    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
    [May 26, 2000]
    [Pages 1038-1040]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    [[Page 1038]]

    Remarks Announcing the Coral Reef and Marine Protected Areas Initiatives
    at Assateague Island, Maryland
    May 26, 2000

        Thank you very much. Well, first, I want to thank all of our
    previous speakers. As so often happens when I get up to speak, what
    needs to be said has already been said.
        Thank you, Carolyn Cummins, for your
    kind words and for your years and years of leadership for Assateague
    Island and for these beaches. I want to thank the park superintendent,
    Marc Koenings. This is his last week here,
    because he has just gotten a new assignment at the Gateway National
    Recreation Area in New York Harbor, a place I've gotten a little more
    interested in, in the last few months. [Laughter] So he's got a very
    good assignment, and I wish him well.
        I want to thank Sylvia Earle, the explorer-
    in-residence at National Geographic and, in a way, an explorer-in-
    residence for the American citizens, as you just heard. I want to thank
    also the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrator, Jim
    Baker, and Deputy Secretary of the Interior
    David Hayes, who are here.
        And I'd also like to recognize the elected officials, particularly
    the Maryland delegation from the United States Congress, who have been
    just terrific on these environmental issues: Senator Barbara
    Mikulski, thank you, Senator. She came
    dressed to spend the day here. I hope she does. [Laughter] I want to
    thank Senator Paul Sarbanes for being
    here. When I came up, he said, ``You know, this is my part of Maryland.
    And my mother is here, and she is
    celebrating her 92d birthday today.'' So welcome to Mrs. Sarbanes. We're
    glad to see you; thank you. Give her a hand. That's great. [Applause]
    She's also got the coolest sunglasses of anybody here, I might add.
    [Laughter]
        I'd like to thank Representatives Wayne Gilchrest, to my left, and Ben Cardin
    to my right for being here. And I'd like to recognize a guest from all
    the way across the country, Representative Sam Farr
    from northern California. He represents the district where Monterey Bay
    is, where we had our oceans conference 2 years ago, and he's a great
    friend of the environment. Thank you, Sam Farr, for being here.
        I'd also like to thank the mayors, the council members, the State
    legislators who met me here. And I'd like to recognize Carl
    Zimmerman, the chief of research management
    of the Assateague National Island Seashore, for your work. Thank you all
    for being here.
        Well, I came down here today to get ahead of the Memorial Day rush.
    [Laughter] And I didn't want all of you who wanted to sit here to be
    lost in the stampede of fun-seekers. But I thank you for coming. We all
    know that this weekend marks the opening of the summer beach season, and
    by the millions, Americans will flock to our coastlines. Beachlines and
    coastlines are now our number one tourist destination.
        Our oceans, however, are far more than a playground. They have a
    central effect on the weather, on our climate system. Through fishing,
    tourism, and other industries, ocean resources--listen to this--support
    one out of every six jobs in the United States of America. Coral reefs
    and coastal waters are a storehouse of biodiversity. Think about what
    children here--and we have some children here from Bennett Middle School
    I met on the way down. And just think about what they see and learn
    about the timeless movement of the dunes, about the complex life of a
    coastal marsh--horseshoe crabs, living fossils whose blood provides us a
    vital antibacterial agent. And I learned today that 5,000 years ago,
    this island was several miles out in the ocean, brought back closer to
    shore by the rising of the sea level, something which is okay in small
    doses but could be very troubling for us if we don't deal with the
    problem of climate change, global warming, the melting of the icecaps,
    and the alarming level at which ocean levels could rise.
        Even though they cover--yes, you can clap for that. [Applause] You
    have to forgive me. When I give these kinds of talks, I veer off the
    script a little bit. Oceans cover more than 70 percent of the Earth's
    surface. They are immensely powerful, as anybody who has ever been
    caught in an undertow can tell you. But they are also very, very
    fragile. Poisonous runoff from the Mississippi River alone has created

    [[Page 1039]]

