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Earth Day Speech
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Earth Day Speech
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FOIA Number: 2012-0769-F
FOIA
MARKER
This is not a textual record. This is used as an
administrative marker by the William J. Clinton
Presidential Library Staff.
Collection/Record Group:
Clinton Presidential Records
Subgroup/Office of Origin:
Council on Environmental Quality
Series/Staff Member:
Kathleen (Katie) McGinty
Subseries:
OA/ID Number:
2888
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Folder Title:
Earth Day Speech
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S
61
5
10
1
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release
April 21, 1993
REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
IN EARTH DAY SPEECH
U.S. Botanical Gardens
Washington, D.C.
11:50 A.M. EDT
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much, ladies and
gentlemen, for being here in the wonderful Botanical Gardens. I must
say there's a lot I have to learn about this town, as you can tell if
you follow events from day to day. And I didn't know that the
Botanical Gardens was a branch of the Congress until I showed up
here. (Laughter.) Just one more thing I'm not responsible for --
I'm glad to be here. (Laughter.)
I also think that we should introduce a guest from
another country who is here with us -- the Environmental Minister
from Australia, Roz Kelly. Would you stand up? We're glad to have
you here. (Applause.)
Al Gore introduced Katie McGinty, and you were all good
enough tc clap. And I don't know if you could hear through the
clapping that her parents are here. And what you may not know is
that the real reason we appointed her is that she's one of 10
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children and we'd like to carry Pennsylvania in 1996. (Laughter.)
We think that there's a significant likelihood now because of that.
I want to say a special word of thanks to the Vice
President for two things -- first of all, for the wonderful trip that
he has just concluded, going to Poland to represent our country on
the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising, and the
wonderful remarks he gave in New York on the eve of that departure
and the way that he represented the United States in Poland. And
secondly, notwithstanding what he said in the introduction, which was
true -- (laughter) -- one of the reasons I did ask him to join the
ticket is that he knew more about the subject of the environment than
I did and I thought I had something to learn from him. And I have
learned a great deal, and it has been an immensely rewarding
experience and one which I hope will benefit the United States in
many ways over the course of the next four years.
That's worth clapping for -- I agree with that, don't
you think? (Applause.)
It's a good thing to have this celebration in the
springtime, a time when our spirits are renewed and we are reminded
by nature of new beginnings and forgotten beauty. This has been an
astonishingly beautiful spring in Washington, D.C., and something for
which I will always be grateful -- my first springtime here that I
see every morning as I go out and jog around in it and try to breath
in it -- something that is a continuing challenge. (Laughter.)
A little more than a week ago, most Americans celebrated
holy days of freedom and renewal. Today, we still nurture the faith
that helps us to understand more clearly that we can do better. This
is a time of new beginnings, a time when there is anguish and anxiety
all around us, but we still must yearn once again to succeed in our
common purposes to reach our deepest goals.
overwhelming determination to change our course, to offer more
opportunity, to assume more responsibility, to restore the larger
American community, and to achieve things that are larger than
ourselves and more lasting than the present moment. We seek to set
our course by the star of age-old values, not short-term
expediencies; to waste less in the present and provide more for the
future; to leave a legacy that keeps faith with those who left the
Earth to us.
That is the American spirit. It moves us not only in
great gatherings, but also when we stand silently all alone in the
presence only of nature and our Creator.
If there is one commitment that defines our people, it
is our devotion to the rich and expansive land we have inherited.
From the first Americans to the present day, our people have lived in
awe of the power, the majesty and the beauty of the forest, the
rivers, and the streams of America. That love of the land, which
flows like a mighty current through this land and through our
character, bursts into service on the first Earth Day in 1970.
When I traveled the country last year, I saw and spoke
of how much had been accomplished by the environmental movement since
then and how much still remains to be done. For all that has been
done to protect the air and the water, we haven't halted the
destruction of wetlands at home and the rain forest abroad. For all
that has been learned, we still struggle to comprehend such dangers
to our planet's delicate environment as the shroud of greenhouse
gases and the dangerous thinning of the ozone layer. We haven't done
nearly enough to protect our forest communities from the hazards,
such as lead poisoning, which is believed to cause mental
retardation, learning disabilities, and impaired growth.
