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John F. Kennedy Library, Boston
Tuesday, February 11, 2003
The environmental challenge is more pressing and more profound than ever. It involves our national resources, our national security, and the ways in which human beings will live together on this planet. More must be done, not less. Far more – yet we don’t have to look far to see the challenge; it is all around us. Too many of American lakes and rivers remain polluted; today nearly half of Massachusetts' waterways are too polluted to fish or swim in and 44% across the nation. Hundreds of toxic sites – dangerous to the millions who live near them – blight places all across the country. The soot, smog and other pollution in our air still sickens our fellow citizens and contributes to 30,000 deaths each year. Thanks to dirty power plants that we refuse to modernize, mercury emissions are expected to climb to 60 tons in 2010, a 33% increase over 1990 levels. Each summer, smog triggers over 6 million asthma attacks and results in nearly 70,000 hospital admissions. We’re rapidly encroaching upon our forests, wetlands and farmlands and all the natural ecosystems that sustain us. And ever more awesome challenges have emerged as we now understand the mortal threat of pollution to our oceans and our climate.
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What is particularly plain to me is that we need a new agenda and America needs a healthier environment – with cleaner air, water, and land. We need and we must have a future that is no longer dependent on oil from unstable regions. So let’s take the President at his word. We will not deny; we will not ignore, we will not pass along our problems to other Congresses, to other presidents, and other generations. But, unlike this president, our actions must be as bold as our rhetoric. Instead of weakening the Clean Air Act, let’s strengthen it to reduce mercury, sulfur, nitrogen and carbon emissions. Instead of letting the Superfund go broke, sticking taxpayers with the tab, and forcing communities to live with toxic sites, let’s restore the polluter pays principle and get the poisons out of our neighborhoods. And let’s deal with new threats, not deny them, turning away and pretending not to see as more and more Americans are exposed to more and more toxics in combinations we’ve never imagined. There are some 80,000 chemicals registered for use in the United States, and each day we are exposed to hundreds, even thousands, of them. They are released into our environment, into our air, water and land and they find their way into the food chain. We bring them into our homes in the food and products we buy, from cleaners to cosmetics to our children’s toys. We assume the chemicals are safe, but that’s a mistake. Fewer than 10 percent have been tested, and some of have been linked to cancer, birth defects and infertility. It’s long since time we give the EPA and FDA the authority and capacity to investigate, monitor and test the long-term risks of these compounds. Our environment and our bodies are no place to experiment with chemicals. We must also help cities across the nation, like the old manufacturing towns all across New England, build the infrastructure that will keep sewage and polluted runoff out of our rivers, lakes and harbors, and beyond this, we must leverage a new urban strategy in America to plan spaces – build community – avoid the endless sprawl that robs us of our public spaces – and ultimately revive the urban center as one of the best places to live and raise a family. We must manage our land knowing we will someday pass it on to tomorrow’s generations. We must work it, reap its harvest, and care for it. This is not just an ideal or a possibility; it is a deeply practical imperative.
And the good news is our progress in technology and the lessons of the past three decades, have taught us that cleaning up the environment will strengthen not weaken our economy. We need to push back on the scaremongering which falsely portrays pollution as the price of prosperity. We don’t have to choose between jobs and the environment. Protecting the environment is jobs – the high value added jobs of the future. This is not pie-in-the-sky, tree hugging, do-gooder environmental day dreaming. This is real. It's happening in pioneering efforts across the country and across the globe. It awaits our leadership. When I hear the polluters and their favored politicians invoke the issue of jobs and growth, my response is: It is not us who should be on the defensive - it's them and it's time we put them there. In doing so, we cannot talk vague generalities. We must show real jobs, real costs, real transition numbers. We must show that our next generation of environmental solutions represent the least intrusive, most cost effective ways of doing the job. We must show the growth in demand in America and precisely how we will meet it, not just without loss but with gain in the quality of our lives. We know if we invest in new technologies we can build cars and SUVs that are twice and three times as efficient as today – and one day a car that relies on no oil at all.
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In the end, though, our concerns about the environment are not just about the economy and quality of life here at home. Make no mistake: our environment and energy policies are critical to national our security. The Bush-Cheney energy policies leave us at the mercy of a region racked with violence and instability, now more than ever. We can no longer tolerate a dependence on foreign oil, that could be cut-off amid global chaos at the whim of unstable tyrants like Saddam Hussein. The Bush Administration thinks we can drill our way out of our energy problems. And their solution is to drill in one of our precious national treasures - the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. That’s not an energy policy, that’s simply the needless pursuit of profit. They brought this plan to the United States Senate -- and we stopped them. Now they say they will try again – and I pledge to you that we will stop them again. This Administration likes fuzzy math but any child can do the math on oil. The fact is when 65% of the world's oil supply is in the Gulf and only 3% in America. There is no way we can drill our way to energy independence. We have to invent our way there. A founding member of the OPEC oil cartel said years ago that the Stone Age didn’t end because we ran out of stones, and the oil age won’t end because we run out of oil. At the start of the 21st century, we have new possibilities to develop technologies that advance both our economy and our environment -- and at the same time become a nation and a world less and less dependent on oil. We can create a market for clean, domestic, reliable energy with a national standard for renewable power in the electricity sector. I believe we should set a national goal of having 20% of our electricity come from domestic alternative and renewable sources by the year 2020. Twenty-twenty - I think it's a vision worthy of America; a goal I believe our citizens are ready to embrace. We can reform the tax code to end the federal largess given to polluting fuels and invest instead in the technologies that will make our homes and businesses and transportation more efficient and bring renewable energy to market. We can cut our dependence on foreign oil by building more efficient cars and SUVs and creating a national market for the biofuels grown on farms across the nation. Domestic, renewable sources are urgently needed now because they are entirely under our control. No foreign government can embargo them. No terrorist can seize control of them. No cartel can play games with them. No American soldier will have to risk his or her life to protect them. For all those reasons -- to create a better, more secure and cleaner environment -- and to move to real energy security -- I believe even the most rock-ribbed conservative would agree we must take steps that go beyond what market forces will do on their own. We should be the world’s environmental leader. Our global environmental policy should be driven by our convictions, not our constraints.
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If we want to be a nation that honors our responsibilities, values our families, and safeguards our society, then we must change our direction. We must forge a new path to an America that looks beyond the next election to the next generation. An America where the use of military might is not clouded by our need for oil. Where the stability of our economy is not rattled by the instability of a dictator or an authoritarian regime. Where no child grows up near toxic cites and poisonous chemicals. Where citizens concerned about the environment have the same access to the White House that big oil companies do today. Where our children can treasure the calm and clear water of the Great Lakes, and the majesty of the Rocky Mountains. In the summer of 1963, in the months after he signed the nuclear test ban treaty, what he called that first step to “make the world safe for human survival,” President Kennedy traveled across the western United States, to the Rockies and beyond, and spoke of that other fundamental cause that would shape the future and fate of America – the conservation of our land, our air, and our water. That call summons us with renewed urgency today. Like his call to end the nuclear nightmare and the evil of racism, the outcome now is up to all of us to believe as he did “Here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.” In that spirit let us embark on our own journey toward that timeless vision of “America the beautiful.” And long after that journey, let our grandchildren look back on it and say that we were the generation that used our time to protect the Earth for all time.
http://kerry.senate.gov/high/record.cfm?id=190261
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