U.S. and China (2009)
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release
July 9, 2009
PRESS BRIEFING BY DEPUTY NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR FOR INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS MIKE FROMAN AND SPECIAL ENVOY ON CLIMATE CHANGE TODD STERN
U.S. Press Filing Center
L'Aquila, Italy
7:31 P.M. CEST
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Q: (Inaudible) when it comes to the way the process (inaudible) the President's remarks that anxiety about the global economic situation should not inhibit or deter either the United States or other member nations from pursuing global climate change legislation to deal with carbon pollution. Why shouldn't it? The ordinary American taxpayer may say, wait a minute, is this really the right time to impose a cap and trade system, to place a new tax on carbon when the U.S. economy is struggling to get out of the deepest recession since the Great Depression? I mean, can you address that, why there shouldn't even be some anxiety about that and that shouldn't at least in some way influence the debate about this issue?
MR. STERN: Sure. Sure. It's understandable that there's some anxiety about it, but there's a couple of points to be made and the President has made these points I think on many occasions.
First of all, the nature of the problem is such that you can't wait. I mean, the status quo is not a sustainable thing.
But secondly, there is -- you could put it aside, pretend that you can wait for some number of years, continue to lock in investment in high-carbon technology -- or you can take steps to build the kind of economy that is going to be sustainable, that is going to build a plant and equipment that's going to be able to last. It's the right economic move to make. If you don't make this you're going to end up spending more money a few years down the road.
So there's no point in having a huge, big stimulus effort which simply locks in old technology, locks in a high-carbon path -- which is completely unsustainable; science, unfortunately, is undoubtedly just going to get worse on this issue, not better -- and the plain reality, this is absolutely compellingly true for countries like China and India and everywhere else, as well as that the high carbon cap is simply untenable. And you're going to suffer economically -- not just in the environment -- you're going to suffer economically if you choose that path, because in not very many years, if it looks bad now it's going to look worse and it's going to be completely untenable.
So the President is making the right choice, and it is the right choice to move forward on this now, even though the anxiety people feel is quite understandable.
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END
7:52 P.M. CEST