Unless we act, and act now, we face a future where our
planet will be home to nine billion people within our lifetime, but
its capacity to support and sustain our lives will be very much
diminished. Unless we act, we face the extension of untold numbers
of species that might support our livelihoods and provide medication
to save our very lives. Unless we act now, we face a future in which
the sun may scorch us, not warm us; where the change of season may
take on a dreadful new meaning; and where our children's children
will inherit a planet far less hospitable than the world in which we
came of age. I have a faith that we will act, not from fear, but
from hope and through vision.
All across this country, there is a deep understanding
rooted in our religious heritage and renewed in the spirit of this
time that the bounty of nature is not ours to waste. It is a gift
from God that we hold in trust for future generations. Preserving
our heritage, enhancing it, and passing it along is a great purpose
worthy of a great people. If we seize the opportunity and shoulder
the responsibility, we can enrich the future and ennoble our own
lives.
Just as we yearn to come together as a people, we yearn
to move beyond the false choices that the last few years have imposed
upon us. For too long we have been told that we have to choose
between the economy and the environment; between our jobs; between
our obligations to our own people and our responsibilities to the
future and to the rest of the world; between public action and
private economy.
I am here today in the hope that we can together take a
different course of action, to offer a new set of challenges to our
people. Our environmental program is based on three principles.
First, we think you can't have a healthy economy without a healthy
environment. We need not choose between breathing clean air and
bringing home secure paychecks. The fact is, our environmental
problems result not from robust growth, but from reckless growth.
The fact is that only a prosperous society can have the confidence
and the means to protect its environment. And the fact is healthy
communities and environmentally sound products and services do best
in today's economic competition.
That's why our policies must protect our environment,
promote economic growth, and provide millions of new high-skill,
high-wage jobs.
Second, we want to protect the environment at home and
abroad. In an era of global economics, global epidemics and global
environmental hazards, a central challenge of our time is to promote
our national interest in the context of its connectedness with the
rest of the world. We share our atmosphere, our planet, our destiny
with all the peoples of this world. And the policies I outline today
will protect all of us because that is the only way we can protect
any of us.
And, third, we must move beyond the antagonisms among
business, government and individual citizens. The policies I
outlined today are part of our effort to reinvent government -- to
make it your partner and not your overseer -- to lead by example and
not by bureaucratic fiat.
In the face of great challenges, we need a government
that not only guards against the worst in us, but helps to bring out
the best in us. I know we can do this because our administration
includes the best team of environmental policymakers who have ever
served the United States: the Vice President, Interior Secretary
Babbitt, EPA Administrator Browner -- and I hope that the EPA will,
soon, by the grace of Congress, be a Cabinet-level department -- and
Energy Secretary O'Leary, Commerce Secretary Brown, Transportation
Secretary Pena, the Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy, our
Environmental Policy Director Katie McGinty, and our Science and
Technology Advisor Jack Gibbons. All of them share an unshakable
commitment to a healthy environment, a growing economy and a
responsive government.
Our economic plan will create new job opportunities and
new business opportunities, protecting our natural environment. The
reductions in the interest rates which we have seen already will free
up tens of billions of dollars for responsible investments in this
year alone.
The jobs package I have asked the Congress to pass
contains -- this is hardly been noticed, but it actually contains
green jobs from waste water treatment to energy efficiency, to the
restoration of our national parks, to investments in new technologies
designed to create the means by which we can solve the problems of
the future and create more jobs for Americans.
Our long-term strategy invests more in pollution
prevention, energy efficiency, and solar energy, in renewable energy,
and environmental restoration, and water treatment -- all of which
can be found in the five-year budget that we have presented to the
Congress.
These investments will create tens of thousands of new
jobs, and they will save tens of thousands more. Because when we
save energy and resources we will have more to invest in creating new
jobs and providing better living standards. Today every other
advanced nation is more energy efficient than we are. That is one of
the reasons why over the last couple of years, for example, the
because that economy uses one-half the energy we do to produce the
same amount of goods. We can do better and we will.
I believe we can develop the know-how to out-conserve
and out-compete any one else on Earth. All over the world people are
buying products that help them to protect their environment. There's
a $200-billion market today for environmental technologies. And by
the turn-of-the-decade in the century, it will be $300 billion.
Let me just share one example with you -- something we
all know and use and something some of us are still trying to learn
how replace: light bulbs. Long-lasting energy-saving light bulbs
didn't even exist in 1985. Now American companies sell over $500
million worth of these products, with sales expected to reach $2
billion by 1995 and $10 billion by the year 2000, creating thousands
of new jobs. American scientists have taken the lead in developing
these technologies, and it's time to help our companies take the lead
in bringing out products and services to market.
