President Bill Clinton
April 22, 1998
CLINTON: Thank you. Thank you.
(APPLAUSE)
Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you for the welcome. I want to especially welcome all
the young children and not-so-young children and all of you who
feel childlike even though you're not anymore to this wonderful
American celebration of Earth Day.
I thank the vice president for his steadfast, constant and
brilliant leadership to preserve our environment for future
generations. I thank Congressman Bob Wise, who has been a good
friend and an adviser and represents you so well.
I want to thank our National Park Superintendent Bob Stanton
(ph). You know, I was sitting with Bob, and I said -- You know
something? You've got the best job in the whole federal
government.
(LAUGHTER)
(APPLAUSE)
And he said -- I know, and they're foolish enough to pay me
to do it every day.
(LAUGHTER)
Mayor Stowell (ph), thank you. Pam Underhill(ph), thank you
for your work at the Appalachian Trail Park. Thank you for a
lifetime of dedication to America's national park system.
And I'd like to ask all of you to give a round of applause to
all the national park employees who are here. They do a
wonderful, wonderful job.
(APPLAUSE)
Finally, let me thank Sandy Murrow (ph) and all the other
volunteers who worked with the vice president and me today to
make sure we didn't mess up anything so badly.
I walked away saying -- Now, I wonder if they're going to
have to go along behind us and undo all the stuff we just did
and then do it right.
(LAUGHTER)
I don't think so. I think we -- we crossed the threshold of
minimum competence as volunteers today.
But let me say to you, Sandy, and to all the other volunteers
that are here and those who will hear about what happens here
today.
The American people have utterly no idea how dependent not
only the Appalachian Trail, but the entire park system, has been
on citizen volunteers.
CLINTON: And we who know need to do more to get out the
word. But I hope you and all your fellow volunteers will
continue to work. We need you. We honor you. And we're very
grateful.
Thank you very much.
(APPLAUSE)
We came here today in part to highlight the work of the
volunteers. Last year, they gave over eight million hours --
the equivalent of $100 million in hard but loving labor -- to
enhancing America's great outdoors.
You know, the Appalachian Trail was conceived of a hundred
years ago by a teenager who was hiking among the sugar maples
and spruce trees in New Hampshire in the White Mountains.
Benton McKay (ph) imagined connecting the country all the way
from New England to Georgia with a hiking trail and in the
process reconnecting Americans to the wonders of nature.
As McKay (ph) said, life for two weeks on the mountaintop
would give renewed perspective to the other 50 weeks down below.
Do you mind if I stay here another 13 days?
(LAUGHTER)
(APPLAUSE)
That's pretty good.
(APPLAUSE)
And so began the Appalachian Trail, the brainchild of a
teenager, the product of generations of cooperation, one of our
most precious national gems, the longest natural thoroughfare in
the world -- passing through four of seven forested habitats of
North America; a haven for rare plants and animals.
And thanks to many of you here today, this Appalachian Trail
surely has surpassed even Benton McKay's (ph) wildest dreams.
CLINTON: Today, on our 28th annual Earth Day, we come here
to the stunning confluence of the Shenandoah and the Potomac
rivers to celebrate the foresight of early conservationists and
to commit ourselves to carry forth their abiding sense of
responsibility to future generations in the new millennium.
I'd like to take just a couple of minutes to tell you what
the agenda the vice president and I have adopted for the coming
year is.
First, we want to preserve even more of our natural wonders.
In the historic balanced budget agreement, we have the means to
save the ancient redwoods at the Headwaters Forest in
California, to protect Yellowstone from the ravages of mining.
And I am proposing to add 100 new sites to our nation's
endowment of sacred places.
We should begin by bringing the last remaining sections of
the Appalachian Trail under public control, thereby making every
inch a part of our children's birthright.
(APPLAUSE)
Among other priorities are providing a critical winter range
for elk and bison, and restoring salmon runs in Washington's
Elwad (ph) River.
What I want to say to you today is that the money has been
authorized and appropriated for all 100 of these projects but
not yet released. As a courtesy and a practice of longstanding,
administrations notify Congress of the intended project targets.
And sometimes, there is an objection -- sometimes a legitimate
one -- to one or two of them.
We have put together a great list of 100. None of the money
for any of the projects has been released because of actual or
potential disputes on other issues.
CLINTON: So if you can do anything, if any of you live in
congressional districts -- aside from Congressman Weiss, he's
not the problem -- I hope you'll do it, because we need to get
about the work and do it now. The money is there. The economy
is in good shape. The budget is going to be balanced. We have
made this commitment to our future. And I'd like to see it get
it done. So I'd like to ask you to encourage your Congress to
support the release of this fund.
