2007 Clinton Global Initiative - Opening Plenary

Here is the Transcript for the opening of the 2007 Clinton Global Initiative - with the reference to Coca Cola in Afghanistan in bold text below:


Transcript
Opening Plenary: The Need for Global Action
September 26, 2007

MALE SPEAKER: Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats. The program is just about to begin.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome the heads of state and distinguished guests, who will now take their seats. The President of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai; the Federal Chancellor of the Republic of Austria, Alfred Gusenbauer; the President of the Republic of Croatia, Stjepam Mesic; the Prime Minister of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, Meles Zenawi; the President of the Republic of Ghana, John Agyekum Kufuor; the President of the Republic of Iraq, Jalal Talabani; the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev; the President of the Republic of Latvia, Valdis Zatlers; the President of the Republic of Macedonia, Branko Crvenkovski; the President of the Republic of Madagascar, Mark Ravalomanana; the President of the Republic of Malawi, Bingu wa Mutharika; the Prime Minister of the Republic of Mauritius, Navinchandra Ramgoolam; the Prime Minister of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Jan Peter Balkenende; the Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Norway, Jens Stoltenberg; the Prime Minister of Papau New Guinea, Sir Michael Somare; the President of the Republic of the Philippines, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo; the Emir of the State of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani; the President of the Republic of Rwanda, Paul Kagame; the President of the Republic of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki; the Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Ralph Gonsalves; the President of the United Republic of Tanzania, Jakaya Kikwete; the Prime Minister of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, Nguyen Tan Dung.

Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome, the 42nd President of the United States, William Jefferson Clinton.

BILL CLINTON: Thank you, good morning. Welcome to New York and the third Annual Meeting of the CGI. In keeping with our preference for no speeches or short speeches, I will be quite brief.

I’m delighted to have you back, and to give a brief report about what’s happened since our first meeting two years ago. More than 600 commitments have been made by hundreds and hundreds of participants in these CGI sessions, impacting tens of millions of lives and more than 100 countries. Among the things which have come out of the commitments made and kept: 20 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions have been avoided, more than 850,000 children under the age of five have received life saving health services, three million more micro entrepreneurs have accessed the capital. And with many of our smaller commitments, large numbers of lives have been changed for the better or saved.
There are nearly 1,300 CGI members in this room today, including world leadership in government, business, academia, philanthropy, and the NGO community. You come from 72 countries, and I’m honored that we’re joined by 52 current and former heads of state. I believe the fact that a real difference has been made by the people in this room, and lives all across the globe shows how much more we have to do, and indicates our obligation to increase our efforts.
The premise of CGI is that we are faced with complex problems that government either is not solving or that government alone cannot solve. Problems like climate change, global health epidemics, poverty, and growing income and equality, the lack of education. Those are the topics we will primarily discuss this year.

To address these issues, we have to find ways to devote more time, money, skills, organization building. We can help more people and save more lives if we do. We can deal with the fact that the world is the devil by persistent and growing inequality, insecurity, and unsustainability.
Everyone here has a different story, a different background. We inhabit different corners of the earth in different ways. But what has brought us together and what connects us, as nearly as I can determine, are three basic convictions. First is just about everybody in this room believes that our common humanity is more important than our interesting differences. I believe this simple issue is at the root of most of the world’s conflicts. And almost every corner of the world where people are fighting instead of working together, they have reached a decision that our differences are more important than our common humanity.

The second thing that brings us together is we seem to all accept our shared responsibility, where correcting as much as we can the current challenges of the world, and passing along a better world to our children.

The third is we actually believe we can do it. We believe we can make a difference. It turns out there are a lot of people who can’t fit in this room or can’t afford to come, who agree with us.
Last year we webcast this meeting for the first time, without any publicity, and about 50,000 people followed it over the internet. Hundreds of them made their own individual commitments, just writing in. So this year we are emailing it, so this year we tried to broaden that. We are, again, webcasting the Clinton Global Initiative, but this year, we’re giving everybody who is watching this in any form or fashion, or following it through any kind of media, the chance to participate by making their own commitment. We set up a separate web site called mycommitment.org, to give the opportunity to people in the United States, and all over the world, the chance to be a part of our common endeavors, to follow just as you will the sections in education, economic empowerment, climate change and health care, and to decide what they want to do, how they want to do it, and register their commitment just as people here will.
So I think that is very exciting.

And before I introduce our morning panel, I want to begin as we typically do, with a description of four commitments which already have been made for this year’s CGI. The first involves His Excellency and my long time friend, Dr. Jose Ramos-Horta, the President of Timor-Leste, and Scott Weber, the Director General of Interpeace. I’d like to ask them to come up to the stage and join me.

Many of you know that Timor-Leste was the first new nation of the 21st century. Its leaders worked heroically for years for justice and humane treatment for their people. They are trying now to work in cooperation with their neighbors, including Indonesia. But violence, political violence, has risen there since the 2007 Presidential election. Interpeace has committed to work with President Ramos-Horta, to facilitate conversations around the country, to alleviate violence and unrest, to create three zones of peace, where reconciliation and economic development will combine to create sustainable peace.

As the 2008 program grows, 20 or more community meeting centers will be built in 13 districts throughout the country, with initial consultations involving more than 3,000 people. This program is designed to enable the Timor-Leste to become the architects of their own future, empowering them by identifying their concerns and allowing them to find ways to address them in a non-violent and sustainable manner.

The governments of Norway, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Switzerland, Ireland, and Denmark have all been instrumental in Interpeace’s efforts in the nation. I expect, I would like to acknowledge, especially, the partners who are here today, including Prime Minister Stoltenberg of Norway, and Douglas Alexander, the UK Secretary of State for Development of Cooperation. I’d like to thank them. And let me say to all of you, this nation was established just in 2000, and when they had the formal kickoff of the first presidency in 2001, I was quite honored when President Bush asked me to join the American delegation there, because we strongly supported their independence efforts, along with Australia and many of their other neighbors.
During the transition to independence, 70 percent of the infrastructure was destroyed, 75 percent of the population was displaced, well over 150,000 people died. That’s a huge percentage of the total population of the country. So they have economic problems, education problems, health care problems, and continuing violence. We know what reconciliation has done in South Africa and in Rwanda, but President Kagame is here, President Mbeki is on the way.
This little country has enormous potential. I believe it could become the primary vacation destination for middle-class Asians in a place that’s exploding. I think that a lot of people should invest there, but we have to build the infrastructure and give people the opportunity to do what can be done. So I want to thank Interpeace, thank you very, very much Scott Weber, but I want to ask all of you who have an interest in Asia to take a look at what is going on and ask, what could we do better?
Thank you very much. Thank you. Bless you, thank you.

