[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 36, Number 12 (Monday, March 27, 2000)]
[Pages 611-614]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at the Signing Ceremony for the Indo-United States Joint 
Statement on Energy and the Environment in Agra

March 22, 2000

    Thank you very much, Foreign Minister Singh, Chief Minister Gupta, 
Mayor Maurya, District Commissioner Chowdhury, and, especially, 
Professor Mishra. We admire you so much for your efforts to save the 
Ganges. We admire you because for you it is a matter of science and 
faith.
    I want to thank all of you for welcoming me and my daughter and my 
wife's mother, many Members of the United States Congress, the Secretary 
of State, the Secretary of Commerce, distinguished members of our 
administration, and our Ambassador here today. I want to thank all the 
environmental leaders from India who have come here today.
    One month from this day we will celebrate across the world the 30th 
anniversary of Earth Day, a day set aside each year to honor our natural 
environment and to reaffirm our responsibility to protect it. In a 
unique way, in India the Earth has been celebrated for more than 30 
centuries. This, after all, is a nation named for a river, a place where 
the Earth and its waters are worshipped as divine.
    With good reason, the people of India have spent centuries worrying 
far less about what we might do to nature and far more about what nature 
can do to us through floods, hurricanes, droughts, and other calamities. 
But as the experience of the beautiful Taj Mahal proves and as the 
struggle to save the Ganges proves, we can no longer ignore man's impact 
on the environment.
    Pollution has managed to do what 350 years of wars, invasions, and 
natural disasters have failed to do. It has begun to mar the magnificent 
walls of the Taj Mahal. Since 1982, protection of the monument has been 
a major priority, and the fight has yielded significant advances. But 
still, a constant effort is required to save the Taj Mahal from human 
environmental degradation, what some scientists call marble cancer. I 
can't help wondering that if a stone can get cancer,

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what kind of damage can this pollution do to children.
    It took the United States a long time to face up to these serious 
environmental questions. Not so many years ago, one of our rivers was so 
polluted, it actually caught on fire. Bad air has made breathing very 
difficult in many of our cities. Acid rain from our cars and our 
factories made it unhealthy to eat the fish from many of our lakes and 
rivers. Over the last generation we have worked very hard to restore our 
natural treasures and to find a way to grow our economy in a way that is 
in harmony with the environment.
    We know that India's remarkable growth has put that same kind of 
pressure on your environment. And the costs of growth are rising every 
year, even along with your prosperity.
    We also know that more and more, the environmental problems of the 
United States or India or any other nation are not just national 
problems. They are global ones. More than any time in history, the 
environmental challenges we face go beyond national borders, and so must 
our solutions. We must work together to protect the environment. That is 
the importance of the agreement Mr. Singh and Secretary Albright have 
signed today.
    There are few areas where that cooperation is needed more than on 
the issues of climate change and clean energy. Here in Agra, you have 
taken important strides since the early 1980's to protect the Taj Mahal 
by using cleaner energy and improving the quality of the air. In 
particular, I commend the work of M.C. Mehta for working to establish a 
pollution-free zone around your national treasure. This is local action 
with global consequences.
    The overwhelming consensus of the world's scientific community is 
that greenhouse gases from human activity are raising the Earth's 
temperatures in a rapid and unsustainable way. The 6 warmest years since 
the 15th century--200 years before the Taj Mahal was built--the 6 
warmest years in all that time were all recorded in the 1990's.
    Unless we change course, most scientists believe that the warming of 
the climate will bring us more storms and more droughts; that diseases 
like malaria will be borne by mosquitos across more borders and at 
higher and higher altitudes, threatening more and more lives; that crop 
patterns will be severely disrupted, affecting food supplies; and the 
sea level will rise so high that entire island nations will be 
threatened and coastal areas around the world will be flooded.
    Now, of course if that hit, it is the developing nations that will 
be hurt the most. And India, because of its geography, is one of the 
most vulnerable.
    Today, your Government is taking an historic step to move us further 
in the right direction toward both clean energy and reducing climate 
change. I applaud the leadership of Prime Minister Vajpayee for 
affirming today that India will embrace specific national goals for 
energy efficiency and renewable energy. In so doing, India is exercising 
leadership for the entire world. It will clean the air; it will reduce 
greenhouse gas pollution and global warming; and it will be good for 
your economy.
    As the world's leading producer of greenhouse gases today, the 
United States and the rest of the developed world have a special 
responsibility. With this historic agreement, our two nations will work 
hand-in-hand to help turn India's environmental goals into a reality 
that also supports your economic growth. There are a number of ways in 
which the U.S. will support these efforts.
    First, through the U.S. Agency for International Development, whose 
administrator is here today, we are committing $45 million to promote 
more efficient energy production and use in India and $50 million to 
promote clean energy throughout South Asia. Our Departments of Energy 
and Environmental Protection will resume their programs of technical 
assistance to India to develop cleaner air and cleaner water. We will 
make available $200 million for clean energy projects through the 
Import-Export Bank. And we will take special steps to work with private 
enterprise to address these challenges.
    I thank the United States Energy Association and the Confederation 
of Indian Industry for agreeing to work as partners to meet these goals.
    All told, we believe this historic agreement will help to reduce air 
pollution, to diminish

