Clinton on AIDS, War, Climate Change, Globalization

(ENS)-Former President Bill Clinton told students at the University of California at Berkeley recently that globalization, the explosion of information technologies and advances in science and biotechnology make it imperative to avert war and terrorism by investing now in health care, education and the environment, especially in poor countries. The Afghan war costs about a billion dollars a month, he said, and comparable amounts should be spent to prevent environmental degradation, AIDS, poverty and illiteracy.

�There are now 40 million people with AIDS and there will be 100 million in 2005,� Clinton said. �If you have 100 million taken, some countries are going to fail, and you�ll have a lot more young people willing to be terrorists or mercenaries in tribal wars, because, what the heck, they�re going to die anyway,� Clinton warned.

�We will spend a lot more money repairing damage than if we invested now in the $10 billion health fund that UN Secretary General Kofi Annan is advancing,� Clinton said. �And you can make the same argument with the environment....The ocean is deteriorating that generates most of our oxygen. One in four people don�t have access to clean water.�

�Climate change is real,� Clinton warned. �If for the next 50 years the Earth�s climate warms at the rate of the last 10, we�ll lose 50 feet of Manhattan Island, we�ll lose the Florida Everglades, island nations in the Pacific will be flooded. That�s the most dramatic set of examples, but the most important is that agricultural production will be disrupted all over the world, and millions upon millions of people will be turned into food refugees, breeding more terrorists, and anger.�

Clinton said money can be made from the substitution of renewable energy technologies for the burning of fossil fuels, such as oil and gas, that contribute to climate change. �I just got back from the Middle East and I told them they ought to forget about becoming the oil center of the world,� he said. �They ought to become the energy center and double the capacity of solar technology and conservation technologies and put them in every warm place in the world.�

While endorsing the need to spend money on defense, Clinton said, �We could do America�s fair share of economic empowerment of poor people, putting all the poor kids in the world in school, funding the Secretary General�s health efforts, and accelerating the effort to turn around climate change, we can do all that and pay our fair share for more or less what we would spend in a year in Afghanistan in a conflict. And I can only tell you it is a lot cheaper than going to war,� he said.

UC Dean of Journalism, Orville Schell, asked Clinton, �If globalization succeeds, is it possible that the resources of the world...[could] lift all boats, not just yachts?� Clinton replied, �Only if we sever the link between greenhouse gas emissions and economic growth. Sustainable development is still a phrase that means next to nothing to most people. [Bush�s] assault on the Kyoto Protocol [stems from the fact that the Republicans] are really people who basically believe first, that you can�t really get rich, stay rich, or get richer unless you put more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. And therefore they have to believe that global warming is a fraud. Otherwise, they�d face the Hobson�s choice of being poor or being toast. So, yes, I think we can lift the poor to a decent standard of living without burning up the planet,� Clinton said, �but only if the people who are in the position to make the decisions honest to goodness believe that we can do it.

�We need to spend more effort to help countries solve their own problems and develop basic capacities, freedom, openness, human rights and actual capacity to govern.