President Clinton: Why I Support (California) Proposition 87

President Clinton: Why I Support Proposition 87 and Why the Oil Companies are Wrong--The Complete Speech Delivered at UCLA

http://www.californiaprogressreport.com/2006/10/first--_thank_y.html

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California is being given an opportunity and an obligation to do something remarkable to save the planet and improve our national security and create the next generation of good jobs for the American people. That's what Prop 87 represents to me. The Apollo program would never have gotten off the ground if it hadn't been for California. The personal computer was born here. I could give example after example after example after example where you have always led the way.

But California, because so many people want to live here, because it is a picture of 21st century America, it is also going to have always more challenges than other places. You're dangerously dependent on unstable sources of oil, your air is still too polluted, with all the risks that carries, and there is a lot of money here, and too much of it is being directed to trying to beat Prop 87.

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Prop 87 will move California toward energy independence with cleaner fuels, with wind and solar power. There are people who don't believe you can do it. I do. Look at Brazil. Don't you think you can do it if they did it? They run their cars on ethanol.

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I've spent a lot of time -- now that I've reached a certain age and I have a grown child and have been in public life a long time, I spent a lot of time over the years with children with asthma. I'm tired of seeing kids gasp for breath, wondering if they will able to run outside on the play yard, wondering if they will be able to fulfill dreams of playing a sport, or riding a horse, or running a race, or just having a normal life. I don't believe the people who are against this proposition want those kids to suffer, it's just they give some other excuse so they can keep on doing what they have been doing. Just think what would have happened if the companies that have spent $100 million to beat this proposition had instead spent $100 million to become comprehensive energy companies instead of oil companies. What if there is a way for them to increase, not decrease, their profits? None of us are against them. I'd love to be an oil company executive today. I'd build it into the best energy company in the world. We would be investing in solar, we would be investing in wind, we would be investing in conservation, we would be investing in clean fuels. That's the answer to the oil companies: Make more money by helping to pave the way to the future, not hold on to an untenable, unsustainable, and dangerous past.

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