Now I want to ask William Demchak, the Vice President of PNC; Andrew Feldstein, the CEO and CIO of Blue Mountain Capital; Christine Ward, Global Ambassador of Etonic; and William McDonald, the Vice-Chairman of Merrill Lynch, to come up. In addition to the organizations I just mentioned, the Goldman Sachs Foundation is also involved in this commitment. Thank you, thank you so much.

This is a commitment worth two million dollars to provide essential humanitarian aid by air lift to Chad and Darfur to directly reach those affected by the ongoing conflict. This is a very interesting thing; this commitment grew out of last year’s CGI, and Christine Ward’s attendance at the Darfur session we had last year. It will fund eight private air lifts of humanitarian cargo and goods in Sudan and Chad, working with the Bridge Foundation to ensure that the partners are able to deliver the aid quickly and efficiently to the region.

The partners in this commitment are looking for other organizations to work with them to fill the planes with essential supplies, including medicine, solar flashlights, and school supplies. The first plane, which served as a pilot for the program sent medicine to treat over 20,000 people, and supplied 10,000 units of oral rehydration salts to fight dehydration from diarrhea. The first four flights will be completed by the end of 2007; the second four by April, so this will quickly unfold.
I just want to say this is an example of the kind of thing that I hoped would come out of CGI; that people would come here, learn more about a given issue, and then decide to take specific and timely action. So I want to applaud all these people, thank them for what they’re doing, and urge those of you who are interested to join them. If you want to send something over there, you now have a good plane to send it on. Thank you very much and congratulations.

Now I’d like to ask Dr. Jordan Kassalow, the Chairman and Co-Founder of the Scojo Foundation to come up. There are other organizations involved in this commitment, including the Foundacion de Paraguay, the Peere Foundation, Pro Mujer, International Linked Foundation, Population Services International. Thank you. It’s actually, this is a prop, my glasses in my old age. This is a prop for the next announcement, because their commitment is to more than triple the scale of Scojo’s successful micro franchise model for training entrepreneurs to sell affordable reading glasses in the developing world. And it’s worth about $1.6 million. Scojo Foundation is committed to more than tripling the scale of its micro franchise model; it trains entrepreneurs and supplies people with much needed reading glasses. Through its Vision Entrepreneurs Program, the Foundation trains low income men and women to conduct vision screenings and sell affordable reading glasses within their communities. So far they have sold 70,000 pairs of glasses, benefiting both the buyer and the vision entrepreneur. As a result of the commitment, 300,000 people will receive new reading glasses and other eye care products, and 3,000 people will launch their own micro franchises, selling low cost reading glasses.
Over the next three years, the Foundation will expand its reach from six to 16 nations. Now think about this. There are 700 million people in the world living in poverty, who need reading glasses and don’t have access to them. If that’s right and their numbers are right, that means we could be creating tens of thousands of micro entrepreneurs at a very small investment, having a big impact in these countries, and diversifying the economies, while helping people who actually need to read, know how to read, or want to learn how to read, do it. Fewer than five-percent of the people in developing countries who need them and live in poverty have access to reading glasses. There’s a big market out here to solve a real problem, and create a lot of new businesses.

This is the sort of thing that the Clinton Global Initiative was designed to do, to find ways to create new markets where you can actually empower people by creating a business, and solve a big social problem. So I think you and your partners have done a great job, Doctor, and we thank you very, very much. Great, thank you.

I would like to now ask the Chairman and CEO of Florida Power and Light, Lew Hay, to join me on the platform. Is Governor Crist here? There he is, this is the Governor of Florida.
This doesn’t have anything to do with CGI, but this man is a Republican and I’m probably about to hurt his reputation. But, but he pushed through and signed a bill in the Florida legislature, to give voting rights to people who were convicted of crimes, served their sentence, and were released from prison. We say we want everybody to start again, he gave it to them, and I’m very grateful for him. Thank you.

And this is a very exciting commitment related to climate change. Florida Power and Light Group is committed to build new solar electricity plants in Florida, to provide customers with information on reducing their carbon imprint, and to give them a way to do it. The commitment is worth $2.4 billion for 2012. And here is what they’re going to do. Based on its leadership in clean energy, Florida Power and Light is committing to invest $2.4 billion in new solar energy and energy efficiency projects. As part of this, the company will build 500 megawatts of new solar energy generating capacity, with an expected reduction in CO2 emissions of more than two million tons over five years. Additionally, the company will start a six year, $500 million program to provide 4.3 million customers with new smart meter technology that helps them reduce their energy consumption. The program will be coupled with an education campaign designed to help customers reduce their carbon footprint.

Now under Governor Crist, Florida has set a goal of cutting state’s greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, and to 80-percent of 1990 levels by 2050. So I want to applaud the governor and applaud Florida Power and Light. As we all know, Florida is one of the sunniest places in America, but this is the sort of thing, if they can prove this works, that can be done in sunny places all over the world. And one of the real challenges with solar power is that on a kilowatt hour basis, it’s still not competitive with long term coal, unless someone is committed to make the kind of investments that Florida Power and Light is. If you mix it in with your overall power mix, the extra cost is not particularly great. And by producing more, every time you double the capacity of solar, you cut the cost about 30 percent. That’s without any new major technological breakthroughs, which I think are on the horizon. This is a huge deal for America, and I think potentially, a huge deal for people all around the world who want to do this. So thank you, thank you very much Lew Hay, and thank you Governor, it’s great. Thank you, I can’t thank you enough. Thank you.

GOVERNOR CRIST: The President was kind enough to indulge me for a second, I thank you for your kinds words first. And Lew, thank you for your leadership in producing solar energy in the Sunshine State just makes sense, but you know, I live in a state, Florida, where it’s a beautiful place, but it is probably the most vulnerable state to global climate change of any of them. We have 1,350 miles of coastline, and because of what you’re doing here, and what Florida Power and Light is doing, it’s making a difference, it’s making the world better, and it’s helping my state, and I’m very grateful. And God bless you.

BILL CLINTON: Thank you. Now we will move to the morning panel. I will introduce the panelists and have them come out, beginning with the President of the Islamic Republican Afghanistan—Republican, I hope not, they’re everywhere—President Hamid Karzai, let’s give him a big hand, he’s a good man. The President of the Republic of the Philippines, and I’m proud to say, my college classmate, Georgetown University’s class of 1968, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo; the President of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick; the President of Wal-Mart, H. Lee Scott; the Archbishop Emeritus of South Africa, Desmond Tutu. Bishop Tutu won the award for last year’s most popular speaker here, with one of the great one liners of all time: religion is like a knife, if you use it to slice bread, it’s good; if you use it to slice off your neighbor’s arm, it’s bad. And the former Vice-President of the United States, and perhaps the world’s most leading crusader against climate change, Al Gore.

