Large Cities Group Press Conference

May 16, 2007
New York, NY

President Clinton: Thank you very much. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I'd like to welcome you, along with our Mayor, Mike Bloomberg, and Mayor Ken Livingstone of London, whose brainchild this Large Cities Group is. We are joined by representatives of four major corporations, five global banks, and the mayors of many major cities around the world that I will recognize in a few moments.

I want to make a couple of remarks to explain what we're doing here and introduce our partners, and then I'd like for Mayor Bloomberg and Mayor Livingstone to take the microphone. I am very grateful for their leadership, and that of all of the mayors here today, as we announce a significant step in the continuing efforts to combat climate change through a worldwide program to make cities more energy efficient.

Cities use more than 75 percent of the world's energy and generate more than 75 percent of its greenhouse gases. Buildings are often the largest energy users, accounting for 50 percent of energy consumption in newer cities; in older ones, more than 70 percent. In New York and London, that is the case. Here in New York City, according to the Mayor's recent report, buildings account for almost 80 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions. There are 950,000 of those buildings, so that is a lot of activity. Most buildings, particularly in older cities, are remarkably energy inefficient. They use lights that generate more heat than light, and they leak cool air in the summer and hot air in the winter because of poorly insulated windows and walls. The heating and cooling systems are antiquated and use inefficient pumps and motors. Heating, air conditioning, and lighting systems often run all night or for hours on end when no one is using them.

We now have the technology to reduce energy consumption in buildings by 25 to 50 percent. If all buildings were as efficient as they could be, we'd be saving an enormous amount of energy and significantly reducing carbon emissions. Also, we'd be saving a ton of money for people who pay utility bills. More often than not, however, it's expensive to take an existing building and make the improvements that will bring about the energy savings.

Today we announce a program to perform these improvements on a massive scale. In 16 major cities around the world, our goal is to dramatically increase the number of buildings that undergo retrofits, to set up systems in participating cities to conduct these
retrofits efficiently, quickly, and as inexpensively as possible. Many public and private building owners don't undertake energy efficiency projects because they require up front payments by the owners for uncertain savings. And the permits and other requirements to start construction and the conditions necessary to secure financing are onerous and complicated. This program will change all that by creating a system to make it easier for building owners to increase energy efficiency.

As the first step, our Foundation is partnered with the four largest energy service companies in the world: Siemens, Johnson Controls, Honeywell, and Trane. These companies audit buildings to identify opportunities to make them more efficient and then act as general contractors by organizing construction work and securing the products and technologies necessary to carry out successful retrofits. Under this new program, these companies have not only agreed to scale up their capacity to do large numbers of building retrofits around the world, but equally important, to provide financial performance guarantees on energy savings that will result from their retrofit projects. So I would like to acknowledge the energy service companies here and ask them to stand. We have George Nolen, the CEO of Siemens; Dave Myers, the President of Building Efficiency for Johnson Controls; Timothy Keating, the Vice President of Global Governmental Relations for Honeywell; and Fred Poses, the Chairman and CEO of American Standard Companies. Thank you very, very much.

Even with the performance guarantees, we have to raise the money to do this work. So we partnered with five major global financial institutions: Citigroup, Deutsche Bank,
UBS, ABN AMRO, and JP Morgan. These banks will finance our first generation of building retrofit projects. They have each committed $1 billion in financing to this program. This is very important. The total of $5 billion that will be devoted to the program will more than double the current global market for building retrofits.

The financing will cover 100 percent of the cost of each building retrofit, and as a result, cities and private building owners will not have to commit to new capital outlays. The reason is that more efficient energy use will result in lower energy bills and savings for building owners and their tenants. Most of the money saved initially will be used to pay back the loan, plus interest to the bank. Later on, the building owner and the tenants will realize part of cost savings and eventually all of the cost savings, once the bank loans have been repaid. My Foundation will also work with these financial institutions to simplify and standardize the applications that need to be made by building owners to secure financing. Together we'll create a secondary market for building retrofit loans so that we can lower the cost of capital for those participating in the program and increase the total pool of funds available, even beyond what has been committed today.

I'd like to introduce the representatives of the financial institutions: Steven Freiberg,
Chairman and CEO of the Global Consumer Group North America for Citigroup; George Longo, Managing Director, and Suneel Kamlani, Chief of Staff, UBS Investment Bank; Kevin Parker, CEO of Deutsche Bank Asset Management; Bill Winters, Managing Director of JP Morgan’s Global Investment Bank; and Denis McHugh, head of North America Global Markets for American ABN AMRO. Thank you very much.

