn up the atmosphere to 
create economic opportunity.
    We have somehow got to convince a critical mass of decisionmakers 
and ordinary citizens in every nation of the world that that is true. It 
will help to concentrate their attention if the people who know about 
Antarctica can illustrate, year-in and year-out, in graphic terms, the 
consequences of ignoring climate change and global warming.
    We are committed to doing more at home and to do more to help 
developing nations bring on these technologies, so they can improve 
living standards and improve the environment. We can do this. We can do 
it in the same way that progress is being made in dealing with the ozone 
layer. Consider that example, something again which we know more about, 
thanks to the work of scientists here.
    Because of chemicals we produced and released into the atmosphere 
over the past 50 years, every spring a hole appears in the ozone layer 
above Antarctica. You already heard, and you know more about it than any 
country in the world, about the unhealthy levels of ultraviolet 
radiation which pass through. Now, every Kiwi school child who has 
participated in Block Day knows what it means, why you have to have 
sunscreen and a hat.
    But in 1987, the international community came together in Montreal 
and agreed to stop the use of chemicals that deplete the ozone layer. 
Experts tell us if we keep going, the ozone hole will shrink, and by the 
middle of the next century, the ozone hole could actually close, so 
that, miracle of miracles, we would have a problem created by people, 
solved by people and their development. This is the sort of thing we 
have to do with climate change, and the stakes are even higher.
    The Antarctic is a great cooling tower for our planet, a great 
learning tower for our planet's scientists. What happens to it will 
determine weather all over the globe and will determine the patterns of 
life of the children here in this audience and certainly of their 
children and grandchildren. It is a bridge to our future and a window on 
our past.
    Right now, the ice is 2 miles thick and goes back more than 400,000 
years. By studying the patterns of the past, scientists will be able to 
tell us what will likely happen in the future and how we are changing 
the future from the past based on what we are doing.
    So much of what we know today from global climate patterns comes 
also from satellite images. But scientists have never had detailed 
images of key parts of the Antarctic to work with until today. So I 
wanted to come here with one small contribution to the marvelous work 
that all of our people are doing here. Today America is releasing once 
classified satellite images of the Antarctic's unique dry valleys. The 
pictures provide two sets of images taken 10 years apart and provides 
some of the most detailed and important information we've ever had on 
these ecological treasures. Last month Vice President Gore did the same thing for the Arctic. Both these releases 
will help scientists understand changes taking place at the poles and 
help us take another step toward meeting the challenge of a warming 
planet.
    This is a special challenge for our young people. We have used the 
Internet, through an initiative called the Globe program, to teach 
students in more than 50 countries that a grasp of science and ecology 
is the first step toward a cleaner world. I am pleased that, working 
with Prime Minister Shipley, we are also 
going to establish a new Globe program for children right here in New 
Zealand.
    When Sir Edmund Hillary made his trek, the Antarctic was the last 
new place humanity looked before turning its attention to the stars. In 
less than 4 months, all humanity will be looking forward to the promise 
of a new century and a new millennium. When the dawn breaks

[[Page 1540]]

on January 1st, the international timeline tells us that New Zealand 
literally will lead the world into a new age.
    Let us vow, in this place of first light, to act in the spirit of 
the Antarctic Treaty, to conquer the new challenges that face us in the 
new millennium. Let us work with the determination of Sir Edmund Hillary 
to strengthen our partnership, to keep our air and water clean and our 
future alive for our children. We owe it to the children of New Zealand, 
the children of the United States, and the children of the world. And we 
can do it.
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 1:38 p.m. in the courtyard at the 
International Antarctic Centre. In his remarks, he referred to Prime 
Minister Jennifer Shipley, her husband, Burton, and their children, Anna 
and Ben; Sir Edmund Hillary, polar explorer and first man to climb Mount 
Everest, and his wife, June; U.S. Ambassador to New Zealand Josiah H. 
Beeman, and his wife Susan; New Zealand Ambassador to the U.S. James B. 
Bolger, and his wife, Joan; Mayor Gary Moore of Christchurch; Karl A. 
Erb, Director, Office of Polar Programs, and Rita R. Colwell, Director, 
National Science Foundation; Richard Benton, General Manager, Visitor 
Centre, International Antarctic Centre; Christopher Mace, Chairman, 
Antarctic New Zealand; and New Zealand weather forecaster Augie Auer.