    a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico that is as large as the State of New
    Jersey. Here in Maryland, runoff threatens fish and crabs in the
    Chesapeake Bay.
        Globally, already, people have destroyed 10 percent of the world's
    coral reefs. Another 20 percent are in grave peril. I saw the changes
    when I went snorkeling 5 years ago off the Great Barrier Reefs in
    Australia. And I read just last week of the challenges now presented to
    the second largest barrier reefs in the world, off the coast of Belize.
    Global warming, as I said, is helping to raise the ocean temperatures to
    record highs, changing weather patterns, killing coral reefs, driving
    species from their habitat.
        When I was with Sam Farr 2 years ago in
    Monterey Bay, I went out into the bay with some young researchers from
    the Stanford center that's there. And they pointed out some small ocean
    organisms that just 50 years ago were 20 miles to the south--minuscule
    organisms that moved that far in 50 years.
        Over the last 7 years, we've tried to change as much of this as we
    could, protecting millions of acres of forests and open space, showing
    we can clean up our environment and grow the economy at the same time.
    But we need to do more with our seas and our coasts. The old idea that
    we can only grow by putting more pollution into our lakes and rivers and
    oceans must finally be put to rest. Indeed, it is now clear that we can
    grow our economy faster over the long run by improving our environment,
    and it's really not enough for us just to try to keep it as it is. We
    have to do better.
        I want to say, on behalf of Vice President Gore, as well as myself, that we are grateful for the
    opportunities we've had to do this work, grateful for the chance that we
    had to host the Oceans Conference in Monterey in 1998--and
    Hillary and Tipper were there, too. We had a wonderful day. Last year,
    the Vice President issued our one-year update, and we're going to try to
    put out a report every year. I hope that in successive years Presidents
    will do the same.
        As has been said, we have quadrupled funding for national marine
    sanctuaries. We have new funding to rebuild our threatened fisheries. We
    extended a moratorium on offshore oil leases for oil and gas drilling
    through 2012. We've been an international leader in efforts to protect
    whales and other endangered species. But we have to do more.
        Today I want to announce two important initiatives that I believe
    will help to ensure that our oceans are places of delight and learning
    for generations to come. First, I am signing an Executive order to
    create a national system to preserve our coasts, reefs, underwater
    forests, and other treasures, directing the Commerce and Interior
    Departments to work together to create a network of marine protected
    areas, encompassing pristine beaches, mysterious deep-water trenches,
    and every kind of marine habitat. This Executive order directs NOAA to
    develop a single framework to manage our national network wisely. We
    intend to establish ecological reserves in the most fragile areas to
    keep them off-limits to fishing, drilling, and other damaging uses. I'm
    also directing the EPA to strengthen water quality standards all along
    our coasts and provide stronger protections for the most vulnerable
    ocean waters, to reduce pollution of beaches, coasts, and oceans.
        Second, I'm announcing today our commitment to permanently protect
    coral reefs of the northwest Hawaiian Islands. If you've ever been
    there, you know why we should. These eight islands are not, all of them,
    so well-known, but they stretch over 1,200 miles. They shelter more than
    60 percent of America's coral reefs. They're home to plants and animals
    found nowhere else on Earth and to highly endangered species, including
    leatherback turtles and monk seals.
        I'm directing the Departments of Interior and Commerce to develop in
    the next 90 days a comprehensive plan to protect the reefs, working with
    State and regional authorities and making sure the people of Hawaii also
    have a voice at the table. It is in our national interest to do this,
    and it should not be a partisan issue. On more than one occasion,
    Representative Gilchrest has supported
    our environmental initiatives, and I thank you, sir, for that. It should
    not be a Republican or a Democratic issue.
        I sent a budget this year to the Congress to provide significant new
    resources to fight climate change and air and water pollution. My lands
    legacy initiative would provide record funding to protect our lands and
    coasts. I think the leadership in Congress is swimming against the tide,
    because they've proposed a budget that would cut funding for critical
    environmental priorities. A House committee has slashed lands

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    legacy by 75 percent. And once again, the majority is loading up the
    budget bills with anti-environmental riders that would cripple the new
    national monuments I created earlier this year, surrender our public
    lands to private interests, and undermine our efforts to protect water
    resources and combat global warming.
        Already in this year of rather hot election rhetoric--you may have
    noticed there's an election this year--[laughter]--there have been
    commitments to roll back the efforts I have taken to create 43 million
    roadless acres in our national forests. We need to have a clear,
    national, bipartisan consensus at the grassroots level that we don't
    need these riders and we do need a national commitment to the
    environment.
        For thousands of years, oceans and beaches have stirred the human
    imagination. Today, ocean depths offer hopes for medicine and science.
    They still stir the curious child in all of us. I said in my State of
    the Union Address that I thought in the next few years we would not only
    decode the human genome and find cures for various kinds of cancer,
    Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, diabetes, we would also find out what's in the
    black holes in the universe. But we are also going to find out what's in
    the darkest depths of our oceans, and what we find out may save hundreds
    of thousands of people.
        Forty-five years ago Rachel Carson wrote from her Maryland home that
    the sea ``keeps alive the sense of continuing creation and of the
    relentless drive of life . . . in the sea nothing lives to itself . . .
    the present is linked with past and future, and each living thing with
    all that surrounds it.'' If we could all think that about each other and
    our community--that we do not live to ourselves, that we are linked to
    the past and the future, and that everything that happens requires a due
    consideration for all that surrounds it--then America would have its
    greatest days in the new millennium.
        Thank you very much, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 2:07 p.m. on North Ocean Beach. In his
    remarks, he referred to Carolyn Cummins, president, Maryland Coastal
    Bays Program; Marc Koenings, superintendent, Assateague National Island
    Seashore; and Senator Sarbanes' mother, Matina. The Executive order is
    listed in Appendix D at the end of this volume.