Sixteen of the world's largest cities have agreed to participate in this program and to offer their municipal buildings for the first round of retrofits. They will also provide incentives for private building owners in their cities to do audits and retrofits for their own buildings. My Foundation will help them to set up a standardized process to simplify permitting and other requirements so that they can begin construction, simplify the program, and cut the cost and time associated with getting real results in energy efficiency.

We're also partnering today with leading cities like Toronto and Berlin that have successfully encouraged building and energy efficiency for decades now and will share their best practices with a broad range of cities looking to incentivize deep reductions in building-related emissions.

I would like to now introduce the mayors that are here, and I hope I have the complete list. In addition to Mayor Bloomberg and Mayor Livingstone, we have the Mayor of Toronto, David Miller; Lord Mayor of Melbourne, John So; Mayor Oh Se-hoon of Seoul; Mayor Dr. Shubha Raul of Mumbai; Apirak Kosayodhin of Bangkok; the Mayor of Sao Paulo, Gilberto Kassab; Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard; and the Mayor of Berlin, Klaus Wowereit. They are both coming and may not be here yet. And I thank the other representatives of the cities that are here.

Participating but not present today, we have Tokyo, Karachi, Chicago, Houston, Johannesburg, and Rome, and we also have Mayor Doug Palmer, the President of the U.S. Conference of Mayors and Mayor of Trenton, New Jersey here. Thank you all very much for being here.

I want to say a special word of appreciation that my own office building in Harlem is going to participate in this program. So I want to thank my landlord, Cogswell Realty, for encouraging other private building owners in New York to do this. This is a big deal in New York City. As I said, 79 percent of our emissions come from buildings. A final component of the program will help participating cities begin programs to train local workers on the installation and maintenance of the energy savings and clean energy products required for this work. This will include programs for minority contractors and for long-term unemployed people. The U.S. Green Building Council and the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air Conditioning Engineers have agreed to help coordinate the training program. We also have support from the Mechanical Engineers Association.

I'd like to introduce Rick Fedrizzi, President of the U.S. Green Building Council; Jeff Littleton, American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air Conditioning Engineers; and David Kruse, the President of the Mechanical Engineers Association. Thank you very much.

Let me just say a word about the last introductions. One of the biggest problems we have in New York and throughout America is the inequality of the current economic recovery, where we have a booming economy, rents in Manhattan going through the roof, but median wages stagnant and an actual increase in poverty among people working full-time and an increase in those losing their health insurance among people working full-time in an economy that superficially seems to be doing great. We see similar problems all over the world in the developing world, where inequality is growing because there's a lot of economic growth, but it's concentrated in too few hands.

A serious effort to retrofit and green all these buildings will put a major dent in that inequality problem in the United States and throughout the world. Much of the glass and many of the lighting fixtures that will be added in these buildings, and a lot of the insulation material, will be made in this country. And with all respect to the Mayor of Mumbai, there's no way we can outsource greening a roof. Somebody must be on the roof in Harlem when we green it in my office building. So we have a chance here to generate enormous numbers of jobs for people who may not have a lot of educational background and may not be doing well in the current information technology-dominated economy. I predict that all of the naysayers who said this was going to be terrible for the economy will be proven wrong, and it will actually turn out to be an enormous economic boon, not only in wealthy countries, but in developing countries as well.

I think the mayors clearly understand that, and we want to be in a position to support them. The Green Building Council; the Heating, Refrigerating, and Air Conditioning Engineers; and the Mechanical Engineers are going to help us.

We know that this is a global problem that requires a successor to Kyoto and national legislation, but we also know that as you reduce greenhouse gas emissions, you must do it place-by-place, company-by-company, building-by-building, block-by-block. The mayors are in a remarkable position to do this. I am very grateful to each of them, those who are here and those who are part of our group who could not be here today, for understanding the profound potential of their leadership on climate change. We know what to do here. We just have to get organized and get after it.

I feel very good about this, because all my Foundation has tried to do is what we did with AIDS medicine. There is a market for public goods here, a clean, energy efficient future. It requires products, it requires services, it has enormous potential to grow the economy, and as long as other energy products are priced as they are now, anything we need to do will be economical if we can organize the financing and execution. All of our partners here today have helped us to organize a market that will then operate in an efficient and profitable way. People who pay utility bills in New York City and all of these other cities will be better off. We'll be creating jobs, we'll be starting businesses, and we'll be solving a huge problem for the world.