President Karzai, I want to start with you. I think it’s fair to say that all over the world, people are pulling for you to succeed. You are running a sincere, but moderate Muslim government, trying to bring your people together, and a lot of people would like to support you. Now the first question I want to ask is a question that I asked 14 years ago when we had the first agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians, and the next day we had 600 Jewish and Arab American businesspeople at the White House, and I was pleading with them to invest in the West Bank and the territories, and they all pledged to do so, but none of them did because they decided their investments couldn’t be protected. So I want to ask you if someone here wants to contribute to a positive future in Afghanistan and is interested in investing there, is there a reasonable chance that their investment won’t be destroyed, and that it will actually work both to help your people and, at least, not to undermine them? And secondly, does such private investment in Afghanistan help you in your efforts to promote reconciliation in the country?

HAMID KARZAI: Well, yes, Mr. President. Investment to Afghanistan has real and good opportunity of returns. I will give one example. The example is investment in mobile telephones in Afghanistan. In 2002, 2003, we almost had no telephones in Afghanistan, no ground lines, nor did we have mobile telephones. When the first investment came by an Afghan called the Afghan Wireless, the license was issued to this company for less than $500,000. The second came, which was [inaudible] investment, called Rosin Light Company, with about five million. Now the third and the fourth investors from the region, from the Emirates and another company, they were given license for $40 million, and now two more are there in the market, so Afghans can carry six mobile phones in their pockets now. [Laughter] I’ve seen people with three mobile telephones in their pockets with different rings. In less than four years, subscribers have gone beyond three million people in the country, and the coverage is almost 86 percent of Afghanistan. Now the most important thing from the point of view of investors, those who invested with less than two or three or five or six million, have now returns of nearly 250 and above million dollars. So investment is profitable in Afghanistan. The presumption of security and actuality of security in Afghanistan does not hurt investment. It’s a country that’s beginning from ground zero up, so investment in any area of public consumption, drinks, returns—massive returns—one of the investors, by the way, is the Coca-Cola from the US, that has established a state of the art manufacturing facility there for soft drinks. So in Afghanistan, mineral water is another example, various Afghan international companies over there, and the list is longer and longer. And, of course, pen, we just began using Afghan produced pen, Afghanistan produced pen, I have one in my pocket, by the way. It’s called Afghan Rowant [misspelled?] which means Afghan Smooth, Afghan Fluent, pen, it works well, and we can try it. So investing and I’m sure there are businesses here. Afghanistan is the place for business. Of course, risks are everywhere and returns are greater.

BILL CLINTON: Thank you. [Applause] Let me, I just want to emphasize, this is a critical issue in places that have been troubled everywhere. You heard I mentioned it with President Ramos-Horta, in Timor-Leste, I mentioned it here. President Talabani from Iraq is here, he would tell you that, at least in the Kurdish area, you could invest and that people are getting along and doing fine. I find all over the world, people are pulling for places that used to be troubled, but they are still unwilling to put investments there unless they’re fairly sure that it’s a reasonable investment. And this is important. For the people that are following this on the internet, the small donor website, kiva.org, carries entrepreneurs from all over the world, including Africa, Latin America, Asia, but all their, they have a lot of Afghan businesspeople on their website, and they’ve all been funded and they’ve all paid their loans back. This is, I think that we sometimes, because we only read negative headlines in the newspaper, we think if we put an investment in country X, Y, or Z, we can’t get it back. So that’s why I wanted to ask you to do it.
I’d like to move now to President Arroyo, who is, I’m not surprised, because as I told you, we’ve been friends a long, long time, but now very long ago, people were writing her off, saying she was in terrible trouble, the Philippines was in terrible trouble. She took a lot of tough economic positions, and the economy is completely turned around, and she’s on the way up now, and in very good shape. And I’m happy to see her here, but I wanted to ask you something related to a problem we’ve discussed for the last two years, and something that relates to President Karzai. The Philippines also has had its fair share of internal conflict, rooted in religious and other differences, and especially in Mindanao so what I was going to ask you is how are you dealing with this, and from trying to promote reconciliation, and what is your experience about the role of economic opportunity, and helping to bridge the civil conflicts within your country?

GLORIA MACAPAGAL-ARROYO: In a world where hard power hasn’t proven its worth totally, in the Philippines we have a paradigm for peace, that’s a combination of soft and hard power. So for the soft power, we are able to melt together confidence-building measures. Number one: interfaith dialog and cultural awareness. And the bishops and the llamas of the Philippines have been very active here to promote religious understanding. And it is also a part of our medium turn and development plan.
Second is the promotion of basic infrastructure and economic development, and I would like to thank the World Bank, because they have a very good project called Mindahao Trust Fund for Peace and Development, where the project bypass with the MILF (Moro Islamic Liberation Front). There is also a World Bank, autonomous region of Muslim in the Trust Fund, which is managed together by the national government and the autonomous government. And this, you know, when we have these projects, they build more than bridges and roads and schools. They build trust, and when there is a new peace agreement, of which we hope will be coming soon, the MILF, because they are not benefiting from, you know, they have a taste for what’s going to come, then everybody is expecting, because the World Bank is also packaging a big initiative for when the peace agreement finally comes, that it will really take off. So we find that this investment in people is paying off because peace doesn’t come from the barrel of a gun. That’s what we’ve found. We have to have, we have to give a person human dignity, food on the table, and a job, and we have to invest in people.

BILL CLINTON: Let me ask you one other question as we segue into the rest of the panel. Many people would be surprised to know that the Philippines is the number one country in the world in generating electricity from geothermal power. I believe you generate 24-percent of your electricity. And I know Iceland has the capacity to overtake you, but I don’t think they’ve quite done it yet. But could you just say a little about that, and what role you believe, whether you think that’s been a positive thing for you? Obviously it’s very good for the environment, it’s clean energy. But what are you doing, are you going to develop more of it? Are the economic benefits of using geothermal apparent to you and widely spread? What do you make of, is it just an accident of geography or have you turned it into something really positive for you?

