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THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary _____________________________________________________________________ For Immediate Release April 22, 1994
9:45 A.M. EDT
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Good morning, and thank you. I want to acknowledge my colleagues here and then make a brief announcement. Then two of them will have short statements, and then we'll respond to your questions.
Jim Baker, Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will make a short presentation after I do, as will Dan Goldin, also Administrator of NASA. We are joined by other participants in this program -- Carol Browner, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency; Neal Lane, Director of the National Science Foundation; Madeleine Kunin, Deputy Secretary of Education; Elinor Constable, Assistant Secretary of the Department of State. And from the White House, Directors of the two White House offices that will be working on the GLOBE program -- Katie McGinty, Office of Environmental Policy, and Jack Gibbons, Office of Science and Technology Policy and Science Adviser to the President.
We're announcing this morning a program to link students in schools around the world in a worldwide effort to monitor changes in the world's environment. Students will monitor such things as temperature and rainfall initially in the areas around their schools and each day feed the results into a worldwide computer network that is in each case linked to the participating school.
The information compiled by these students will be instantaneously formed into a global image, produced by a computer system here in the United States, that utilizes the information to portray a graphic representation of what is happening in the global environment that day. It will then be displayed with hourly updates in the classrooms of the participating schools and made available to news organizations and others on an hourly basis.
The scientific community is participating in the design of the information collection system and is extremely interested in obtaining the new data that is simply not available today. For example, they do not have information on the distribution of rainfall on continents around the world, or good readings of ground-level temperature in large areas of the Earth's surface where these students will be supplying that information.
We have built in quality control systems and sampling techniques to validate the information as it is collected. And we have put together a team of experts to utilize the system for environmental education purposes, and to enable the students to communicate among themselves.
If, for example, a school in Ecuador comes up with a particularly useful approach to the environment, some presentation about what they're doing can be made available to their counterparts in other schools around the world.
This morning I had the opportunity to conduct a town hall meeting with students from schools located on every continent that talked about the program and, on Earth Day, gave us a chance to share in a discussion of aspects of the environment in which they are interested.
We will begin with 500 schools; by the end of next year, we will have 1,000 schools. It may expand more rapidly than that, I might say, because the expressions of interest in participating in this program have been overwhelming just in the last several days. And we have formal expressions of enthusiastic support, which we'll provide for you this morning, from Argentina, Australia, Benin in Africa, Bolivia, Canada, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Egypt, Germany, India, Israel, Japan, Jordan, Kyrgyzstan, Morocco, the Netherlands, Norway, Papua New Guinea, Russia, Senegal, Sri Lanka, and the United Kingdom. That is the first wave of countries expressing support and participating in the program. We anticipate that many, many others will join in this program.
Eventually, in later phases of the evolution of this program, we anticipate that students will begin reporting on a daily basis on efforts to remediate problems in the environment. For example, schools may report on how many trees they planted this week or this month, or how streams were restocked with fish, or whatever. In addition, we anticipate more complicated observations of the environment as the program evolves with students participating in activities such as bird counts in particular areas -- bird counts during the migratory season linking up schools along particular migratory routes.
But in the early phases, it will focus on relatively more simple observations and the creation of this worldwide -- this image of the world's environment that they will be able to see each day, knowing that they have helped to create that image by collecting the information upon which it is based.
Now, let me now turn it over to Jim Baker, who is Administrator of NOAA. And NOAA is the host agency here in the United States for this program. And I'd like to ask Jim Baker to say a few words, and he will then in turn introduce Dan Goldin.
ADMINISTRATOR BAKER: Thank you, Mr. Vice President. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is pleased to be the host agency for the GLOBE program -- the first steps towards implementation of a grand vision of both enhancing environmental awareness; of educating a broad and diverse constituency; of schools about the environment and how to impact the environment; and also to provide additional and very valuable scientific information which we can add to our environmental data bases so we have a better understanding of how the Earth works.
This is an international initiative, as The Vice President mentioned, and it's also very much an interagency initiative. We have representatives here from NASA, from the National Science Foundation, EPA, the Department of State, and the Department of Education -- all of whom are playing a very strong role and using their resources to help pull this together.
We think this is a very exciting initiative. We've been very pleased with the progress that has been made in the last few months in pulling this together. And we're looking forward to a major change in human behavior if the program can actually be successful. So we're very pleased to be a part of The Vice President's vision, the grand vision that he has.
Let me now turn this over to Dan Goldin, who is the Administrator of NASA, and who has also been a key player in pulling together the early planning stages here.
ADMINISTRATOR GOLDIN: Mr. Vice President, I'd like to thank you for your vision. In one of our first meetings when we got together, we talked about the priorities for NASA and how it might be relevant to this country. And it became clear that Mission to Planet Earth in understanding our environment was crucial.
