[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 31, Number 14 (Monday, April 10, 1995)]
[Pages 558-560]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Message to the Congress on Environmental Policy

April 6, 1995

To the Congress of the United States:

    The United States has always been blessed with an abundance of 
natural resources. Together with the ingenuity and determination of the 
American people, these resources have formed the basis of our 
prosperity. They have given us the opportunity to feed our people, power 
our industry, create our medicines, and defend our borders--and we have 
a responsibility to be good stewards of our heritage. In recent decades, 
however, rapid technological advances and population growth have greatly 
enhanced our ability to have an impact on our surroundings--and we do 
not always pause to contemplate the consequences of our actions. Far too 
often, our short-sighted decisions cause the greatest harm to the very 
people who are least able to influence them--future generations.
    We have a moral obligation to represent the interests of those who 
have no voice in today's decisions--our children and grandchildren. We 
have a responsibility to see that they inherit a productive and livable 
world that allows their families to enjoy the same or greater 
opportunities than we ourselves have enjoyed. Those of us who still 
believe in the American Dream will settle for no less. Those who say 
that we cannot afford both a strong economy and a healthy environment 
are ignoring the fact that the two are inextricably linked. Our economy 
will not remain strong for long if we continue to consume renewable 
resources faster than they can be replenished, or nonrenewable resources 
faster than we can develop substitutes; America's fishing and timber-
dependent communities will not survive for long if we destroy our 
fisheries and our forests. Whether the subject is deficit spending or 
the stewardship of our fisheries, the issue is the same: we should not 
pursue a strategy of short-term gain that will harm future generations.
    Senators Henry Jackson and Ed Muskie, and Congressman John Dingell 
understood this back in 1969 when they joined together to work for 
passage of the National Environmental Policy Act. At its heart, the 
National Environmental Policy Act is about our relationship with the 
natural world, and about our relationship with future generations. For 
the first time, the National Environmental Policy Act made explicit the 
widely-held public sentiment that we should live in harmony with nature 
and make decisions that account for future generations as well as for 
today.

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It declared that the Federal Government should work in concert with 
State and local governments and the citizens of this great Nation ``to 
create and maintain conditions under which man and nature can exist in 
productive harmony, and fulfill the social, economic, and other 
requirements of present and future generations of Americans.''
    Over the past 25 years, America has made great progress in 
protecting the environment. The air is cleaner in many places than it 
was, and we no longer have rivers that catch on fire. And yet, this year 
in Milwaukee, more than 100 people died from drinking contaminated 
water, and many of our surface waters are still not fit for fishing and 
swimming. One in four Americans still lives near a toxic dump and almost 
as many breathe air that is unhealthy.
    In order to continue the progress that we have made and adequately 
provide for future generations, my Administration is ushering in a new 
era of common sense reforms. We are bringing together Americans from all 
walks of life to find new solutions to protect our health, improve our 
Nation's stewardship of natural resources, and provide lasting economic 
opportunities for ourselves and for our children. We are reinventing 
environmental programs to make them work better and cost less.
    My Administration is ushering in a new era of environmental reforms 
in many ways. Following is a description of a few of these reforms, 
grouped into three clusters: first, stronger and smarter health 
protection programs such as my proposed Superfund reforms and EPA's new 
common sense approach to regulation; second, new approaches to resource 
management, such as our Northwest forest plan, that provide better 
stewardship of our natural resources and sustained economic opportunity; 
and third, the promotion of innovative environmental technologies, for 
healthier air and water as well as stronger economic growth now and in 
the future.
    Stronger and Smarter Health Protection Programs. Throughout my 
Administration, we have been refining Government, striving to make it 
work better and cost less. One of the best places to apply this 
principle in the environmental arena is the Superfund program. For far 
too long, far too many Superfund dollars have been spent on lawyers and 
not nearly enough have been spent on clean-up. I've directed my 
Administration to reform this program by cutting legal costs, increasing 
community involvement, and cleaning up toxic dumps more quickly. The 
reformed Superfund program will be faster, fairer, and more efficient--
and it will put more land back into productive community use.
    Similarly, EPA is embarking on a new strategy to make environmental 
and health regulation work better and cost less. This new common sense 
approach has the potential to revolutionize the way we write 
environmental regulations. First, EPA will not seek to adopt 
environmental standards in a vacuum. Instead, all the affected 
stakeholders--representatives of industry, labor, State governments, and 
the environmental community--will be involved from the beginning. 
Second, we will replace one-size-fits-all regulations with a focus on 
results achieved with flexible means. And at last, we're taking a 
consistent, comprehensive approach. With the old piecemeal approach, the 
water rules were written in isolation of the air rules and the waste 
rules, and too often led to results that merely shuffled and shifted 
pollutants--results that had too little health protection at too great a 
cost. With its new common sense approach, EPA will address the full 
range of environmental and health impacts of a given industry--steel or 
electronics for example--to get cleaner, faster, and cheaper results.
    Better Stewardship of our Natural Resources. Just as representative 
of our new approach to the environment--and just as grounded in common 
sense--is the Administration's commitment to ecosystems management of 
the Nation's natural resources. For decades ecologists have known that 
what we do with one resource affects the others. For instance, the way 
we manage a forest has very real consequences for the quality of the 
rivers that run through the forest, very real consequences for the 
fishermen who depend on that water for their livelihood, and very real 
consequences for the health of the community downstream. But until 
recently, government operations failed to account adequately

