[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 35, Number 32 (Monday, August 16, 1999)]
[Pages 1620-1623]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
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.

[[Page 1621]]

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 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

[[Page 1622]]

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 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

[[Page 1623]]

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 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.