Remarks at the Signing Ceremony for the Indo-United States Joint Statement on Energy and the Environment in Agra

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, March 27, 2000

March 22, 2000

Thank you very much, Foreign Minister Singh, Chief Minister Gupta, Mayor Maurya, District Commissioner Chowdhury, and, especially, Professor Mishra. We admire you so much for your efforts to save the Ganges. We admire you because for you it is a matter of science and faith.

I want to thank all of you for welcoming me and my daughter and my wife's mother, many Members of the United States Congress, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Commerce, distinguished members of our administration, and our Ambassador here today. I want to thank all the environmental leaders from India who have come here today.

One month from this day we will celebrate across the world the 30th anniversary of Earth Day, a day set aside each year to honor our natural environment and to reaffirm our responsibility to protect it. In a unique way, in India the Earth has been celebrated for more than 30 centuries. This, after all, is a nation named for a river, a place where the Earth and its waters are worshipped as divine.

With good reason, the people of India have spent centuries worrying far less about what we might do to nature and far more about what nature can do to us through floods, hurricanes, droughts, and other calamities. But as the experience of the beautiful Taj Mahal proves and as the struggle to save the Ganges proves, we can no longer ignore man's impact on the environment.

Pollution has managed to do what 350 years of wars, invasions, and natural disasters have failed to do. It has begun to mar the magnificent walls of the Taj Mahal. Since 1982, protection of the monument has been a major priority, and the fight has yielded significant advances. But still, a constant effort is required to save the Taj Mahal from human environmental degradation, what some scientists call marble cancer. I can't help wondering that if a stone can get cancer, what kind of damage can this pollution do to children.

It took the United States a long time to face up to these serious environmental questions. Not so many years ago, one of our rivers was so polluted, it actually caught on fire. Bad air has made breathing very difficult in many of our cities. Acid rain from our cars and our factories made it unhealthy to eat the fish from many of our lakes and rivers. Over the last generation we have worked very hard to restore our natural treasures and to find a way to grow our economy in a way that is in harmony with the environment.

We know that India's remarkable growth has put that same kind of pressure on your environment. And the costs of growth are rising every year, even along with your prosperity.

We also know that more and more, the environmental problems of the United States or India or any other nation are not just national problems. They are global ones. More than any time in history, the environmental challenges we face go beyond national borders, and so must our solutions. We must work together to protect the environment. That is the importance of the agreement Mr. Singh and Secretary Albright have signed today.

There are few areas where that cooperation is needed more than on the issues of climate change and clean energy. Here in Agra, you have taken important strides since the early 1980's to protect the Taj Mahal by using cleaner energy and improving the quality of the air. In particular, I commend the work of M.C. Mehta for working to establish a pollution-free zone around your national treasure. This is local action with global consequences.

The overwhelming consensus of the world's scientific community is that greenhouse gases from human activity are raising the Earth's temperatures in a rapid and unsustainable way. The 6 warmest years since the 15th century--200 years before the Taj Mahal was built--the 6 warmest years in all that time were all recorded in the 1990's.

Unless we change course, most scientists believe that the warming of the climate will bring us more storms and more droughts; that diseases like malaria will be borne by mosquitos across more borders and at higher and higher altitudes, threatening more and more lives; that crop patterns will be severely disrupted, affecting food supplies; and the sea level will rise so high that entire island nations will be threatened and coastal areas around the world will be flooded.

Now, of course if that hit, it is the developing nations that will be hurt the most. And India, because of its geography, is one of the most vulnerable.

Today, your Government is taking an historic step to move us further in the right direction toward both clean energy and reducing climate change. I applaud the leadership of Prime Minister Vajpayee for affirming today that India will embrace specific national goals for energy efficiency and renewable energy. In so doing, India is exercising leadership for the entire world. It will clean the air; it will reduce greenhouse gas pollution and global warming; and it will be good for your economy.

As the world's leading producer of greenhouse gases today, the United States and the rest of the developed world have a special responsibility. With this historic agreement, our two nations will work hand-in-hand to help turn India's environmental goals into a reality that also supports your economic growth. There are a number of ways in which the U.S. will support these efforts.