GLORIA MACAPAGAL-ARROYO: Well, we are endowed with geothermal power and it fits very well with our Green Philippines program. We want to use clean energy, we want to have energy independence, and geothermal power gives us clean energy and energy independence. Just before coming here yesterday, I was in central Philippines, in an island in central Philippines, in a geothermal field. In fact the biggest wet field of geothermal power in the world. This is in Leyte in central Philippines. And what we did was we presided over yesterday a turn over of a build operate and transfer project from the private sector to the government sector. I had a similar turn over a few weeks ago, and the private sector has been able to get, the investors have been able to get their money back before they turn it over to the national government. So it’s been a well paying proposition for them, too.
Yesterday, I also announced, for the second time, an initiative where we are encouraging economic zones to be set up around the geothermal sites, because not only can geothermal fields give us power, they also give us jobs because the local governments earn royalties from the geothermal power. And they, by law, they can only use most of it for electricity. So they subsidize the electric bills of the constituents. So now we are creating economic zones there, so that businesses, like electronics, for instance, power incentive electronics firms, will locate there. So aside from the subsidized power bills from the local governments, they will also have the usual investment incentives. So these areas, which are usually far from central Manila, will now have industries, as well as power.

BILL CLINTON: That’s really, yes, you can clap for that, that’s good. So that brings me to you, Mr. Zoellick. One of the things that we have to decide, I think, is in this inter dependent world is, are the institutions we have sufficient to meet the challenges of the 21st century, and, in particular, what is the relevance and role of the World Bank? So I would move from the Philippines to the rest of the world. Vice President Gore has said, and many others have said many times, that clean energy is not just for the wealthy countries, it’s for emerging countries. All these emerging countries could skip a whole stage of energy development, and improve their economies. Not because we want them to stay poor, but because they could do better.
About a year ago, the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, who’s here, Meles Zenawi, on the front row there, I sat with him and Addisu Legesse [misspelled?] and he said to me, you know, Africa should become the first oil free continent when it comes to transportation. It was an amazing statement. I think it’s, one of the African countries is now co-investing in a Jatropa plant. It’s either Malawi or Zambia, I can’t remember, you maybe, a Jatropa plant with a private investor, and they’re going to make ethanol and ship it back to Europe. So he says to me, in Ethiopia we can grow sugar cane as well as the Brazilians can with the same conversion ratio. He knew it was eight to one. He knew what the options where, and he said, why should we use oil to get around? It’s a terrible waste of a wasting resource and bad for the economy. Now if you have people all over the world who are thinking like this, how can we actualize that? President Kagame is overseeing this enormous development program in Rwanda. He’s about 65-percent of his people on the electric grid. Should the other 35-percent go on the grid, or can they go into solar power, wind power, some other decentralized clean power? The answer is we could do a lot of these things if the financial systems were there, with a reasonable payout. So what’s your take on this, what should the World Bank be doing about this?

ROBERT ZOELLICK: Well, first Mr. President, let me thank you for inviting me to be here with such an impressive group. And, as you say, I think the World Bank, and some of the other multi-lateral institutions, are really now at a critical time of trying to determine how they adjust to changing circumstances. And the issue that you highlighted is clearly one of the foremost on the agenda. I think the starting point is the question of making sure that developing countries, who are crying out for energy as part of their overall strategy, figure out how to deal with some of the climate change issues in an integrated fashion in their development. So it’s now just an add on, but its questions of adaptation and mitigation being built into their core aspects. And that’s something that the Bank can help with.
In addition, we can innovate, in terms of financing tools. We’re doing something now with tropical forests and we’re working closely with Indonesia, so that we can have a combination of financial support and innovation.
In addition, I think everybody would recognize that technology is going to be a key aspect of this. so as technology’s are developed, such as carbon sequestration, I think the bank can help try to make sure that those get out, get moving quickly into the system, and people can include them.
Then there’s issues of markets, it doesn’t necessarily involve finance, but clearly one key aspect is going to be how you use carbon trading markets. There’s been some experience developed, I think we can use some of that expertise and help share it with others around the world.
And then, I think, as you wrap this together, there is the issue of how countries themselves, because as you know, it has to be a question of national ownership, figure out how climate change economics are going to affect them. I was talking with the chief advisor of Bangladesh. Obviously, climate change is a critical issue for Bangladesh, giving its low lying area, if you’re an island state, if you’re one that can draw different energy sources. So each of this has to be customized.
And then as the countries in the world look to develop the international regimes to follow, I think that the bank can be there as a resource, taking this experience in terms of markets, technology, finance, innovation, and always putting the focus on development, because the one core point I’d emphasize, Mr. President, is that there is some sensitivity in the developing world, that the resources that can be channeled to climate change will come at the expense of other development needs. As you said, it needn’t be that way, it shouldn’t be that way, particularly if we create the climate for the private sector to be involved in this effectively. But at the same time, I think it’s going to be the responsibility of the developed world, to reassure the developing world that this doesn’t come at their expense, but instead can be of support and help for their aims of overcoming poverty.

BILL CLINTON: I agree with that, but the reason I wanted you to speak in this order is just the first point you made. Not everybody knows as much about this as you do. And if you were running a country with a per capita income of $300 a year, you might not even have the resources to hire somebody to tell you what your options are. I mean, I think that’s one of the things that the World Bank has to do, because I completely agree with what you say. I don’t think we have the right to ask anybody in the world to stay poor. We would look hypocritical, particularly Americans, who had given how weak our record has been to date on this issue, as a country.
But if you can show that they could actually get rich quicker, and more importantly, have more even economic growth, because inequality is growing in developing countries as well as developing ones, by pursuing a cleaner energy path that parenthetically would help the world avert climate changes worst consequences, I think that would be an invaluable role for the World Bank. People can’t seize options they’re not aware of. So they will just stay in the proven path of development, or what they believe to be the proven path, unless they know. And it could be showing people their options and the cost and benefits of each, would not only convince them they don’t have to sacrifice health or development or education, but, in fact, they’ll have more money for those things if they make the right sort of clean energy choices. And I think, I predict, that will be one of the major roles for the World Bank in the next decade. And I’m glad you’re there.
I’d like to go to Lee Scott, who’s made a major address in the United Kingdom, I guess a little over a year ago, about Wal-Mart’s commitment to sustainable future, which includes a major effort to reduce their carbon footprint. And I’d like to ask him to briefly conclude, explain to us because it’s the same thing Mr. Zoellick said about what the World Bank could do for developing countries. The same thing is true of companies. How did you decide this would be good for your shareholders, for your company, and most of all, for your customers? And I’ll say an interesting thing, at least in the United States, the Wal-Mart customers basically are people who work hard for modest incomes, they have to watch every last dollar they spend, so when they have to spend more on energy, they literally have less money to spend on their children’s education. And in America, for the last five years, we’ve had nominal economic growth, but median incomes are flat, and people are spending more for health care, for energy, for housing, and for higher education. So the economics of having extra money to spend at a Wal-Mart store are really tough for most of his customers. And I’d like to ask him how he deals with that, and sees that in a context of this energy issue, and the whole issue of climate change.