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health risks, to fight global warming, to protect and preserve the 
natural beauty of India. And while we work to cooperate between our 
nations, we must also remember our obligation to realize the promise of 
the landmark Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change. For if we act wisely, 
this agreement can help both the developed and the developing nations to 
harness the power of the market to build a clean energy future. We must 
complete the work begun in Kyoto so that the United States and other 
nations can ratify the protocol and it can enter into force.
    Now, let me say that there are some people who don't believe 
anything can be done about global warming because they don't believe the 
economy can grow unless energy is used in the same way it has been used 
for 100 years in the industrialized countries. They do not believe that 
India can grow wealthy unless you put more greenhouse gases into the 
atmosphere by burning more oil and coal, in the same way the United 
States and Europe and Japan did. And in the industrial age that might 
have been true, but that is no longer true.
    Many members of our delegation today rode over here in electric 
buses that you use here to keep from promoting air pollution. In no time 
at all we will have electric vehicles or vehicles that use fuel from 
farm products or from simple grasses that will not pollute the 
atmosphere. In no time at all we will be using solar power wherever it 
is feasible. We will be building buildings with materials that keep heat 
and cold out and are far more efficient.
    We can, in short, do something today that could not be done 50 years 
ago. We can promote more economic growth in India by using less energy 
and keeping the environment cleaner. In other words, the economic 
conditions today are precisely the reverse of what they were 50 years 
ago.
    The United States will never ask India or any other developing 
nation to give up its economic growth in order to reduce pollution. But 
we do ask you to give us a chance to work with your scientists to prove 
that you can achieve even greater economic growth and make the 
environment even cleaner.
    I must say that we even have some people in the United States who 
believe the Kyoto Protocol is some sort of plot to wreck our economy and 
who, unfortunately, some of them, have a good deal of influence. They 
continue to deny that global warming is real. All I know is, the 
overwhelming consensus of scientists and the evident lessons of the 
weather patterns of the last few years all say the climate is warming at 
an unsustainable rate. We know it takes at least 50 years to turn it 
around. Why would we take a risk in not doing it when we know we have 
the technology today, with alternative energy sources and conservation, 
to chart a different future? I hope that in my country and yours and 
throughout the world, we will have the sort of partnership to which we 
have committed ourselves on this day.
    Finally, let me just say that we don't have to choose. We don't have 
to choose between economic opportunity and environmental protection. But 
we do have to choose between a future of sustainable development for all 
of our children with clean water and sanitary conditions and energy 
efficiency and clean air, and a future in which we give it up simply 
because we refuse to take the necessary decisions to preserve them.
    On this Earth Day this year and on this historic day today of 
partnership between our two nations, when we stand in the shadow of the 
Taj Mahal, we remember that it is a monument built in love. All the most 
important monuments are built for love. The most important monument 
today we can give our children and our children's children is the 
preservation of the Earth that was given to us. We should give that 
monument in the spirit of love.
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 5:55 p.m. at the Taj Khema overlooking the 
Taj Mahal. In his remarks, he referred to Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh 
and Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee of India; Chief Minister Ram 
Prakash Gupta of Uttar Pradesh; Mayor Baby Rani Maurya and Commissioner 
Nita Chowdhury of Agra; Verr Bhadra Mishra, director, Ganges River 
Clean-Up NGO; the President's mother-in-law, Dorothy Rodman; and M.C. 
Mehta, co-founder, Indian Council for Enviro-Legal Action. Prior to the 
President's remarks, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Foreign 
Minister Jaswant Singh signed the joint statement.

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