I am very grateful to the next two speakers. First of all, Ken Livingstone from London, who really took the lead on this early and saw the potential to get other cities involved. He invited my Foundation to be involved. And I'm very grateful to our Mayor, Mike Bloomberg, who has put out an extremely detailed comprehensive plan and has proven one more time that he's willing to take on a tough issue and see it through. I thank them both, and Mayor Bloomberg, I'd like to ask you to come up, and then Mayor Livingstone. Thank you very much.

Mayor Bloomberg: Mr. President, thank you for the kind words and also your strong words that you voiced for our plan. Mayor Livingstone, I just wanted to say thank you for taking the lead here. London is one of the great cities of the world, and you've shown all of us that we can take on some of the tough things, and that there are solutions to intractable problems if you have the courage and the foresight. You certainly do, and you're to be commended.

You should all know that Bill Clinton has taught me a great deal about leadership, about being strong, about being charismatic, about being tall and handsome -- [Laughter] and southern. I would have thought the southern would have gotten more of a laugh.

Seriously, I'm so glad his Foundation is helping New York host this week's historic C40 Summit on Climate Change, which Mayor Livingstone is chairing. The Summit highlights what New York, London, and many of the world world's great cities are doing to combat global warming, and today we are delighted to join the Clinton Foundation in this global Energy Efficiency Building Retrofit Program. It really is groundbreaking. It really is going to make a difference.

The program will play a critical role in helping us achieve one of the key goals of PlaNYC, reducing New York City's greenhouse gas emissions 30 percent by the year 2030. This is part of what we believe to be the most comprehensive and concrete environmental plan that any major city has developed. Making both our private and public buildings more energy efficient is crucial to decreasing New York's impact on climate change. As I said in my remarks at the Summit yesterday, New York City's more than 900,000 buildings account for almost 90 percent of the city’s production of greenhouse gases.

It's also vital to reducing New York's energy costs in the years ahead. Some of the 85 percent of buildings that will be active in the year 2030 are already standing today. PlaNYC intends to encourage and eventually require the kind of efficiencies in those buildings that this exciting new initiative will underwrite. So it's really going to make a huge difference in helping us begin doing our part to fight climate change.

In reducing New York City's production of greenhouse gases, city government intends to lead by example, you should know, and our goal is to cut the emission of greenhouse gases from city buildings, vehicles, and other sources by 30 percent over the next 10 years, by 2017. So along with 12 of the world's other great cities, we'll work with the private sector to make buildings available for the first round of retrofits under this new building retrofit program. We'll also look to take advantage of some aspects of the program for city-owned buildings. Mayors are responsible for coming up with solutions and then implementing them, and this initiative will help us achieve real and lasting results.

Before I turn the floor over back to President Clinton, let me make two final points. First, the robust commitments made to this program by five of the world's leading banks and four of the globe's largest energy service companies demonstrates something that the C40 Summit has also made very clear. Today, major businesses and financial institutions increasingly understand that shrinking the world's carbon footprint is a pro-growth strategy; indeed, the only pro-growth strategy for the long term. Going green cuts energy costs, creates jobs, and improves the bottom line as well as the future for everyone.

Second and finally, I want to say how much our administration looks forward to a creative, ongoing partnership with the Clinton Foundation through this building's retrofit program. The Clinton Foundation has made an enormous impact by creating voluntary partnerships to fight AIDS worldwide. And now President Clinton, your leadership in the C40 Summit and with this new initiative has really put the spotlight on what New York, London, and other cities around the globe are doing to fight climate change. So I just wanted to thank you personally for your continued leadership on this crucial issue. You really are making a difference, Bill.

Mayor Livingstone: I'd like to thank Mayor Bloomberg for those kind words and say it's an absolute pleasure to be in a well-run city and to give you one word of advice: you may find some negative and hostile criticism as you proceed to tackle the problems of traffic congestion.

Mayor Bloomberg: Not here in New York.

Mayor Livingstone: Let me tell you, the moment it comes in, everyone will say, “Wasn't that a wonderful idea?” And within a few months, it will be inconceivable that you could ever not have done it. And of course, as somebody once said, if you can make congestion charging work in New York, you can make it work anywhere. And it will be a breather to cities across America to tackle one of the greatest sources of carbon emission, and I have to say, dramatically improve the quality of life of your citizens.

I also want to say a great big thank you to President Clinton. It's been just ten months since we met in Los Angeles to sign the memorandum in which the Clinton Foundation threw its weight behind the great world cities and mobilized its access to banks and to energy companies to clear away all the problems that have held back creation of a real program of reducing carbon emissions in our buildings.

