Bill Clinton's discussion of environment w/Letterman...

[bliss_eternal]

back in 2002.

It's so weird that I still recall this interview. I googled something I recalled Clinton saying in it, and found the transcript on line.

Read this and weigh in after, with your thoughts on this...Here's the excerpt from the interview addressing Clinton's ideas/suggestions of energy alternatives:

There is a big idea that people can’t let go of that’s not true any more which is that you cannot get rich, stay rich or grow richer without burning more coal and oil and putting more greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. When we had a primarily industrial economy, that was true.

It is not true anymore and America needs to do much more to develop energy conservation, alternative energy technologies and we’d actually create jobs, have more wealth and save the planet. And, we’d make ourselves more independent of foreign oil. There is right now today a one trillion dollar untapped market for existing alternative energy and energy conservation technologies never mind these cars that are about to developed that will get 100 miles to the gallon or run on electricity and be efficient and all of these other things that are going to be done. It is just crazy and we’re in the grip of this and if we don’t set a better example, within 30 years the Chinese and the Indians will both be putting more greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere than we are and we’ll be suffering from what they do instead of the other way around.

DL: And I’ve talked about this before to almost everybody who will listen to me and that’s a pretty short list, but we’re talking about this in 2002. Doesn’t that just seem preposterous to you.

BC: It does.

DL: Why weren’t we talking about this in ‘82, why weren’t we talking about this in ‘72? I know we were but why hasn’t something happened? You know, when John Kennedy said let’s put a man on the moon by God, there was a guy on the moon. Why can’t we do something like that?

BC: I’ll tell you exactly why. Because the old energy economy is highly centralized. It’s centralized and oil companies and utility companies and coal companies with a lot of good people who work for them and a lot of money and a lot of political influence. The new energy economy with energy conservation, solar power, wind power and other things is highly decentralized. It is very difficult to get from here to there unless the government puts a huge amount of money in it or somebody else decides to do it.
I gave a speech in Saudi Arabia in January to 400 business people from the Gulf and I said, all of you are going to think I’m nuts. Maybe they did already. I said if I were you, I would stop trying to make Saudi Arabia the oil capital of the world and make it the energy capital of the world. You should take your cash right now and go out and buy half the solar capacity in the whole world and you should start at the equator. All the way around the equator and go north and south until you put solar power everywhere the weather will tolerate it. You will save the planet, get richer and you’ve already got your oil wells drilled, it will be cheap. You can still get your oil out and sell it.

DL: This doesn’t sound like a bad idea to me and I understand the economy and capitalism and jobs and stock prices and profits and on and on and on. But as you say why couldn’t somebody, the Dave Letterman Oil Company, why couldn’t we start...

BC: I’ll invest in that.

DL: Oh yeah. Well, why couldn’t we start diversing and exploring and developing and we would still make enormous sums of money without killing the planet?

BC: Well, we should do it. You know John Bryson ran a very progressive electric utility out in California and they began to finance energy conservation. We built with the Energy Department and HUD and the National Home Builders Association which is a conservative group. We built a housing development out in the Inland Empire out east of LA for lower income working people and we promised them if they moved in these houses, they’d save 40% on their electric bill with efficient lighting, good insulation and solar panels on the room which now look like little shingles. After two years, they were saving an average of 65%. It’s out there but it’s not organized so we’ve got to put some money behind it and build competing entrepreneurial organizations. I’m telling you there is more money in this, it’s better for the economy, it’s good for the planet and as you pointed out it would be very good politics for us.

DL: So you’re telling me and I want to understand this, people like Standard Oil, they would pursue this, they won’t pursue this?

BC: They won’t because look, the nature of it is to be decentralized.

DL: I understand that. ork and guaranteed earnings so it’s a lot of trouble. All the government would hredits to people to do this and fund the research and development which is what we’ve done every time we’ve moved into a new era. Whether it was in the space program or new defense technologies or you name it. Or what we do now in biomedical research where we sequence the human gnome in 2000 for example. Everybody supports this kind of investment in research and development in other areas, we have to do this in energy and energy conservation. It is important politically but the environmental issues could hardly be greater.
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The full transcript can be found here--
http://hometown.aol.com/transcriptclint/

[Inland]

1. It's not a surprise that Clinton is so much smarter than Bush.

It's that even Letterman is that much smarter than Bush.

Probably half the band and most of the audience would make better presidents than Bush.

[bliss_eternal]

2. Hahahaha!

I'm trying to imagine Paul from the band, as Chief of Staff or VP.

:rofl:

[Inland]

3. "That's groovy, real cool, Mr. President." nt