You know, when you look down on Planet Earth from space you see a ball 8,000 miles in diameter surrounded by a thin blue line of maybe tens of miles -- bright blue. And from space you get the perspective that no one owns that environment, no one country could put up boundaries, and we all share that air we breathe -- it nurtures life.
And Mission to Planet Earth is the most ambitious program set forth to understand that environment. But it shouldn't just be a scientific endeavor, it must involve the children of the world, the adults of the world. And this is crucial. NASA is going to participate in GLOBE to tie together our knowledge for Mission to Planet Earth, get zero ground-based measurements to correlate with our space-based measurements, and more importantly to get dissemination to work properly. So we're really privileged and pleased to participate in this noble program.
Thank you, Mr. Vice President.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. Let me say just a couple of other words and then open it up to your questions.
The communications system will be a combination of the worldwide INTERNET and satellite-based communications systems that are currently in existence and others that we anticipate will be available within three to four years.
Secondly, this is a public-private partnership. A great many private organizations are going to be participating actively in helping to provide support for key elements of the program, as other countries will be participating in it, as I mentioned.
And may I say that the level of enthusiasm in these other countries is difficult to exaggerate. Prime Minister John Major contacted me personally to say he wants to emphasize not only the United Kingdom's support but his personal enthusiastic support for this. Prime Minister Keating of Australia, President Akayev of Kyrgystan, King Hussein of Jordan -- many other world leaders have expressed their personal enthusiasm and support for this endeavor.
Many individuals in the private sector have been very important to our efforts to develop this initiative. Tom Van Sant (phonetic), with the Eyes on Earth program has been very helpful in thinking this through and will be participating in it, along with many others in the private sector.
And the agencies represented here will, of course, have particular responsibilities. In addition to NOAA and NASA, EPA is working very hard on coordination with existing environmental programs and environmental education programs. The Department of Education is working on educational quality control and curricula development. The National Science Foundation is serving as the liaison with nongovernmental organizations, and also with curricula development. The Department of State is helping us with the international coordination of program design and implementation. And I'm grateful to them and to the White House offices that have worked so hard on this initiative.
So, with that, let me throw it open to your questions.
Q Mr. Vice President, to an environmental community that seems to be waiting for something dramatic, like the energy tax or higher CAFE standards, this may strike them as something more along the lines of public relations. Can you look the environmental community right in the eye and say that you are satisfied with the progress this administration's made on the environmental front?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Oh, absolutely. We have turned environmental policy around and headed it in the right direction. Nobody said it would be easy, but we're making tremendous progress. And you mentioned the energy tax as if we are somehow to blame for the fact that the energy tax, or the BTU tax, was not enacted. We proposed it and worked hard for it, and the fact that there is not yet sufficient political support in the country to convince the Congress to support an initiative like that is something that we'll take our share of the blame for; but I'm not sure that it's fair to say that having proposed it and fought for it that we ought to be blamed for the fact that there wasn't sufficient political support to adopt it.
We have taken dramatic steps in proposing an environmental budget that really, as several environmental organizations have said, is an Earth budget. It's a great program. We have signed the Biodiversity Treaty. We have begun enforcing the requirements to protect endangered species. We've signed the Climate Change Convention and put forward a climate action plan. We have engineered compromises, thanks to Carol Browner and others, on the Northwest forest plan and the Everglades. We're taking an innovative new approach to fix problems with the Superfund program and to pass an excellent Safe Drinking Water Act this year and a Clean Water Act. We're moving forward on every front with energy efficiency and conservation, with new public-private initiatives like the new generation of vehicles.
And this initiative is going to start small but expand, and I think in the future make a tremendous difference. But it illustrates one simple fact: We've only been here 15-16 months; we've already brought about the progress that I just listed; but we've got a lot of other initiatives that are still in progress. And we want to be judged not on our ability to list an agenda or to describe new initiatives, but on the results that we produce. And we feel that we're beginning to produce those results and, given a little bit more time, we'll be able to produce a lot more results.
Q On CAFE standards, for instance, if your voluntary programs on greenhouse gasses don't work, are you going to revisit that issue and --
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Oh, sure, of course. And that's always been in the works. Incremental progress on CAFE standards is not put aside while we focus only on the historic effort to triple fuel efficiency, which the automobile companies are working with us to do.
I want to recognize Sandy McDonald in the audience, with NOAA, who has done yeoman's work in bringing this project to the state that it is now at.
Even though you just arrived, I think it's very appropriate to turn to Andrea now.
