Closing Remarks of President William J. Clinton
The Third Annual William J. Clinton Presidential Foundation Forum
New Thinking on Energy Policy: Meeting the Challenges of Security, Development and Climate Change

December 6, 2004
New York University

Ladies and Gentlemen: I said most of what I had to say this morning. I’d like to thank Carol Browner and our panelists: Jim Wolfensohn, Leonel Fernandez, and Joe Lieberman. I thank the previous panelists and the moderators. Again I want to thank the people at NYU, the donors and contributors who made this possible and the NGOs. If you haven’t visited the NGO booths outside please do so before you leave. I want to make only a couple of suggestions here. When we dedicated my library a few days, I said that at a time of great change it seemed to me that American needed its best of its two strains of political thought: conservatism, which at its best draws lines that shouldn’t be crossed. In plundering the environment we are repeatedly crossing lines that shouldn’t be crossed. It violates conservatism. And liberalism, which at its best takes down barriers that are no longer necessary or should never have been built in the first place. And Lord knows there are lots of institutional barriers to dealing with the problems of climate change and making this country more energy independent. Then I was listening to everybody, including myself, sort of complain about all the political problems here and I thought, well, liberalism at its worst is about believing we can solve every problem tomorrow. That’s me—I always think that. And conservatism at its worst is always for yesterday’s change after they have defeated everybody who brought it about. So in other words you just never get around…

When I was a kid growing up in Hot Springs, Arkansas, there was a bar on Central Avenue run by a guy named Wendy. And Wendy had a little neon sign that said Wendy and underneath the neon lights it said twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred and sixty-five days a year; it said free beer tomorrow. And so you saw it on Monday and went in on Tuesday Wendy would just say look it at the sign. It always said free beer tomorrow and tomorrow never came. Well, what’s the point of all that? The point of all that is most of us are not in the American government. Lots of us once were and we were deeply honored to serve and I hope some of you will have the chance to do it again. Most of us are not in the Congress; most of us are not in the governments of developing nations. Most of us are in business or NGOs or some other form of life. This is an ongoing debate. Okay, so Kyoto wasn’t perfect even though the United States was instrumental in negotiating it thanks to Al Gore and a number of others. It wasn’t perfect it didn’t include the developing nations. It was easier for Russia to meet those targets because they closed down some dirty old industries. It was easier for Germany to meet those targets because they took in East Germany and closed down some of those dirty old industries. France to meet the targets because France had a lot of nuclear power. I’ve heard all that bellyaching and whining. It was all true. It’s also true we have fiver percent of the world’s population and emit twenty-five percent of the greenhouse gases. What’s the point of all that? The point is its time to turn off the neon sign that says free beer tomorrow. Tomorrow is here. It’s time to stop worrying when if ever the current administration will change its mind about climate change. We should still continue to lobby for it. It’s time to let Senator Lieberman and Senator McCain do the very best they can do to pass that bill and if you have any influence with anybody in congress Republican or Democrat, for God’s sake use it. But the point I want to make is the most important thing you can do is something, anything. Roger Sant said this morning, that at present prices with presently available technology we could dramatically cut America’s greenhouse emissions through conservation. We know that we have options to produce clean energy. We know that the Scandinavian countries, for example, directly finance clean energy projects in the developing world. Like the one being financed, that I mentioned earlier this morning, the 12 mega watt wind project in the Dominican Republic. We know that these things happen and that the world is better off however incrementally after they happen than before. We know that it doesn’t make any sense to produce bio fuels out of corn and sugar when you have rice hulls, wheat stalks and other agricultural waste products to do it. But if you do it you can do quite a lot of good with it. We know all this stuff. And the reason I want you to go one more time as you walk out, saunter by those NGO booths, is there is an unlimited number of things you can do that will be a good outlet for you charitable investments, if you’re an investor where you can actually make money doing them that will either promote clean energy or energy conservation.

That’s what I would like to leave you with. Because one of the things that all of us can do together to change the world, is to change the way people think about this. Now in polite society you have to say you believe in global warming. You know, it’s impolite to say you don’t. It’s almost like showing bad manners at the dinner table. But it’s okay if you don’t do anything about it because American government doesn’t know how to write policy or oh well you don’t have any options. It’s not okay. The lesson of today is there is literally something every single person in this room can do. If you own a business have you retrofitted that business with double pane glass and proper insulation and light bulbs that cost twice as much but last three times as long. If you have to repair a roof have you bought shingles with solar reflectors in them. And I could give you lots of other examples.

So that’s my plea to you. The world is awash in people think this is a very nice problem but since greenhouse gases collect for fifty years in the atmosphere and when we get visited with global warming it will be because of something that happened decades before and it will endure for decades afterward. I think I’ll worry where I am going to eat dinner tonight—now that’s the truth. And therefore, I would say to all of you we have to prove… We have to reach what Malcolm Budwell said in his marvelous little book The Tipping Point; we have to prove we can save jobs in the auto industry wit a clean energy future, not cost jobs. We have to prove we can create more businesses in climates that are cold in climates that are cold like upstate New York and climates that are hot like south Florida and not cost jobs. And we have to prove that most important of all, that the poor people of the world, who as you heard in a gripping example that Jim Wolfesohn gave about the people of Manchupichu—that they not only have more to lose because of global warming, they don’t need to put more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere to make a decent living. Now it should not surprise you that people who run the governments of man of the fastest growing countries do not believe tot his day that they can get rich and stay richer without putting more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. I am very encouraged with that happened in China. When Hillary and I went to China in the late-nineties, the environment minister practically wept in thanking me for doing an environmental event and talking about a clean energy future for China. He said: you know when I talk about this they look at me like I’m nuts, like I don’t want China to grow. So it’s encouraging what they’re doing. But the truth is someday the world will, for those of us who are optimistic, the world will reach a positive tipping point in the management of energy toward a clean energy future toward energy conservation, toward moving the world away from the calamities that would otherwise result from climate change. There are two things we can do, you and me, we can sit around and say somebody else should do something or we can go do something. And you should never minimize doing what is you can. I never really believed this until it finally sunk in on me that Mohandas Ghandi actually did sit alone at his spinning wheel every day and spin cloth. To remind himself that in addition to whatever he talking about he should actually do something every day to advance a cause he said he believed in. So I leave you with that thought. Don’t leave here today thinking this is all interesting and possible. Leave here today with one of those NGOs to help out; Leave here today looking for a project in your hometown or in your business or in your house, or in the country in which you vacation. To promote clean energy, energy conservation and a world free of the worst consequences of climate change. You can do something. And in the aggregate as we do these things we will reach a tipping point then all the public policy will follow.

Thank you and bless you all.

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