H. LEE SCOTT: Let me first say that as I was ushered onto the stage and introduced as the President of Afghanistan, it suddenly dawned on me that there are tougher jobs in the world than the one I have. So I think if you think about the people on this stage, and you think about the people in the audience, the truth is, this world faces significant challenges, whether you’re the leader of a government, an NGO, you’re a thought leader, a global organization. At Wal-Mart, when we looked at it, the question you had to ask yourself is, is there a role for business in these issues that society in general faces? And you had to come to terms with what has traditionally been the argument, and that is that there is a conflict between contributing to the social good, other than some percentage of profits, and running a business. And thanks to great guidance from associates, both internal and external, what we realized as a company is that if we’re going to resolve the problems that you talk about in this forum, it is going to take all of us. You cannot wait for government, business already has a bias for action, business has the ability to allocate capital, both human capital and financial capital, to address issues. Business has the opportunity to create innovation that will, in fact, resolve many of the problems that we talk about when it comes to climate change. And what has, I guess shocked us, is the fact that there are benefits far beyond what we thought about.
First of all, our whole premise is that we save people money so that they can live better. Well, what we found is we’ve gone down this journey in sustainability, is the first things we’re doing is we are taking waste out of this whole stream of products and things that all of us are using. And they’re not exotic decisions. One I talked to General Mills about is that they straightened the noodles on the Hamburger Helper, and more noodles go into the box, and the boxes are now smaller. And thousands of tons of waste are eliminated, truck loads of movement are eliminated, fuel is eliminated. And it is basic good business practices that ultimately cause the price of the product itself to go down.
And it is better for the environment, and in our case, one of the things I underestimated, two things I underestimated. One is that our suppliers were waiting for us to ask. And when we started asking the question, they actually accelerated. And number two is I had no idea of the momentum that our associates would feel, the pride they would feel from this. Not just in the US, but in San Jose, Costa Rica; in Argentina; the people in the UK said we’ve been wondering when is Wal-Mart going to do this. Our dot com business in San Francisco, the level of pride and enthusiasm and commitment among our associates has been incredible. And at the same time, what it does it allows those working people you’re talking about, they get to participate in sustainability without having to sacrifice their standard of living.

BILL CLINTON: Let me just, let me ask you a couple of questions. How are you doing on selling those 100 million compact fluorescent bulbs?

H. LEE SCOTT: Well, we’re going to make it. We were in Saddlebrook, New Jersey yesterday helping at a site counter, and did sell a four pack of 60 watt to one of our customers, and I, we are on track to sell the 100 million compact fluorescent light bulbs, and to make an extraordinary difference for our customers in their expense, and in the use of fuel.

BILL CLINTON: Now we’re all laughing, but if this one company sells 100 million of those light bulbs, and people screw them in and use them, it has the effect of taking 700,000 cars off the road. Is that about right?

H. LEE SCOTT: Off the road.

BILL CLINTON: And they reduce their packaging by five percent, right? Save the supply chain $3.5 billion, has the affect of taking 210,000 diesel trucks off the road that get six miles to the gallon. That about right? And to give you an idea, this whole efficiency thing is not just for rich countries, or wasteful people. A young friend of my daughter’s who works at Goldman-Sach’s gave me a study they commissioned the other day that claimed that if the United States, Russia, India, and China, simply reached the energy efficiency levels of Japan, with no new clean energy production, just the efficiency levels, we’d cut greenhouse gases 20-percent lower than they’d otherwise be over the next few years. And the Energy Department says if everybody got out of incandescent light bulbs, it would obviate the need for 80 power plants just in the United States, just the lighting.
So Wal-Mart is providing a systematic way for us to deal with this.
Now that brings me to the next question I want to ask Vice President Gore. In theory, if oil is over $70 a barrel, and a depleting resource, and the cost of producing truly clean coal are recovering the emissions from burning coal is set at a market value, then all these decisions that we’re celebrating here in theory, would be economical for everybody, everywhere. But we know that in practice, the systems are not in place to do it. So it’s obvious that what we try to do with Kyoto didn’t work, or at least it wasn’t accepted in America. Al and I really didn’t think the Kyoto Accord was too tough, but in America they thought it was so horrible, I think it’s the only bill I ever lost in Congress before I even sent it up there. That was sort of embarrassing. But I’m proud of, very proud that he has continued on this fight. So I guess what I’d like to ask you is, okay, we’ve got the Philippines doing what they’re doing, the big companies, like Wal-Mart are doing what they’re doing, the Florida Power and Light, and Governor Crist doing what they’re doing, but you were with Governor Schwarzenegger yesterday at the UN, I think, and so and there’s going to be another conference in Bali soon. What comes after Kyoto? So does, A, does the world need an agreement that binds us all together and gives us a way to keep score? And if it does, what should the agreement look like?

AL GORE: Well, first of all, I’m proud of what you’re doing, and what the Clinton Global Initiative is doing, and thank you for your leadership on all of these issues. And by the way, anybody here who has not yet bought Giving, I want you to go out and buy it; it’s a great book, and congratulations on that. I may be the only one plugging your book up here today.

BILL CLINTON: Well, if we make any progress on it, I’m going to give it away, so at least he’s not feathering my nest.

AL GORE: Well, that’s what Tipper and I did with An Inconvenient Truth, as well. But let me say that it’s all of the market initiatives are incredibly important. The market allocates more money in one hour than all of the governments together allocate over a year’s time. But government’s set the rules of the road, and determine how markets allocate capital and make decisions. And there should be no mistake that this crisis, the climate crisis, is not going to be solved only by personal action and business action. We need changes in laws, we need changes in policies, we need leadership, and we need a new treaty, we need a mandate at Bali, during the first 14 days of December this year, to complete a treaty, not by 2012, but by 2009, and put it completely into force by 2010. We can do it and we must do it.
Now two things happened last week that were particularly important. Number one, five days ago, at the time of the equinox when the warm half of the year in the northern hemisphere ended, there was the official measurement of the maximum extent to which the ice of the north polar ice cap had melted. It not only set an all time record low, it was 22-percent below the previous record, an extra one million square miles melted, there are only 1.6 million square miles left. What it means is that the entire north polar ice cap could be completely gone in less than 23 years. And if it goes, it won’t come back in millions of years.
What this means, ladies and gentlemen, and particularly, all these heads of state and business leaders here, we face a genuine planetary emergency, we cannot just talk about it, we have to act on it, and we have to solve it urgently. [Applause]

