[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.