[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 36, Number 21 (Monday, May 29, 2000)]
[Pages 1228-1230]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
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 Haynes, 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.

[[Page 1229]]

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 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, 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 move 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.

[[Page 1230]]

    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 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, and Marc Koenings, superintendent, Assateague National 
Island Seashore.