There will be people here who I think are not aware of the significance of what we are doing today. These five banks haven't said, “We're making a billion each available over the years to come.” They have put a billion each up front, available from now to begin the work of tackling carbon emissions in our buildings. These four giant energy companies have agreed to slash their prices, so overnight, there is a completely new economic dynamic.

And the 15 mayors who have agreed to put their municipal buildings, their schools, their hospitals, their police stations, and their fire stations forward to start this progress have created a market with just these groups and cities coming together. We have taken an industry which has limped along with a small turnover, and as President Clinton said, more than doubled it at a stroke. It means hundreds of thousands of jobs created in these cities to do this work. But it is not just about municipal buildings. You create the skills, you create the market, and every other building from the private sector will come along. Having no up front costs, not the great struggle to raise the capital, and immediately seeing a reduction in their energy bills, most of which will go to repay the cost of the work, but each of them getting a reduction in their energy bills that will build up year by year, until this work is done.

If we look at the pattern of carbon emissions around the world, in the decade that follows this decision, as this new global industry takes off, we can reduce total global carbon emissions by about 10 percent. This is not just a new initiative. This is the biggest single step to tackle climate change that has been taken by any layers of government anywhere in the world since the debate about climate change started.

Let it embolden our national leaders as they meet soon to discuss the next stages forward. We in the cities couldn't wait. We see the problems. We see the damage that carbon emissions are doing, the threat of flooding and of violent weather, of terrible levels of heat. And I pay tribute to the cities, to the financial institutions, and to the energy companies that have come together to tackle this problem. Let it be an example to those who sit in government around the world; it is now time to move. But I pay the greatest tribute of all to President Clinton. No man could have mobilized this support. We couldn't have done it without you, and it is an incredible legacy for the protection of humanity and the well-being of all life on this planet. I thank you very much.

Thank you. But before I open the floor to questions, I just want to thank a lot of people here who have not been acknowledged and who supported us in the development of this plan and working through these mechanisms.

President Clinton: But let me say that I, as an American, have been dismayed at my country. It's been less than forthcoming on this issue as a nation, but I’m encouraged that now more than 400 of our cities have bound together and promised to meet or beat the Kyoto Protocol targets, and Mayor Palmer and I have talked about it, but I also want to thank my old friend, the Mayor of Albuquerque, New Mexico, Mayor Martin Chavez, thank you for being here. They are one of the cities that are going to beat their targets by a good long ways. And a lot of these cities have agreed to work with us in an advisory capacity to help us take what was done in a smaller area to scale in some of these mega-cities in the world.

The only other thing I'd like to add to what Ken Livingstone said is that I hope these 16 mayors will inspire their counterparts. They come from every continent, and as we work out the kinks in this, we will want more and more cities involved. While we have an enormous percentage of the world's largest cities, we don't have them all. And if we did, we could do even better. So thank you, Mayor Livingstone, thank you Mayor Bloomberg, and thank all of you for your participation. Thank you.

Do we have any questions? Just stand up and be heard.

Question: What do you think of the Mayor's ideas of congestion pricing in New York City, and do you think that there's enough political will to make it a reality?

The longer I wait in traffic, the better I like it. I'm like everybody else; it just depends on what day you ask me. I remember when people said he was committing political suicide when he came out for smoke-free restaurants when the restaurant revenues were down already 15 percent after 9/11. He clearly was right, and events proved him right. And so I wouldn't bet against the Mayor's judgment on this.

President Clinton: I want to point out that while all of the headlines went to the congestion tax, you would be doing this announcement a great disservice if you did that today, because 80 percent of the Mayor's plan deals with the buildings. The congestion tax, whether you like it or dislike it, is only 20 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions; 80 percent are the buildings, and that's what we're here to talk about today.

Question: Because of the good weather, most of Sao Paulo's buildings in Brazil don't have central heating or air conditioning. The main problem in Sao Paulo is traffic. How are you planning to help Sao Paulo?

President Clinton: That's up to the mayor. Do you want to say anything?

Mayor Livingstone: We have had some very good suggestions about traffic. We're very lucky in New York and in London, where our ancestors bequeathed us a good mass transit system. I think many cities have made a mistake in recent years as they plan their development. If you've got a huge, dynamic economic center, people have to get there by mass transit; they can't drive. And therefore, we'll be working on this as part of what we're doing in the next stage, because this is just the first announcement. We are working on many more that will deal with other areas of the policy, and mass transit will be one of them, and what we can do to actually encourage people out of their car and into buses, into an improved mass transit system.

