Green Energy News | July 20, 1997

July 20, 1997 – Vol.2 No.16

ENERGIES... week of July 20, 1997

PRESIDENT CLINTON REMARKED, at a White House conference on climate change this week, “It is obvious that we cannot fulfill our responsibilities to future generations unless we deal with our responsibility to the challenge of climate change.

“... the overwhelming balance of evidence and scientific opinion is that it is no longer a theory, but now a fact that global warming is for real.” (Quoting Vice President Gore.)

“ And so what we are doing today is beginning a process in which we ask the American people to listen to evidence, to measure it against their own experience, but not to discount the weight of scientific authority if their own experience does not yet confirm what the overwhelming percentage of scientists believe to be fact today.”

“ I do want to say that I am convinced that when the nations of the world meet in Kyoto, Japan, in December on this issue, the United States has got to be committed to realistic and binding limits on our emission of greenhouse gases. Between now and then, we have to work with the American people to get them to share that commitment. We have to emphasize the flexible market-based approaches. We have to embrace research and development efforts in technology that that will help us to improve the economy - improve the environment while permitting our economy to grow.”

“... the quicker you get after this (paraphrasing a participant at the conference) the less extreme the remedy you have to embrace to have a measurable effect to avoid an undesirable outcome. And the longer you wait the more disruptive the ultimate resolution will be.”

The conference was held on the eve of another round of United Nations negotiations on climate change to begin on July 28 in Bonn, Germany.

ONE RESPONSE - there were many - to Clinton’s comments was this from Chrysler Corporation Chairman, President and CEO Robert J. Eaton. “Instead of trying to put the U.S. on an energy diet by using taxes or some sort of rationing scheme, the U.S. should lead the way in a major push to develop breakthrough technologies that lead to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.”