Clinton on AIDS, War, Climate Change, Globalization

(ENS)-Former President Bill Clinton told students at the University ofCalifornia at Berkeley recently that globalization, the explosion ofinformation technologies and advances in science and biotechnologymake it imperative to avert war and terrorism by investing now inhealth care, education and the environment, especially in poorcountries. The Afghan war costs about a billion dollars a month, hesaid, and comparable amounts should be spent to prevent environmentaldegradation, AIDS, poverty and illiteracy.

“There are now 40 million people with AIDS and there will be 100million in 2005,” Clinton said. “If you have 100 million taken, somecountries are going to fail, and you’ll have a lot more young peoplewilling to be terrorists or mercenaries in tribal wars, because, whatthe heck, they’re going to die anyway,” Clinton warned.

“We will spend a lot more money repairing damage than if we investednow in the $10 billion health fund that UN Secretary General KofiAnnan is advancing,” Clinton said. “And you can make the same argumentwith the environment....The ocean is deteriorating that generates mostof our oxygen. One in four people don’t have access to clean water.”

“Climate change is real,” Clinton warned. “If for the next 50 yearsthe Earth’s climate warms at the rate of the last 10, we’ll lose 50feet of Manhattan Island, we’ll lose the Florida Everglades, islandnations in the Pacific will be flooded. That’s the most dramatic setof examples, but the most important is that agricultural productionwill be disrupted all over the world, and millions upon millions ofpeople will be turned into food refugees, breeding more terrorists,and anger.”

Clinton said money can be made from the substitution of renewableenergy technologies for the burning of fossil fuels, such as oil andgas, that contribute to climate change. “I just got back from theMiddle East and I told them they ought to forget about becoming theoil center of the world,” he said. “They ought to become the energycenter and double the capacity of solar technology and conservationtechnologies and put them in every warm place in the world.”

While endorsing the need to spend money on defense, Clinton said, “Wecould do America’s fair share of economic empowerment of poor people,putting all the poor kids in the world in school, funding theSecretary General’s health efforts, and accelerating the effort toturn around climate change, we can do all that and pay our fair sharefor more or less what we would spend in a year in Afghanistan in aconflict. And I can only tell you it is a lot cheaper than going towar,” he said.

UC Dean of Journalism, Orville Schell, asked Clinton, “Ifglobalization succeeds, is it possible that the resources of theworld...[could] lift all boats, not just yachts?” Clinton replied,“Only if we sever the link between greenhouse gas emissions andeconomic growth. Sustainable development is still a phrase that meansnext to nothing to most people. [Bush’s] assault on the Kyoto Protocol[stems from the fact that the Republicans] are really people whobasically believe first, that you can’t really get rich, stay rich, orget richer unless you put more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Andtherefore they have to believe that global warming is a fraud.Otherwise, they’d face the Hobson’s choice of being poor or beingtoast. So, yes, I think we can lift the poor to a decent standard ofliving without burning up the planet,” Clinton said, “but only if thepeople who are in the position to make the decisions honest togoodness believe that we can do it.

“We need to spend more effort to help countries solve their ownproblems and develop basic capacities, freedom, openness, human rightsand actual capacity to govern.”