Now the second thing that happened last week was that the world celebrated the 20th anniversary of a great success story. The hole in the ozone layer was discovered in 1985, the science had been established completely in 1974, and the world did nothing for 11 years, until they discovered the hole in the ozone layer. And then within the following year and a half, action took place. Now not as some people said, voluntary action, we’ll solve it, businesses will take the initiative. The Secretary of the Interior at that time said voluntary measures, like wearing more sunglasses and floppy hats was the answer, some here remember that. But Secretary of State George Schulz and others in President Reagan’s administration, convinced him that he had to take the lead, that it wasn’t an ideological or political issue, and Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill joined hands and listened to the scientists, they didn’t censor them. And the world, in 1987, got a treaty that is putting us well on the path to solving that crisis. They said it would be too expensive. It has been much cheaper, in fact a lot of companies have made money in the transition, and the same thing will be true of the climate crisis.
The UN met in a special meeting, the largest meeting of the heads of state on climate in history, many of these heads of state were there on Monday, and thank you. It was an excellent meeting. Now there’s another meeting tomorrow that begins tomorrow. I would like to call on President Bush to follow President Reagan’s example, and listen to those among his advisors who know that we have to have binding reductions in CO2, we have to put a price on carbon, and the United States of America has to lead the world to solve the climate crisis.

BILL CLINTON: Let me ask you something. You know, I know you’ve been active in this carbon reporting project. Yesterday morning I went over to Merrill Lynch, because they had taken charge of, there are now investors that control $41 trillion of investment, more than three times America’s annual GDP, who are asking all the people they work with to participate in carbon reporting. How important is that? How important is it that we know that all these companies are going to, even if we get a new system, how important is it, in your mind, that they know where they’re starting from, so we can keep score well?

AL GORE: I think it’s extremely important because it opens the eyes of business leaders to the opportunities that are available. You know the old cliché that the Chinese and Japanese express the word crisis with two symbols together; the first means danger, the second means opportunity. Lee Scott is a great example of a CEO who has seen the opportunity. And the required reporting of carbon emissions can open the door to these great new opportunities. But again, if those who take the low road and cut corners are not penalized, if they gain an advantage by simply dumping their pollution on everybody else, then disclosure or nothing at all, it won’t work. It is time now to say to those who are dumping, contributing to the dumping of 70 million tons of global warming pollution into the atmosphere every 24 hours; we cannot continue to treat the earth’s environment like an open sewer. It’s important to report it, it’s important to understand where it’s coming from, because CO2 is odorless, tasteless, and invisible. Out of sight, out of mind, that’s been part of the problem. We have to bring it into the economic calculations; reporting is the first step. But we need to price it. Auctioning the rights to emissions and cap rates and treaties like the one that will be negotiated in Bali, that’s important. CO2 taxes would be an even more efficient way to do it. But one way or another we have to price carbon.
You know the book A Tale of Two Cities, there is a tale of two planets. Earth and Venus are neighbors in the solar system, both are almost exactly the same size, both have almost exactly the same amount of carbon, but ours is in the ground, and in Venus it’s in the atmosphere. The difference is the temperature here is 15 degree Celsius, 59 Fahrenheit; and on Venue it’s 455 degrees Celsius, 800 something degrees Fahrenheit, it’s above the melting point of lead. That’s relevant to our current practice of taking as much carbon out of the ground as we can, burning it as quickly as we can, and leaving it in the atmosphere. Governments have to act so that those businesses that do open their eyes will not be undercut by those who are polluting not only the atmosphere, but the political discourse with falsehoods about what the science is. It is time to look this unblinkingly straight in the eye and tell one another the truth about what we have to do.

BILL CLINTON: I want to go into Archbishop Tutu, but I want to come back to you Mr. Zoellick just for a minute. One of the big debates that I thought was phoney, but it carried the day, when Al and I were trying to argue for the Kyoto treaty in the United States, and it was a big debate among not just Republicans, but also Democrats. This was a, and I might say that Congress has come a long way, there’s now a bipartisan majority in the Senate, at least for cap and trade system, and for pricing carbons. We’ve come a long way, but one of the things was we had all these people saying, A, it would be bad for the economy, which I think we’ve gone a long way to demolish that; but, B, it isn’t fair for us to tie our hands if the India and China, which will soon emit more greenhouse gases than we do, don’t follow suit. I always thought that was a backwards argument, because the Indians and Chinese will never do anything unless we set a good standard, and show that it can be good economics. And these things are morally right and economically sensible.
But the question I want to ask you is this. Let’s just take India. The current government in India was elected, and I never saw this, the previous government was thrown out of office after overseeing nine-percent growth for several years in a row. Most of us would kill to produce that kind of growth for seven years in a row, and the old India government was voted out for a simple reason. That nine percent growth was concentrated in 350 million of India’s one billion people. So India had to, ironically, the biggest middle class in the world, and still, 650 million very poor people. So the Congress party won it back and Prime Minister Singh got in office by saying vote for us, we’ll figure out how to take the prosperity of the 350 million have, and spread it more to the other 650 million.
Now my question to you is this. Given what Al Gore just said, is there something the World Bank can do, or is there any institutional operation available that can persuade national governments that this is a way of decentralizing economic opportunity, and contributing to saving the planet? Is there an institutional role for you in that?

ROBERT B. ZOELLICK: I think there is. I think the key challenge here, and the Vice President has identified a core element of this, is that at the same time that you have this crying challenge in terms of climate change, you go around the developing world, everywhere you run, people need energy. So I met with an Indian minister yesterday, one of the ones that actually got elected in that campaign and election that you talked about. And he was telling me how he has done a lot to bring rural electrification systems, but they don’t have enough energy production to produce the electricity regularly. And if you look at the projections that I’m sure Al knows about for China, in terms of the coal fire power plants, it’s just mind boggling in terms of what is being put on line. So I think the core challenge here is many leaders in the developing world understand this is an issue. I met with President Hu Jintao who is developing a low carbon growth strategy. But they are trying to get the balance for themselves in terms of energy with a low carbon strategy. And I think the key will be to try to provide some of the mechanisms. In the case of developing countries, it’s recognizing how their tropical forest can be extinct and perhaps paying for that, so they can set some developmental benefit. It’s a question of as the technologies are developed to try to deal, for example, with carbon sequestration, that’s going to be critical for where China goes. And my sense is that you’re increasingly getting leaders in the developing world that are wary of the developed world telling them what to do. But if you create the right incentive structures, and again, when the Vice President was talking about how you make the markets work, how you set this up with rules and pricing, that’s an area where we can be helpful, but I think it’s one where the system as a whole is going to have to move to try to bring the developing countries on board. And I, you know, for this audience, I just can’t emphasize enough, when I was in Africa at the time of the Heiligendamm summit, so I went to West Africa, East Africa, South Africa, climate change, big topic. What I heard every place I went was we’re very worried the developed countries are frankly going to hijack the World Bank to spend on global climate change, and what happens for us in poverty reduction. There is an answer to that, but frankly we got to explain how it fits their energy and growth needs.

