Bill Clinton: We Need To Slow Economy To Save The Planet
From Jake Tapper’s ABC Blog:
Which begs the question — does Hillary want to slow down the economy?
Former President Bill Clinton was in Denver, Colorado, stumping for his wife yesterday.
In a long, and interesting speech, he characterized what the U.S. and other industrialized nations need to do to combat global warming this way: “We just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions ’cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren.”
At a time that the nation is worried about a recession is that really the characterization his wife would want him making? “Slow down our economy”?
Bash Note:The RNC issued a statement in response to the former President’s comment.
“Senator Clinton’s campaign now says we must ‘slow down the economy’ to stop global warming,” said Alex Conant, RNC Spokesman. “Clinton needs to come back to Earth. Her ‘tax-it, spend-it, regulate-it’ attitude would really bring the economy crashing down. No amount of special effects will hide Clinton’s liberal record.”
Back to Bubba…
I don’t really think there’s much debate that, at least initially, a full commitment to reduce greenhouse gases would slow down the economy….So was this a moment of candor?
He went on to say that his the U.S. — and those countries that have committed to reducing greenhouse gases — could ultimately increase jobs and raise wages with a good energy plan..
So there was something of a contradiction there.
Or perhaps he mis-spoke.
Or perhaps this characterization was a description of what would happen if there isn’t a worldwide effort…I’m not quite certain.
“Everybody knows that global warming is real,” Mr. Clinton said, giving a shout-out to Al Gore’s Nobel Peace Prize, “but we cannot solve it alone.”
“And maybe America, and Europe, and Japan, and Canada — the rich counties — would say, ‘OK, we just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions ’cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren.’ We could do that.
Which begs the question — does Hillary want to slow down the economy?
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Is Bill Clinton the only person on the planet prepared to talk openly about a real global issue, one that is ominously looming before humanity on the far horizon?
What I find surpirsing is this: even though Bill Clinton has “stepped it up” by talking about the need to slow the global economy — given its leviathan scale and, perhaps, soon to become unsustainable growth rate — there remains one problem, the proverbial “mother” of all global challenges, about which Republicans and Democrats, the self-proclaimed Masters of the Universe and ordinary people, the corporatists and environmentalists, leaders and followers remain in virtually total denial…. trenchantly unwilling to discuss openly:
OVERPOPULATION ISSUE OVERLOOKED BY PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES
http://www.madison.com/tct/mad/topstories/269259
THE CAPITAL TIMES, Madison, WI
Rob Zaleski — 1/25/2008
Thanks for your attention. Comments are invited.
February 3rd, 2008 at 6:53 amSteven. Is that the same global population bomb that Paul R. Ehrlich warned in 1968 would lead to: “in the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death”, that nothing can be done to avoid mass famine greater than any in the history, and radical action is needed to limit the overpopulation.
You folks have to drop the “Sky is Falling” rhetoric. It’s no longer funny. Amazing how the left says that the Republicans use the “politics of fear” and you’ve just predicted that the world will end if we don’t immediately turn back the clock to the stone age and thereby CAUSE the deaths of millions of people.
Manmade global warming is a LIE! It’s purpose is to permit a socialist/one world political movement to handcuff and weaken Western society, but principally the United States.
And yes, I am proud to state my environmental credentials: I worked for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in Washinton, DC for a number of years and was acquainted with this issue very early on. It’s the biggest scam of all time and will suck needed resources away from poverty, literacy and health programs worldwide.
February 3rd, 2008 at 10:13 amThe claim that Bill Clinton advocated slowing the economy to combat global climate change is simply intellectually dishonest when the full quote shows exactly the OPPOSITE assertion. Animosity toward Bill Clinton is no excuse to use false facts - of course unless the truth gets in the way of a good smear.
“And maybe America, and Europe, and Japan, and Canada — the rich counties [sic] — would say, “OK, we just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions ’cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren.” We could do that. But if we did that, you know as well as I do, China and India and Indonesia and Vietnam and Mexico and Brazil and the Ukraine, and all the other countries will never agree to stay poor to save the planet for our grandchildren. The only way we can do this is if we get back in the world’s fight against global warming and prove it is good economics that we will create more jobs to build a sustainable economy that saves the planet for our children and grandchildren. It is the only way it will work.”
February 3rd, 2008 at 10:58 pmSomething is happening that many too many people appear not to be seeing, I suppose.
Scientific evidence is springing up everywhere that indicates the massive and pernicious impact of the human species on the limited resources of Earth, its frangible ecosystems and life as we know it.
Guided by mountains of carefully and skillfully developed research regarding climate change, top rank scientists like Dr. Rajendra K. Pachauri, Dr. James Hansen, Dr. Hans J. Schellnhuber and Dr. Christopher Rapley issued a Climate Code Red emergency declaration this month to leaders of governments and to the family of humanity proclaiming the necessity for open discussion and action by politicians and economic powerbrokers.
From my humble perspective, many leaders of the global political economy are turning a blind eye to human over-consumption, overproduction and overpopulation activities that can be seen recklessly dissipating the natural resources and dangerously degrading the environs of our planetary home. The Earth is being ravaged; but it appears many leaders are willfully refusing to acknowledge what is happening.
Because the emergent and convergent global challenges that could soon be presented to humanity appear to so many fine scientists as human-induced, leaders have responsibilities to assume and duties to perform, ready or not, like them or not.
Perhaps leadership in our time has too often chosen to ignore whatsoever is somehow real in order to believe whatever is politically convenient, economically expedient, socially agreeable, religiously tolerated and culturally prescribed. When something real directly conflicts with what leaders wish to believe, that reality is denied. It appears that too many leaders are content to hold tightly to widely shared and consensually validated specious thinking when it serves their personal interests.
Is humanity once again finding life as we know it dominated by a modern Tower of Babel called economic globalization? That is, has human thinking, judging and willing become so egregiously impaired by our idolatry of the artificially designed, manmade, global political economy that we cannot speak intelligibly about anything else except economic growth and profits without sounding like blithering idiots?
Steven Earl Salmony, Ph.D., M.P.A.
February 16th, 2008 at 5:35 amAWAREness Campaign on The Human Population, established 2001
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/