Clinton calls biofuels key to creating jobs

Takes aim at Bush's decision to pull out of Kyoto agreement

Urges industry leaders to act on poverty and the environment
Apr. 12, 2006. 01:00 AM
STUART LAIDLAW
FAITH AND ETHICS REPORTER


CHICAGO—Former U.S. president Bill Clinton took dead aim at his successor in the White House at a major business conference here yesterday, saying the key to prosperity in the future lies in fighting global warming.

And it can be done for a lot less than the cost of the war in Iraq, he says.

"The most important thing you can do is give us a different energy future," Clinton told a luncheon crowd at BIO 2006, a gathering of 20,000 biotechnology executives and scientists.

During his presidency, George W. Bush has opposed efforts to fight global warming, and pulled his country out of the Kyoto Protocol to limit climate change.

Clinton said that every decade or so a new source of good-paying jobs must be found. During his presidency of the 1990s, that source was the booming technology sector.

"In this decade, we have not found that new source of jobs. It's sitting right in front of us," he said. "Biofuels are the bird's nest on the ground."

Biofuels are a renewable alternative to fossil fuels such as coal and oil, and are made from such sources as corn, canola, lumber or agricultural waste.

"If we made a serious decision to go to a clean energy future, we would reverse the wage decline," said Clinton, saying wages in the U.S. have dropped since he left office in 2001.

"This has never happened before."

In a wide-ranging speech touching on many challenges facing the world today — from disease and poverty in the Third World to obesity in developed countries — Clinton said nothing is more important that global warming.

"If we don't deal with this, all these other issues will be totally academic," he said.

Clinton noted the current war in Iraq, which sits on one of the world's largest oil reserves, is costing the U.S. government $60 billion (U.S.) a year.

"If we spent a third of that on biofuels ... just image the huge difference we could make."

The money could be used to develop efficient methods of producing fuels from renewable futures, ways to use those fuels and to promote their use among consumers.

"Clearly we need to move to a biofuels future," he said.

It was a theme he touched on the night before at a fundraising dinner in New York City he attended with his former vice-president Al Gore, who warned the world has only 10 years to avert an environmental disaster.

Clinton repeated the warning yesterday in Chicago.

"We have to deal with this," Clinton said, citing "an avalanche of evidence" in recent months that global warming is a growing threat.

Gore was defeated by Bush in the 2000 U.S. presidential election.

Clinton yesterday urged industry leaders in the audience to move on several other fronts, including disease, hunger and obesity. "In all of these sectors, biotechnology has a role," he said. "We really are raising our children to ... live fewer years than their parents."