I've asked the Energy Department, the Commerce
Department, and the EPA to assess current environmental technologies
and create a strategic plan to give our companies the trade
development, promotional efforts and technical assistance they need
to turn these advances into jobs here in America, as well as to help
promote a better environment. America can maintain our lead in the
world economy by taking the lead to preserve the world environment.
Last year, the nations of the world came together at the
Earth Summit in Rio to try to find a way to protect the miraculous
diversity of plant and animal life all across the planet. The
Biodiversity Treaty which resulted had some flaws, and we all knew
/
that. But instead of fixing them, the United States walked away from
the treaty. That left us out of a treaty that is critically
important not only to our future, but to the future of the world.
And not only because of what it will do to preserve species, but
because of opportunities it offers for cutting-edge companies whose
research creates new medicines, new products, and new jobs.
Again, just one recent example makes the point. A tree
that was thought to have no value, the Pacific Yew, used to be
bulldozed and burned. Now we know that that tree contains one of our
most promising potential cures for ovarian cancer, breast cancer and
other forms of cancer. We cannot walk away from challenges like
those presented by the Biodiversity Treaty. We must step up to them.
Our administration has worked with business and
environmental groups toward an agreement that protects both American
interests and the world environment. And today, I am proud to
announce the United States' intention to sign the Biodiversity
Treaty. (Applause.)
This is an example of what you can do by bringing
business and environmentalists together, instead of pitting them
against each other. We can move forward to protect critical natural
resources and critical technologies. I'm also directing the State
Department to move ahead with our talks with other countries which
have signed the convention so that the United States can move as
quickly as possible toward ratification.
To learn more about where we stand in protecting all our
biological resources here at home, I'm asking the Interior Department
to create a national biological survey to help us protect endangered
species and, just as importantly, to help the agricultural and
biotechnical industries of our country identify new sources of food,
fiber and medication. (Applause.)
hospitable and more hostile to human life. Today, 1 reaffirm my
personal, and announce our nation's commitment, to reducing our
emissions of greenhouse gases to their 1990 levels by the year 2000.
(Applause.)
I am instructing my administration to produce a cost-
effective plan by August that can continue the trend of reduced
emission. This must be a clarion call, not for more bureaucracy or
regulation or unnecessary costs, but instead, for American ingenuity
and creativity, to produce the best and most energy-efficient
technology.
After the Cold War, we face the challenge of helping
Russia achieve a healthy democracy, a healthy economy, and a healthy
environment. Our Russian aid package includes $38 million to clean
up pollution and promote better uses of energy. As with the full
range of our investments in Russia, this is truly an investment not
only in promoting our own values, but in protecting our national
security. To protect the environment at home and abroad, I am
committed to a government that leads by example, brings people
together, and brings out the best in everyone. For too long our
government did more to inflame environmental issues than to solve
them. Different agencies pursued conflicting policies. National
leaders polarized people. And problems wound up in the courts or in
the streets instead of being solved.
We seek to bring a new spirit to these difficult issues.
Three weeks ago in Portland, Oregon, we brought together business
people, timber workers, and environmentalists from throughout the
Northwest to discuss how best to preserve jobs and to protect the
old-growth forests and the species which inhabit them. People sat
down in a conference room, not a court room, and in the words of
Archbishop Thomas Murphy of Seattle, we tried to find common ground
for a common good. At the close of that forest conference, I asked
/
my Cabinet and our entire administration to begin work immediately to
craft a balanced, comprehensive long-term policy that is also
comprehensible.
Before I ask our companies and our communities and our
families to meet any challenge, it seems to me we have to set that
standard for the government. The American people are entitled to
know where the United States stands on this issue and many other
issues. And it is time to bring and end to the time when issues like
this wind up in court and there are five different positions from the
United States government itself. We can never solve problems in that
fashion. We can only undermine the security and stability of
people's lives.
That's one reason I am proud that yesterday the United
States Army announced its plan to clean up a large number of sites
where we learned recently that chemical weapons materials may be
buried, in some places from as long ago as World War I. Working with
the EPA, the Army will clean up this problem safely and in an
environmentally-sound manner.