None of these things are easy. If they are easy, somebody else would have done it before.

President Clinton: Let me say one other thing, and I want Mayor Bloomberg to come up. Cisco is a technology company that's working with us in three major cities around the world now to try to the develop models for reducing congestion through the use not just of GPS positioning, but other information technology tools. They’re working in Seoul, San Francisco, and I believe Amsterdam.

But there's no question this is a big part of it. In general, about a third of greenhouse gas emissions come from transportation, a third from buildings, and a third from manufacturing and the generation of electricity, but in cities it's almost always more buildings. I bet you even in Sao Paulo, even without the need for air conditioning and heating in the winter, I bet you'd be surprised what percentage the buildings generate, and how much can still be saved there by efficiency. Mayor?

Mayor Bloomberg: And you can do some mass transit. You don't have to go and build subways. The economics are very difficult, especially for a city like Sao Paulo, but having dedicated bus lanes is one of the very easy things to do. If you make it easy for people to take mass transit, if you make it safe and affordable and reliable, common sense says most people will do it. People don't enjoy their commutes. They just want to get where they are going quickly.

And I can only tell you, I could not function in this city if it weren't for mass transit. I take the subway to work most days. This is the second time today I've been uptown: subway up, subway down. Without that, I'd be stuck in traffic. Couldn't get here.

Question: I would hope Mayor Livingstone, could you elaborate a tiny bit on that projection of a 10 percent reduction of emissions? Is that specifically from this program or from this plus many more cities? Because $5 billion for a 10 percent cut is a good deal.

Mayor Livingstone: This is the beginning. In my city, where transport is 22 percent and commercial buildings are just under 40, if we can get a 25 percent reduction starting with the municipal buildings, then going on to the private sector, that gives us a 10 percent cut. That's if we only achieve 25 percent. Replicate that through all of these cities and then the others that will come in. These are the leading cities in their nation. What we will then do, as we will do in London, is take this to Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow, and all of the other cities. You can't run it all through the center, but each of these cities will become national leaders in driving this program forward. It will take a decade. There aren't the trained workers there to do it on this scale. We will build it up. It will take a decade. But I think one percent a year, year by year by year by year; 10 percent of the reduction of global emissions will be the first big breakthrough, and I think it would involve other people to look at these areas as well.

President Clinton: You made an interesting comment there. I agree that if you could get 10 percent for $5 billion, it would be a good deal. But let's don't fall into this trap that people keep falling into. You're not going to a store and paying $5 billion for whatever reduction we get. You're investing $5 billion which creates jobs and incomes for people who will pay taxes and become consumers and businesses that will be started. And in the process, you will lower utility bills, which will create more disposable income for individuals and for businesses, as well as for public entities.

This is an economic development investment, and it's now been made drastically more economical because of what our financiers have done in making it possible for the landlords principally here, including the public landlords, not to have to come up with the up front cash and to finance this out of reduced utility bills. This is an investment with a high rate of return. We’re doing a public good at only a modest, as opposed to a massive cost. And it's very important that we think of it as such.

Question: A question from Denmark. We are very much looking forward to your visit next week. I would just like to ask you if you have learned to ride the bike you got on your first visit to Copenhagen?

President Clinton: You have no idea what a funny question that is for me. I actually wrote about this in my book. I broke my leg when I was five, and I got paranoid. I never rode a bicycle until I was 21, but now I ride one quite often, every chance I get.

Mayor Bloomberg: I made the mistake of buying a bicycle and got vilified for paying a lot of money for it, and I gave it to some kid who I hope still has it.

President Clinton: But there's a very serious element when we get into the transportation part of this. Having available bicycle lanes is important. If you look at, I took a walk through Central Park last night here in New York, and this is the most wonderful time of year to be there; so you have the joggers and the skaters and the bikers. In order for this to be practical in cities where the distances are still too great, you have to have the bike lanes. As Mayor Livingstone said, that's part of our next deal. We have to get into transportation, and then we have to get into clean energy, what we're going to do on solar and wind and other things. There's a lot more to come. But in order for bikes to work, people have to have a safe place to ride them.

Question: What percentage reduction have the energy service companies agreed to in their pricing?

President Clinton: I don't know.

Mayor Livingstone: They will tell you that's commercially confidential, but it's big.

President Clinton: Basically, I don't know, and I'm glad, because I'd probably tell you if I did. But what they agreed to do was essentially to do what we did for the first time with the AIDS drugs; that is, a $5 billion dollar global market, this is a fairly anemic market given the sophistication of what they do.