BILL CLINTON: I completely agree, but the point I was, I want to make about this, is to go back to what Al said, is if Lee Scott does this and Wal-Mart makes a ton of money by reducing its carbon footprint, actually creates greater profit and more jobs, and by lowering costs, directly and indirectly gives its customers more disposable income to buy money then, to buy goods. Then other businesses will follow suit as a matter of course. They may be even much smaller, they’ll say, oh well, God, what can I do like that? With governments there is a presumption that because of the way we developed and because of the stage we developed, well, we have options, the United States, Europe, Japan, and a few others, and even the sort of middle income and rising countries like the Philippines where a lot of geothermal, that countries with a per capita income of $2 a day or less, don’t have. And, in other words, they don’t think they have to, they think they have to copy Wal-Mart by doing what they did 20 years ago, not what they’re doing today. That’s the analogy. And we need an institution that will not preach to, or force to, any of these developing countries, but will help more of them reach the conclusion Prime Minister Meles did. Well, Africa could be an oil free continent by transportation. Or that the Malawi’s [misspelled?] did, we’re going to use tryptophan and make biofuels. That’s what we need, where it looks like good economics, not bad. And these governments don’t’ have the resources to do that. They need to see what their options are, and I think it’s very important.
Let me just switch topics, just briefly, if I might and go to Archbishop Tutu. Archbishop Tutu, there have been a raft of books since you were here last year, written about what a terrible force religion is in the modern world. You’ve doubtless seen a lot of them, right? Book after book after book, all these religious nutcases with this fantasy that God created earth and has a destiny for man, have unleashed murderers on the world. And, you know, reactionaries in politics all over the world, and all that. And if you look at it, it’s very interesting, President Arroyo’s, she’s dealing with what the Philippines has dealt with for a long time now, with the conflict between the Muslim minority and the largely catholic majority in the Philippines. We obviously know well about the Middle East, we know what the Iraqis are facing, we know what President Karzai is facing with the, if you will, an inter-Muslim fight, in both those two countries. Religious conflict.
But there is a place in the world today that I want you to comment on beyond Burma, where Buddhist monks are on the side of the angels, literally, I think, against a largely, secular, old fashioned, authoritarian dictatorship. So I would like for you, because last year you talked some about Darfur, I’d like for you to talk about what is going on in Burma, and the role of the Buddhist faith in this. And secondly, what your answer is to all these people saying that religion is an unalloyed curse for the modern world. And there have been a huge spate of books making this case.

DESMOND TUTU: Thank you very much, Mr. President. I heard you just before this, referring to President Me, which was very much like a lady rushing up to greet me in San Francisco, and she’s saying, hello, Archbishop Mandela. Sort of getting two for the price of one. No, I want to say very firmly, those who speak, and may I answer the second one before I go to the Burmese one, are incredibly selective about the evidence that they have looked at. What will they say about the Dalai Lama? I mean, he’s about the only non posture [misspelled?] who, when he comes to New York, can feel Central Park. And people flock to hear him, and he doesn’t even speak English properly. But, I mean, he’s an incredible human being, and people recognize, I mean, we have an internal kind of antenna that hones in on the goodness that is his. What did they say about Mahatma Gandhi? What do they say about people who, instead of choosing retribution, revenge, inspired by spiritual values, choose the path of forgiveness and reconciliation? I don’t want to refer to Al-Qaeda particularly, but most people had expected that our country was going to go up in flames. Everybody virtually was saying this is what has happened is a recipe for a racial blood bath. It didn’t happen. And almost all of our people would say that we are deeply religious. If you went and said to an African that they were not spiritual, it would be an insult because for us, the spiritual is so real. We speak about those who say God is dead, I mean our ancestors, they are around here, they got their day as part of who we are. And there’s no doubt that in places like, I mean, even in the Philippines, even before this, one of the revolutions, in a sense, was led by religious persons, and in South Africa, people of all faiths, you had a rabbi, you had a Muslim, you had a Christian, walking together in their struggle against this awful, vicious system of apartheid. Boom, fantastic. I think I mean that we ought to celebrate the incredible courage of our sisters and brothers in Burma. And we want to salute our sister of [inaudible], who for 11 of the last 17 years, is under house arrest, and I think, I mean, that we, it is incumbent on us to say, no, please for goodness sake, listen to the call of the people. The people are saying, we just want freedom and democracy, please, please, how can men armed to the teeth be scared of a petite, demure, beautiful woman? She’s my only pin up in my office.

BILL CLINTON: That may be the answer about why they’re scared of her. Everybody in the Philippines is scared of Gloria, I think that’s great. Let me say, first of all, I thank you. I thank you for your support of the monks in Burma, but for the general comment you made, I think it’s profoundly important that sitting over here next to your President, President Mbeki is, and my great friend Kim Dai-jung who won the Nobel prize for being under house arrest, almost was killed once, standing against the military regime, and bringing a genuine democracy and a spirit of reconciliation with North Korea to the leadership of South Korea. And I say that because when he finally got to the President, after the long price he paid, his ascendancy was paralleled by the growth in his country of the largest Christian churches in the world. Many, they have, like 11 or 12 churches with over 100,000 members, and individual churches, not sects, individual congregations. And I say that only to make this point. Obviously the growth of their faith had nothing to do with derailing the progress of democracy, and it’s like you said last year, it depends on what you use religion for and how you’re motivated. But I think that’s a very important thing because at least in America, there really has been an interesting slash of books saying that all these problems in the world are because the people are too religious. So I think that they are drawing the wrong conclusion from their religion. And so I just wanted to give you a chance to say that.

DESMUND TUTU: Thank you.

BILL CLINTON: Well, believe it or not, we have five minutes to go, and so I want to ask if any of our panelists would like to say anything else? President Karzai and Vice President Gore, and then Gloria. Go ahead.

HAMID KARZAI: Very short.

BILL CLINTON: Yes, go ahead.

HAMID KARZAI: Would you like to go first?