(APPLAUSE)
Second, as part of our celebration of the millennium in which
we will both honor our past and imagine our future, we had to
expand our efforts to preserve our places' richest and cultural
and historic values, sites that echo with America's most
important stories. That's what we see here in Harper's Ferry,
the other part of Harper's Ferry -- the story of John Brown, the
story of pre-Civil War America.
And we have just unveiled an initiative to preserve the
homes, the churches, the other sanctuaries all along the route
of the Underground Railroad, the route to freedom for Harriet
Tubman and thousands of other fleeing slaves.
(APPLAUSE)
It also includes part of the Appalachian Trail.
Third, as the vice president said, we want to improve our
ability to encourage and support better stewardship on our
private lands through voluntary partnerships to help private
landowners preserve their own lands. Of the more than 100
million acres we have protected during the last five years, more
than three-quarters are privately owned.
It's a real tribute to the American people that they want to
manage their property properly, and I believe it's the right
thing for our government to do to get out their and create the
incentives and the partnerships and the support for them to do
so.
(APPLAUSE)
CLINTON: For example, right here in the Appalachian region,
acid drainage from abandoned coal mines have polluted streams
severely, endangering plant and animal life. But now we're
working with mining companies to create natural buffers to stop
pollution from flowing into streams. Citizens already are
reporting that fish stocks are recovering for the first time
since the early part of this century.
Successful local models like this are at the core of the
clean water initiative I announced in February. We must do more
of this.
Wherever people are willing to help us with private property
to restore biodiversity, we need to support it. And I thank you
for your support.
(APPLAUSE)
Fourth, we want to change and broaden the focus of how we
manage our national forests -- putting greater emphasis on
recreation, wildlife and water quality (AUDIO GAP) forest values
too long ignored.
We're reforming logging practices to ensure sustainable
supplies of timber and jobs.
Our national forests are more than mere paper plantations.
They are the source of the vast majority of our fresh water.
And it's places where far more families experience the outdoors
than anywhere else in America.
So I urge Congress today on Earth Day, let's make our
national forests a common ground, not a political battleground.
(APPLAUSE)
Fifth, we must commit to healing the wear and tear in our
magnificent but often quite overextended national parks. Many
parks, refuges and monuments are in dire need of repair,
ironically because the American people love them so much.
Countless Americans set off for their vacations every year,
knowing they can have the best and most economical vacation in
the world in a national park.
CLINTON: Often, it may be the only one that they can afford
and still might be the best one money can buy. We have to
continue to honor this pack with the American people. And
therefore, I have proposed an increase of nearly $1 billion over
the next five years to carry on the work of repairing our
national park system.
(APPLAUSE)
Finally, as the vice president told us in his remarkable
book, "Earth in the Balance," years ago, we have to broaden
our notion of stewardship of the environment to embrace our
entire planet. The greatest environmental challenge we face
today is that of global climate change. If we are growing more
interdependent economically, if we are growing more
interdependent socially, surely our interdependence
environmentally is apparent to every thinking person.
The world's leading climate scientists have warned that if we
do not reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases, the earth will
warm, the seas will rise, severe weather events will intensify
and increase in number.
Fortunately, we know how to avert these dangers. We know we
can make great program in reducing greenhouse gas emissions
through innovative, technological market-related solutions all
around the world. We have made an unprecedented commitment here
of more than $6 billion for research and development and tax
incentives to promote new green technologies that will
dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
I hope you will all support that, and I hope you will tell
your elected representatives it is a great investment in our
children's future.
(APPLAUSE)
CLINTON: You know, the vice president mentioned Teddy
Roosevelt, who is a particular favorite of mine among our past
presidents. Ever since Teddy Roosevelt started talking about
conserving our natural resources, for a hundred years now, every
time someone has said it, someone else says, if you do that, it
will ruin the economy.
And we now have 100 years of experience. They have uniformly
been wrong every time they have said it for 100 years.
(APPLAUSE)
And since 1970 and Earth Day and the Clean Air Act, we have
heard it with repeated intensity. It has always been wrong.
Every time we have taken a sensible, reasoned but strong step to
protect the environment, we have actually increased the
diversity of our economy, the breadth and width of it, and
increased jobs and strengthened the long-term economic prospects
That is the lesson the whole world has to embrace now. We
can only sustain economic growth if we can improve the
environment, if we can reduce greenhouse gas emissions, if we
can build a balanced future together.
So I hope that all of you as you leave here on this Earth Day
will honor the great gifts God has given us; will honor our
national park employees and others who preserve our treasured
resources with their careers; will honor these volunteers; but
most of all, will promise yourselves to be the best possible
citizen stewards of our...
(AUDIO GAP)
... the landscape that President Jefferson said was worth a
voyage across the Atlantic.
That is the ethic that will enable us to honor our
responsibilities as Americans well into the 21st century.
Thank you, and Happy Earth Day.
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