It's basically still a fairly low volume, high-margin business. What we worked out here was a higher volume, lower margin, certain payment business. As a matter of principle, I think it's wrong for people doing what we're doing to ever ask anybody to lose money. We've got to be able to construct a sustainable world where you have viable economies preserving the environment. So I hope that they have not cut their prices so much that they are in any risk whatsoever of not running a profit. I just hope their profit comes more from volume and less from margin, and that's basically the theory that we're operating on, and whatever cut it is, that’s what they project the trade-off will be once we get the volume up and the payments certain.

Question: After this magnificent leap ahead to critical mass, how about also calling on the retail banking sector across the country to follow the lead of these institutions and make green mortgages available in short order for the residential and small business customers after this fantastic leap clean through to sustainability that you've made?

President Clinton: Well, we're working on that. You also should know that there's a lot of support now for this kind of thing among traditional utility executives, and I don't want you to jump the gun on his announcement, but Jim Rogers, the President of Cinergy, the third biggest user of coal in America (so a major contributor to the greenhouse gas problem), I think will make a proposal which will be amazing for small businesses and individual homeowners on this.

But we still need something done in the mortgage market for people who are going to purchase, and I agree with that. But we're working on that. Just give us a little time. One thing at a time. We're getting there.

Question: Mr. President, Simon Harris from ITV News in London. After your dealing with world leaders, what's it like doing business with the mayors? You seem to have found a way of effectively sidelining governments that don't support your initiative.

President Clinton: Say that again?

Mayor Livingstone: He said how do you find working with mayors, is it better or worse than government?

President Clinton: Well, I liked it when I was in office, and I liked it when I was working with my colleagues doing what we did today. For example, when we made a commitment to forgive the debts of the world's poorest nations coming up on the millennium, I didn't like it when I had a meeting where I thought we spent all of our time figuring out exactly what words we were going to use to pontificate on some policy over which we had no direct control, even though we were the leaders of our various countries. People were looking around. I think doing is more satisfying than talking. And the thing I like about working with the mayors is that they are in the doing business. We're in the harness here. And look, this is like everything else. Some of these programs will work better than others. Some cities will be more successful than others. Some will have labor shortages. Others will have gaps in operations. I bet you anything, we'll have some delivery problems in supplies. Real world things will happen.

But I know one thing. Every day, these people will get up and try to make something good happen. So the exhilarating thing to me is that we're back in the solutions business, which is what I think politics should be about. Mayor Bloomberg and Mayor Livingstone and all of these other mayors would never be re-elected if all they did was pontificate. People keep score on them, and they keep score on themselves. That's what makes this so much fun.

Mayor Bloomberg: Let me add something from the other side, from the mayors' point of view. Having somebody with the stature and the drive and the charisma of President Clinton to galvanize people and to pull us together is just immeasurably valuable. Without that, we can each of us lead our own cities, we can have our conferences, but Bill Clinton really does bring something to the party by being able to get everybody on the same page and in the same place, and his enthusiasm comes through, and that's really a great asset. So it's the other thing also from our point of view. We love to work with each other as mayors, but being able to work with a former President is really quite impressive.

Question: This is actually a question for Mayor Bloomberg. With all of the people here, there seems to be a pretty non-partisan effort you're doing. Is this correct?

Mayor Bloomberg: I don't think that global warming is a partisan issue. As you know, I'm running a campaign against guns in the hands of criminals. That's not a partisan issue. I've spoken out against immigration. I don't think that's a partisan issue. The real things people care about are not partisan. They are problems that we all face and that we want government to help us with so that we can share in the great American dream or the great British dream or whatever around the world. People want to be safe; they want to lead the good life; they want to have a future for their children. That has nothing to do with partisanship. That has to do with people, as Ken Livingstone said, who stand up and face the difficult issues, make real concrete decisions, and then be held accountable.

President Clinton: Let me just echo that. You know, California passed the most far-reaching state legislation in our country on this, and the Governor of New York has just proposed a very impressive piece of legislation. The California Legislature is Democratic; Governor Schwarzenegger is a Republican. He signed it, and he embraced it. We have 10 states in the Northeast that are going to have their own compact to accept limits on greenhouse gas emissions. So this is not really a partisan issue.