This is a legacy of America's efforts to defend our
people and the community of free nations. Now, we are taking steps
to defend our people and our environment and the environment of the
world. In that same spirit, I plan to sign an executive order
requiring federal facilities that manufacture, process or use toxic
chemicals, to comply with the federal right-to-know laws, and
publicly report what they are doing. (Applause.)
I might add that it is time that the United States
government begins to live under the laws it makes for other people.
With this executive order, I ask all federal facilities to set a
voluntary goal to reducing their release of toxic pollutants by 50
percent by 1999. This will reduce toxic releases, control costs
associated with cleanups, and promote clean technologies. And it
will help make our government what it should be -- a positive example
for the rest of the country. (Applause.)
Poor neighborhoods in our cities suffer most often from
toxic pollution. Cleaning up the toxic wastes will create new jobs
in these neighborhoods for those people and make them safer places to
live, to work, and to do business.
Today, I am also signing an executive order that directs
federal agencies to make preliminary changes in their purchasing
policies, to use fewer substances harmful to the ozone layer. Here,
too, we must put our actions where are values are. Our government is
a leading purchaser of goods and services. And it's time to stop not
only the waster of taxpayers' money but the waste of our natural
resources.
Today I am signing an executive order which commits the
federal government to buy thousands more American made vehicles,
using clean, domestic fuels such as natural gas, ethanol, methanol,
and electric power. This will reduce our demand for foreign oil,
reduce air pollution, promote promising technologies, promote
American companies, create American jobs, and save American tax
dollars. To demonstrate my commitment to this issue, Energy
Secretary O'Leary is creating a task force led by the Land
Commissioner of Texas, Gary Mauro, who is here in the audience today,
who has headed a successful effort in his own state. I hope we can
do as well in America as they have done in Texas. (Applause.)
In that same spirit, I plan to sign an executive order
committing every agency of the national government to do more than
ever to buy and use recycled products. This will provide a market
for new technologies, make better use of recycled materials, and
encourage the creation of new products that can be offered to the
government, to private companies, and to consumers. And again, it
will create jobs through the recycling process.
We must keep finding new ways to be a force for positive
change. For example, the federal government is the largest purchaser
of computer equipment in the world, and computers are the fastest
growing area of electricity use. That's why I am also signing an
executive order today requiring the federal government to purchase
energy-efficient computers. We're going to expand the market for a
technology where America pioneered and still leads the world, and
we'll save energy, saving the taxpayers $40 million a year, and set
an example for our country and for the world.
For as long as I live and work in the White House, I
want Americans to see it not only as a symbol of clean government,
but also a clean environment. That's why I'm announcing an energy
and environmental audit of the White House. We're going to identify
what it takes to make the White House a model for efficiency and
waste reduction. It might mean fewer memos and less paper.
(Laughter.) And then we're going to get the job done. I want to
make the White House a model for other federal agencies, for state
and local governments, for business, and for families in their homes.
Before I ask you to do the best you can in your house, I ought to
make sure I'm doing the best I can in my house. (Applause.)
I ask that all of us today reaffirm our willingness to
assume responsibility for our common environment, and to do it
willingly, hopefully, and joyously. We are challenged here today not
so much to sacrifice as to celebrate and create. I've challenged
Americans who are young in years or young in spirit to offer their
time and their talent to serve their communities and their country.
I've asked them to help in teaching our children, healing the sick,
policing our streets.
But equally important are efforts to protect our
environment -- from our largest cities to our smallest towns to our
suburbs. Our National Service Plan will ask thousands of American to
do their part, from leading recycling drives to preventing lead
poisoning.
The challenge to shoulder responsibility and seize
opportunity extends to each of us in business, communities, and
homes. In our own lives, in our own ways, each of us has something
to offer to the work of cleaning up America's environment. And each
of us surely has something very personal to gain.
On a colder day in the middle of winter, just three
months ago, a poet asked us to celebrate, not only the marvelous
diversity of our people, but the miraculous bounty of our land.
"Here on the pulse of this new day," Maya Angelou challenged us to
look at, "the rock, the river, the tree, your country." Now, it is a
season of new hope and new beginnings. And as we look anew at our
neighbors, our children and our own communities, as well as the world
around us, we must seize the possibilities inherent in this
exhilarating moment; to face our challenges, to exercise our
responsibilities, and to rejoice in them.
Thank you very much. (Applause.)
END
12:16 P.M. EDT
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