Q I was outside doing the Lord's work --
May I ask a question about Bosnia, Mr. Vice President?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Okay, yes you can, but I do want to take any other questions on this initiative if there are any others.
Q Do you think that, assuming that the North Atlantic Council will go along with the proposal, do you think that this will work? And what effect can it have for Gorazde, which is already in such disastrous condition that air strikes can't help?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: We don't know the answer to the second question, but we feel that we have to try because of the depth of the tragedy unfolding there. We hope that the new initiatives that we're close to getting agreement on will make a difference and will ultimately enhance the prospects for success in the peace talks that have already brought two of the three parties into an accord. And now, of course, we're moving toward the goal of getting the Serbs to join the Croatians and the Bosnian Muslims.
Q Mr. Vice President, there's strong sentiment for lifting the arms embargo if this doesn't work. Several of the leaders in Congress have just expressed that to us. Do you feel that that should be the next step?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, we've been in favor of lifting the arms embargo from day one of this administration. And we urge a lifting of the arms embargo. But there are two different ways of asking that question. While we push as hard as we possibly can for lifting the arms embargo on an international basis, we feel that a unilateral move by the United States to violate the United Nations resolutions and lift the arms embargo in a way that does not respect the international regime that's in place there could have very harmful effects on other interests that the United States has around the world.
For example, we have asked other nations to join with us in enforcing an embargo against Iraq in order to prevent a recurrence of what Saddam Hussein did in his invasion of Kuwait. We may be asking other countries potentially to join in sanctions against North Korea if our other efforts to solve that problem should not succeed.
And if we establish the precedent that one nation on its own initiative can bust out of a world U.N.-sanctioned embargo, then we have to think a couple of steps down the road to what harmful consequences that will have for us in other areas of the world.
But we strongly believe that the embargo ought to be lifted. It's not fair, and we are working to try to get it lifted. There is strong opposition to that on the part of some European countries that are closer to Bosnia, and that has been one of the problems we've faced for 16 months now.
Q Mr. Vice President, on Haiti, there is a lot of criticism on the Clinton administration policy of Haiti especially from many Democrats in the Senate and in the House. There's talk now of asking the U.N. for a stronger embargo against Haiti. How do you see a solution to the Haiti situation?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, we're working with our allies in the Congress and with President Aristide to bring about the restoration of President Aristide. We've had intensive talks with him about the best and most effective way to proceed. And these very tough sanctions against the group that has illegally seized power in Port-au-Prince we hope will improve the odds of success there. But these discussions are ongoing.
Q Mr. Vice President, last June 4th, the U.N. Security Council voted 13 to nothing, with Venezuela and Pakistan abstaining, to authorize air strikes to protect the six safe areas in Bosnia. And the United States said at that time they wanted to confine air operations to protecting U.N. peacekeepers in the country. That being the case, why not just do it at this point, rather than going through this complicated bureaucratic exercise?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, the history is a little -- I would recite the history in a slightly different way than that. We have been pushing for a broader and more robust use of air power to enhance the peace process in Bosnia. I would not go along with an assertion that we were the ones that wanted to hold back, and that's just not what happened.
There are others in the Security Council and others in NATO that have troops on the ground in Bosnia and are very reluctant to take steps that they feel might expose their people to harm. And we have to be respectful of their attitudes because we do not have people on the ground there.
At the same time, we are pushing for a more robust use of military force to back up NATO's words, and to back up the United Nations' resolutions there. And we're going to continue to try to do that.
Let me just take one more and then --
Q Secretary Christopher, on MacNeil-Lehrer, had an interesting phrasing, saying, at this time U.S. ground troops would not be used. Are we reading too much into that to think that there is the prospect now that U.S. ground troops might be introduced in some --
THE VICE PRESIDENT: I think you are reading too much into that. And I think what he was probably referring to implicitly was a previously-stated intention on the part of the United States that if a true peace agreement is entered into voluntarily by all three parties there; and the United Nations is asked then to witness it, to monitor it, and to station people in key areas to make sure that it's abided by; and if it's a true and voluntary peace agreement, then we would be willing to participate along with the rest of the world community.
There's nothing new about that. And I think that he probably carved out that exception in his language there.
Q But some in the administration -- at least a couple of people -- are saying that there is a possibility that they might be used -- U.S. ground troops might be used -- between the Croatians and the Bosnian Muslims. Is that a possibility?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: There's been no change from the situation that I described a moment ago. There's no active consideration of putting U.S. ground troops into Bosnia, except as part of an international group to monitor compliance with a truly voluntary and genuine peace agreement that all sides enter into. And so, those are the only conditions in which we can foresee ground participation there.
Any other questions on this program? If not -- well, thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thank you.
THE PRESS: Thank you
END10:11 A.M. EDT