BILL CLINTON: Quit being deferential, you’re wasting time. Just everybody’s got to talk, we got four people to talk in five minutes, go.

HAMID KARZAI: I think what His Eminence the Bishop said is very, very important. I don’t think it’s religions that are fighting, or religion that’s causing the problem. I think it’s the misuse of religion for political purposes that’s causing the problem. I think it’s the politilization of religion that causes the problems. Terrorism is a product of that; instrumentism is a product of that. We see examples of that all over the world, we see examples of that in my part of the world, in Afghanistan, in Pakistan, in [inaudible]. I was struck and surprised by an interview in Kabul conducted in a private television, with a clergy, with a Mullah, and the interviewee asked the Mullah, why are you against extremists and terrorists? Is it because they are hurting the image of Islam? And the Mullah said, no, even more important, they are hurting humanity. So religion is basically for good, and it’s us, the politics that we pay that hurts everybody. Afghanistan is another good example of religions cooperating in Afghanistan. We have here a number of countries of the world, from Hindu’s, to Christians, to Muslims, to Buddhists, to countries who are melting in Afghanistan. The road from Kandahar to Iraq is built by the Saudi’s, by the Americans, by the Japanese, by the Indians, four religions for a common cause, for the safety of all of us.

BILL CLINTON: Al?

AL GORE: I wanted to say why I think the effort to solve the climate crisis is actually the key to giving us the ability to successfully address these other crises, whether its religious strife, or the effort against global poverty, or HIV AIDS, or any of the others. When people from different points of view with different experiences have a shared goal that is urgent, that’s connected to their survival, they find the ability to put their differences aside and work together. We’ve seen it time and time again, sometimes in war, sometimes in peace. This is an emergency.
Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., once said injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. Now global warming pollution increasing anywhere is a threat to the integrity of the climate everywhere. None of these issues will have a chance to get resolved unless we successfully resolve this. I think that the key to fighting global poverty is to have the wealthy nations and the developing nations join together to reduce the global warming pollution everywhere. I think what we need is a global marshal plan, to make the creation of jobs in the developing world around the reduction of carbon the central organizing principle for how we develop this.
There’s an old African proverb, forgive me for citing one in the face of sitting next to the master, that if you want to go quickly, go alone, if you want to go far, go together. We need to go far quickly. That means we need to arrive at a common understanding of the urgency of this challenge. The Alliance for Climate Protection, Kathy Zoey, the CEO, is here, has brought together groups throughout this country to launch a mass persuasion campaign on the facts to change the climate of opinion on a bipartisan basis. But, in closing, let me just say, our children, not many years from now, will ask one of two questions, trust me. Either they will look back on us at the beginning of this century and say, what in the world were they thinking? Why were they doing nothing? Why were they talking about aspirational, voluntary goals, when our survival was at stake? Or they will ask a second question, the one I prefer them to ask. How did they find the moral courage to rise and successfully address a crisis that so many said was impossible to address? We must make that the question and we must answer it with our actions.

BILL CLINTON: President Arroyo?

GLORIA MACAPAGAL-ARROYO: I’d like to close by putting together our paradigm for peace and our paradigm for development, as we discussed today. On our part for peace, the reason why I think all those books are being written against religion is that the terrorists use religion and cause religious warfare. In our paradigm for peace in [inaudible], we use interfaith dialogue to promote religious understanding, instead of religious warfare. On our paradigm for development, we see too many countries believe explicitly or implicitly that there’s a trade off within development and the environment. But we believe, and because we are just taking off now, that we can do it right from day one. We want to promote development, we want to create jobs, and take care of our environment. And the second point, five percent growth that we have been able to achieve in the last quarter is evidence our paradigm is working, and we’d like to share this paradigm with the world and thank you for the opportunity to be able to share it. Thank you.

BILL CLINTON: Bishop?

DESMOND TUTU: The Secretary, the former Secretary General of the UN received a report under the aegis of Alliance of Civilizations. And one of the things they got to say is it is not the faiths that are the problem. It is not the faiths, it is the faithful. And then just one last point, can we join God, who has a utopian dream? You know, God believes in the dream that we would live in harmony, and that we would live as members of one family, God’s family. Now that sounds sentimental. But it’s actually most one of the most radical things you would ever say, for God’s family has no outsiders. All are insiders, the rich, the poor, the clever, the not so clever, the gay, the lesbian, the so called straight.

PRESIDENT WILLIAM J. CLINTON: That’s right up there with the knife comment. Let’s go.

DESMOND TUTU: But all, all belong, I mean, Bin Laden, George Bush, all, all belong, and God says can you help me realize my dream, that my children one day will learn that they are members of one family, and can live, sharing, being compassionate, being gentle, being caring? There will be a great deal more laughter and joy, and that is possible, that’s God’s dream. How about helping God realize that dream?

BILL CLINTON: Ladies and gentlemen, we have two more things to do. I have one more commitment to announce, but before that, because I know our panelists all have other things to do, I think they’ve been wonderful, and I think we should give them another round of applause. Let’s give them a big one, thank you.

I’d like to invite to the podium Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg of Norway, Prime Minister Balkenende of the Netherlands, President Kikwete of Tanzania, and the Executive Director of UNICEF, Ann Veneman. I think they’re all here, they should be, come along. Hello, friends.
Well, this is a great ending to what I thought was a great day. I love the early commitments, I thought the panelists were terrific. And this is our fifth commitment of this year’s CGI. Their commitment is to launch a global campaign to meet the millennium development goals and health, with a special emphasis on women and children. The commitment involves $1.15 billion, including a 10 year commitment of a billion dollars from Norway, $175 million from the Netherlands over three years. About 10 million children die every year before their fifth birthday, 500,000 women die in childbirth every year from pregnancy related complications. Virtually 100-percent of these deaths are in developing countries. Most are due to diseases easily preventable or treatable with low cost interventions. This initiative calls for a global advocacy campaign called Deliver Now for Women and Children, a network of global leaders to serve as champions for maternal and child health, and increase funding for maternal and child health, tied directly to improved health outcomes. The campaign will focus on the fourth and fifth millennium development goals, to save the lives of 8 million children and 375,000 mothers each and every year.

And let me just say, this is, you heard what I said about the money involved, one billion dollars will save the lives of two million children. One billion dollars will save the lives of two million children. These people have done a great thing today. It’s a great way to end our first session, let’s give them a huge round of applause.
We’re adjourned, go on to the next session, thank you very much.

MALE SPEAKER: Ladies and gentlemen, please remain in your seats and allow the heads of state and distinguished guests to depart the room. Thank you very much.

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