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Interview With Leonardo DiCaprio for ABC News' "Planet Earth 2000" - Interview
Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, May 1, 2000
Citizen Involvement
Mr. DiCaprio. Now, I'm sure you've heard so many reports from scientists and politicians and citizens. What do you think the best course for American citizens is within the next 20 years as far as helping the environment is concerned?
The President. Well, the biggest global problem by far on the environment is global warming. The biggest problem in many developing countries right now is safe water. We still have huge numbers of children dying from diarrhea and other related diseases and problems because they don't have safe water. And there are local air pollution problems that are horrible in various p laces.
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But internationally, the biggest problem is global warming. And I think the most important thing we can do is, every citizen must first understand that he or she can do something about this, and it won't bankrupt them. They should have their homes, their cars, their businesses, everything they do should be oriented toward energy efficiency and alternative energy technologies. And then they should make this one of the issues that has to be discussed by public officials running for office at every level. This has to become not just an issue that we talk about once a year on Earth Day but an issue that is debated along with health care and education and national security and other issues at every election.
You know, I was fortunate when I asked Vice President Gore to join me in 1992 that he had written a book on this, that he was interested in it. He talked to me about it. And so we just, on our own initiative, have done a lot of these things. But we could have had a whole environmental agenda and not dealt with this really very much. And then we had Kyoto, which we strongly supported, the Kyoto Protocol. But this needs to become an issue for every public official. It needs to become a matter of citizen debate.
So I think citizen action, and then citizens as voters turning it into a political issue, in the very finest sense--those are the things that I think need to be done right now and for the next several years to get America on the right track.
Mr. DiCaprio. Do you think we can eventually become a role model?
The President. Absolutely. We should become a role model because, just as we've led the world in information technology with the development of the Internet and digital technology of all kinds, we have the technology here. And there's no excuse for not implementing it comprehensively and quickly in every American community. And there's no excuse for not making it available at an affordable price to every American family.
So if we take this on the way we did the Industrial Revolution, the way we did the information technology revolution, there will be an energy revolution in the 21st century that will save the planet and actually increase health and wealth. That will be one--I predict to you that will be one of the great stories of the 21st century, that there was a dramatic revolution in work caused by a change in the source of energy, in the level of conservation, and in the availability of technologies that just weren't there before.
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