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"Scam" ads the norm Trail Mix: Hillary haters spam cyberspace Gunning for the center Democrats make Hillary legit The blundering pundit Don Giuliani Campaign video: |
Leo DiCaprio, uncut | page 1, 2, 3 Clinton: Oh, yes, over the long run, it's one of the two or three major issues facing the world over the next 30 years. I think it's because it takes a long time for the climate to change in a way that people feel it, and because it seems sort of abstract now. That's why I think it's important that programs like this are aired, and people like you -- not politicians or scientific experts, but citizens -- express their concern. And then it's important that citizens know that it ought to be an issue -- it ought to be a voting issue at election time. And I don't say this in a hateful way, it's just that people need to tell the politicians and the candidates they care about this, they want action. But our citizens need to follow the lead of a lot of our religious groups and other civic groups in actually doing things themselves.
Right now, if the American people knew all the options that are available to them and understood the economics, we could do much better. And, of course, if my plan were to pass the Congress and we were to give the tax breaks to consumers and manufacturers of these products and technologies, we could do it even faster. DiCaprio: Now, the major polluters are obviously the big industries, such as the oil companies, who are one of the most powerful lobbies in the world. How do we convince them to change the way they've been doing business for the last century? Clinton: Well, for one thing, oil is a depleting resource, and I think that oil companies and coal companies should be given incentives to become energy companies and to promote energy efficiency so that the oil they have will last longer and provide them a more steady stream of income, and so that they can develop other ways of earning money. They should become -- they should think of themselves as energy companies, not oil companies. And if you look at the record, starting with British Petroleum and its leader, some members of the oil industry are beginning to come over to support action on climate change. Some leaders of the auto industry are beginning to come over and support action on climate change. They understand that this is real and that when these gases get up in the atmosphere, it takes at least 50 years for them to dissipate. So we need to begin now a disciplined effort, which will be good for our economy -- I will say again, this is good for the American economy and good for public health. We need to do this, and if we did it from today until the time you're my age, we'd be a much wealthier country, a much healthier country, and with that kind of effort over that length of time, we could head off this crisis. DiCaprio: How do we get power companies to replace their coal plants with cleaner technologies? And why don't we make it so expensive for power companies to keep their old coal plants, that they have to invest in cleaner fuels? Clinton: Well, I think you can do it in two or three ways. I think, first of all, it's important to have very rigorous clean air standards. And I think it's important also to provide them the tax incentives they need to move as quickly as possible to alternative energy sources. A lot of the most enlightened utilities in America also see conservation itself as an energy source. PG&E in California, for example, but other utilities have understood that our inefficient patterns of using electricity are pressing them to use more traditional energy and emit more greenhouse gases and warm the climate. So I think what we should do is to have a system where we finance not only the conversion to alternative energy, but also looking at conservation itself as a form of energy. When you save, you do the same amount of work with less energy, and it's like creating more energy in a totally clean way. And I think that we should be financing those things in part with tax breaks from the American government. And I've pushed for that, and I will continue to do so. DiCaprio: Now, you've enacted tax credits for people who want to buy electric and fuel-cell vehicles. What are we doing to encourage oil companies to research alternative fuel technologies like fuel cells? Clinton: Well, I want to give tax credits to them, too, to make it easier for them to spend money on that kind of research. And we are doing a lot of the basic research in the government. The work, for example, we did with the auto companies on developing fuel cells, on developing a dual-fuel electricity and gas engines -- DiCaprio: A hybrid vehicle. Clinton: Hybrid vehicles -- the work that we've done to try to help them develop cars that run on electricity, but where the electricity regenerates -- the capacity regenerates so they don't have to pull in every 80 miles and juice up the battery again, and a lot of the research we're doing through the Agriculture Department in biofuels -- all these things I think are very important. As we do more of that research, the basic research, we then make it more cost-effective for the energy companies and for the auto companies to take that basic research and quickly convert it into commercially viable research to develop products. So I think our research at the national level should increase as well. I think it's very, very important that the federal government do that. You know, to get out of the energy context, the Internet basically began as a federally funded research project. So a lot of the things we take for granted today in the private sector began with a heavy investment of basic research from the national government. And I think we're still at a point where the national government should be doing a lot of this basic research. I'll just give you one example. If we could -- suppose we get cars that will get 70 miles to the gallon, 80 miles to the gallon. And then suppose they can run on clean biofuels that don't have any greenhouse gas emissions, instead of gasoline. Now, what's the problem today? The problem today is it takes about 7 gallons of gasoline to produce 8 gallons of ethanol or other biofuel. So the researchers today are working on a chemical breakthrough which would permit you to produce 8 gallons of biofuel with 1 gallon of gasoline. If you did that, if you improve the ratio to 8-to-1, and you had a car getting 70 miles to the gallon, it would be like getting 500 miles to the gallon of gasoline in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. Then the whole future of the world would be different. I mean, this whole issue would be radically different. And then Americans, simply by buying fuel that would be cost-effective, could whip this problem. And we're on the verge of those kinds of breakthroughs, but we need the energy companies to think of themselves as that -- not oil and coal, but energy; we need the auto companies to keep supporting the work of combating global warming, not pretending it doesn't exist, and many of them are today; and we need more action from ordinary citizens, smaller businesses, and the government to promote energy conservation and alternative energy sources. But again I say, this is not a problem that requires big taxes, big regulation and slow economic growth. It is no longer necessary -- in the information economy, with the dramatic scientific breakthroughs already made; we can grow economies faster by conserving energy rather than burning it up. And that's what people don't yet believe. That's the real big debate out there. If we can get people to really believe that we could have a great future using less energy, not more -- traditional energy, I mean -- then we'd have the battle half won. And maybe that will come out of this program. Because there's nothing so dangerous to society than being in the grip of a big idea that isn't true anymore. And it is just no longer true that for America or India or China or Latin America or any other place to grow wealthy, they have to put more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere by burning up more coal and oil. That's just not true anymore. And so we have to show people that that's not true and show them how they can make a difference, and then keep making these products and technologies available so that it becomes easier and easier and easier to do what is not only the right thing environmentally, but the right thing for our long-term economic and public-health purposes.
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