My wife and Senator John McCain, who are running for their respective nominations, have taken two trips together with other senators to demonstrate to them the reality of climate change. They went to an island 600 miles north of Norway to the northernmost settlement on earth to show the current state of scientific research to try to persuade the Senate to take more action. Then they went to Port Barrow, Alaska, one of the northernmost parts in the United States, to let native populations talk to U.S. Senators about the impact of climate change on their lives. And I don't think that they had a single discussion on either trip about whether there was a Republican or Democratic way to deal with this.

Now, once we get in harness and work on this, we may have differences of opinion about what should be done by the government or what should be done by the private sector or what's necessary for national or state or local government. But we need to get the country in gear, and we need in a way to go beyond whatever the past political arguments were. We all have an interest in this, and our children and grandchildren. We want them to be able to have the life that they dream of, and there's really no partisan deal here. We've just got to get the show on the road. I feel very good about where Americans at the grassroots level are on this.

Question: Is there any kind of analogous historical precedent for this kind of collaboration, a multi-dimensional collaboration, in instant market creation?

President Clinton: I really don't think so. As I said, the only thing that I've ever done that approximates this is what we've done with the AIDS medicine, where we were able to get big, big cuts in prices by going to high volume, low margin, certain payment businesses. And I want to thank, by the way, all of the people at our Climate Change Initiative who have worked on this, but especially Ira Magaziner, who really pioneered the AIDS medicine breakthrough and has worked on applying it to this context.

But let me say this. I think there should be more of this. Think about how many so-called public goods markets there are that are just underdeveloped. They are under organized, underinvested, and underdeveloped. Objectively, we know there is money to be made there. As long as you've got oil over $60, nobody really seriously doubts that we could do a lot of good with biofuels or with electric motors. Everybody knows that if you can do the financing, this energy conservation investment is a pretty quick payout. And every time you double the use of wind or solar, the price drops about 30 percent, even without a drastic technological breakthrough. So I think you'll have much more economical wind and solar, where I think there is about to be a breakthrough or two, within the next two years.

So it's very important that those of us who can at least organize the tools that will maximize the transition. Otherwise, the old energy economy hangs on too long, because it's well-organized, well-financed, highly politically influential, and it will be convenient not to do those things which were otherwise economical. As far as I know, there's no real precedent for it, except on a smaller scale with the AIDS drugs. And it's what we try to do, by the way, in development projects in Africa. We try to cut the price of fertilizer, cut the price of microloans, cut the price of everything; just go to a higher volume and a certain payment system.

Question: Local question for Mayor Bloomberg. Will City Hall be one of the first buildings; or if not, what will be, and what will we see, and when does it start?

Mayor Bloomberg: I don't know. That's a Freudian slip, but I guess it's fine. Last night I was at a black-tie event at the Museum of Modern Art, and I wore a green tie, and I was amazed at how many people knew why I was wearing a green tie last night. It was very elegant, last night, for those of you that you want to know.

We have changed the light bulbs at City Hall; not all of them, but almost all of them. We are starting to work on the Tweed Courthouse building, where the Department of Education is behind us, where there are small incandescent light bulbs. I have changed most of the light bulbs in my house. You know, you save money every place, and I think that's just the beginning. I think Wal-Mart has done a great job at trying to promote the use of more energy efficient light bulbs. That's helpful. If we can get more of the private sector to do those kinds things, we'd all be an awful lot better off. But I think you lead by example, and we're going to do it in this city. We have the commitment to bring down our energy bills and our carbon footprint, and we're going to do it, and I'm going to try to get as many of those things done as possible in the next 960 days that I have in office.

President Clinton: If I could just echo one of those things, the gentlemen earlier asked me about whether we can get the banks to do more mortgage help for small businesses and residents. One of the things that I hope we'll be able to do with this is to accelerate the creation of the consumer market the same way, like if Wal-Mart sells those 100 million compact fluorescent bulbs and people like us buy them and screw them in use them, it will have the same effect on greenhouse gases as taking 700,000 cars off the road. When they reduce packaging by five percent, it will save the supply chain $3.5 billion and have the effect of taking 203,000 diesel trucks off the road that get six miles to the gallon.

So I think what we hope is that all of these urban initiatives will trigger different consumer options in every city here present, not just ours, but all here, as well as increase the awareness in the countries.

We've got time for I think one more question. Our mayors are getting restless. Amory? My hero, Mr. Lovins. Let me tell you this, Amory Lovins, 30 years ago, was saying that we ought to do this, and it would be good economics, not bad economics; 30 years ago this January, he testified for me at a utility hearing in Arkansas that we didn't need another power plant; we needed to conserve. And they looked at us like we were interesting, but quite insane, young people. So I want to thank you for 30 years of lost battles, because you're about to win the war.