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for such interaction. In many cases, several Federal agencies operated 
independently in the same area under different rules. In many cases, no 
one paused to ponder the negative consequences of their actions until it 
was too late.
    Often, these consequences were catastrophic, leading to ecological 
and economic train wrecks such as the collapse of fisheries along the 
coasts, or the conflict over timber cutting in the Pacific Northwest. 
When I convened the Forest Conference earlier this year I saw the 
devastating effects of the Federal Government's lack of foresight and 
failure to provide leadership. Here, perhaps more than anywhere else, is 
a case study in how a failure to anticipate the consequences of our 
actions on the natural environment can be devastating to our livelihoods 
in the years ahead. Our forest plan is a balanced and comprehensive 
program to put people back to work and protect ancient forests for 
future generations. It will not solve all of the region's problems but 
it is a strong first step at restoring both the long-term health of the 
region's ecosystem and the region's economy.
    Innovative Environmental Technologies. Environmental and health 
reforms such as EPA's common sense strategy and natural resource reforms 
such as the forest plan provide an opportunity, and an obligation, to 
make good decisions for today that continue to pay off for generations 
to come. In much the same way, sound investments in environmental 
technology can ensure that we leave to future generations a productive, 
livable world. Every innovation in environmental technology opens up a 
new expanse of economic and environmental possibilities, making it 
possible to accomplish goals that have eluded us in the past. From the 
very beginning, I have promoted innovative environmental technologies as 
a top priority. We've launched a series of environmental technology 
initiatives, issued a number of Executive orders to help spur the 
application of these technologies, and taken concrete steps to promote 
their export. Experts say the world market for environmental technology 
is nearly $300 billion today and that it may double by the year 2000. 
Every dollar we invest in environmental technology will pay off in a 
healthier environment worldwide, in greater market share for U.S. 
companies, and in more jobs for American workers.
    Innovations in environmental technology can be the bridge that 
carries us from the threat of greater health crises and ecological 
destruction toward the promise of greater economic prosperity and social 
well-being. Innovation by innovation, we can build a world transformed 
by human ingenuity and creativity--a world in which economic activity 
and the natural environment support and sustain one another.
    This is the vision that Jackson, Muskie, and Dingell articulated 
more than two decades ago when they wrote in the National Environmental 
Policy Act that we should strive to live in productive harmony with 
nature and seek to fulfill the social and economic needs of future 
generations. We share a common responsibility to see beyond the urgent 
pressures of today and think of the future. We share a common 
responsibility to speak for our children, so that they inherit a world 
filled with the same opportunity that we had. This is the vision for 
which we work today and the guiding principle behind my Administration's 
environmental policies.
                                            William J. Clinton
The White House,
April 6, 1995.

Note: This memorandum was released by the Office of the Press Secretary 
on April 7.