Mr. Amory Lovins: Thank you, Mr. President. I'm happy to report the Arkansas commission just made a landmark decision in favor of what we proposed 30 years ago.

The world has passed from majority rural to majority urban. Therefore, almost half the world's people now live in rural areas. What do you see, the three of you, please, as the linkages between your urban initiative and what needs to be done in the countryside?

Mayor Livingstone: The trend you've got at the moment is that we've just had half the people in the world move to living in the cities, and by the middle of this century, if not earlier, it will be 75 percent. But already, we're in a position where the cities with just half the people produce three quarters of the carbon emissions, and you start where the problem is the worst. In the cities, we have the economies of scale and the density of population, so it's easier to work. And I have to say, as well, I think we've got to be absolutely clear in this, that those nations like America and Britain and the industrialized world who have created the vast bulk of carbon emissions are right that we take the lead and make the initial difficult decisions.

The emerging economies, most of them still largely rurally-based, have got some real growth to make so that they can lift their people out of poverty, and the debate about carbon emissions is not about holding half the world in poverty while we protect ourselves. It's about moving to a fairer sharing of energy and the consumption of energy; and therefore, it would be much more difficult to fashion that for the world as we know, but they are not going to leave them behind.

Mayor Bloomberg: Amory, I think number one, the cities are the taste-makers of the world. People look to where the big cities are, because that's where the media is focused. Even in the suburban and rural areas, that's where they get their ideas, and they see what's focused on at the moment.

Also, remember in New York City, we think we'll have a million more people living here. The city, even though it does have a carbon footprint, we shouldn't be satisfied, even though we do pollute a lot more than we should, hopefully a lot more now than we will be doing, but the truth of the matter is per capita, big cities tend to be very efficient, but those million people moving here will help in a perverse way.

If the big cities start using some compact fluorescent bulbs, for example, if the big cities find a way to generate power a lot more efficiently, it is those in the suburbs and the rural areas that will follow, because we're going to drive the prices down with scale, and so they will be able to benefit as well.

President Clinton: If I could answer that question, in the United States and in other wealthy countries, people living in small towns and rural areas tend to make a bigger contribution to greenhouse gases through transportation, as opposed to buildings. So from my point of view, we have to make an aggressive effort to go to a clean fuels future. You showed me your 100-mile-a-gallon vehicle a few years ago up in Colorado, and I know that X Prize has offered $10 million to anyone who could come up with a 100-mile-a gallon vehicle that could be commercially produced.

We have to do more on transportation. I think we have to do more on sustainable agricultural and reduced methane emissions. I think we have to do more on resource and species, plant preservation and the right sorts of carbon sinks. And I think that in the developing world, we should set up economic incentives to keep rainforests up instead of tearing them down. There is increasing evidence, as you know better than I, that trees planted and maintained in tropical climates absorb more CO2 emissions than those in northern climes.

Finally, I think that people like you and me in developing countries ought to be making the most compelling case we can that we don't really need more centralized power grids in developing countries. We should try to get the generation of electricity to follow the pattern of cell phone development and decentralize electricity generation around solar and wind and geothermal and biomass and other things where it's appropriate.

But you know, I now have this project in Rwanda. Because of the genocide 13 years ago, about a third of the country still doesn't have electricity. And because Rwanda is well-organized and well-run, I could go to the World Bank and get a big loan to run the wires out to the other third of the country. But I'd rather get financing to build them all the most efficient solar and wind power. They would be in control of that power, the rural people would. It would be fundamentally empowering and much more sustainable.

So I think we've got a ways to go on this. I agree, we really have to think this through. And while I agree with Mayor Bloomberg, the real problem we're going to face, the three of us probably won't be around for it, but it is projected that in the next 43 years, the world's population will grow from 6.5 to 9 billion people. That's going to make some of our cities totally unmanageable, or these people are going to have to make a living somewhere else. And this is a big deal.

In the last decade, only Brazil and Argentina, of all the countries on earth, dramatically increased grain production. The rest of us, Canada, Australia, the big rice-producing countries of Asia, the Indians in wheat, the United States and Europe, we held our own. Only Brazil and Argentina had a big increase, but they still can't feed 2.5 billion people. So we're going to have to have people in sustainable lifestyles more widely dispersed, and I think we have to begin by dealing with transportation, and then by decentralized generation of power. I think it would be a disaster if we contribute to the already rampant tendency to overbuild coal plants. That's my off-the-top-of-my-head thinking.

Thank you all very much.