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President Bill Clinton

We can and must chart a new course on climate change that will avert its most destructive consequences and build a future of broadly shared prosperity for both developed and developing nations.

In the 1990s, we invested in clean energy technologies, reduced vehicle emissions, issued new energy-saving standards for household appliances, and saved more than $750 million through energy-efficiency. But we could not convince Congress to approve the Kyoto Accords, despite America’s role led by Vice-President Gore in forging them. They simply didn’t believe that climate change presented a grave threat to our future or that emissions could be reduced without hurting our economy.

Today, the circumstances are very different. The vast majority of climate scientists agree we must reduce our global greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by mid-century, and evidence abounds that changing the way we produce and consume energy is good economics. Yet in the wake of the severe global recession, claims that reducing emissions will reduce growth are a powerful deterrent to change.

Let’s look at the economic evidence.

Before the financial crisis, the four wealthy nations that will surely meet their Kyoto targets — the U.K., Germany, Denmark, and Sweden — were creating more new jobs and new businesses and experienced less income inequality than other wealthy nations because of their progress toward a new energy future. A recent Deutsche Bank study says that Germany’s green-energy policies have created 300,000 jobs. In the United States, the President and Congress are beginning to tap our clean-energy potential to create millions of sustainable, good-paying jobs. China has embraced the potential of clean-energy technologies, with commitments to invest in solar and wind power generation that far exceed America’s current projections. because they see the potential of an enormous global market. India also has committed to reducing its emissions by up to 25 percent by 2020 and is aggressively pursuing a wide range of new opportunities.

According to the Earth Policy Institute, every $1 billion we invest in coal-fired power plants creates 870 jobs while the same investment in photovoltaic cells creates 1,800 jobs; in solar thermal plants, 1,900 jobs; in wind energy, 3,300 jobs; and in building retrofits, 7,000 jobs. There is also tremendous economic potential in clean energy transportation, waste management, reforestation and avoided deforestation, more efficient household appliances, carbon neutral buildings, carbon capture, electric cars, natural gas-powered buses and trucks, and a host of other options that will create far more new jobs and new businesses than our old energy economy was producing.

More and more businesses are embracing the profits of clean, efficient energy. For example, Wal-Mart committed to reducing its packaging by 5 percent, saving the supply chain $3.5 billion and reducing emissions as much as taking 213,000 diesel trucks off the road.

My foundation’s climate initiative is helping 40 large cities in the United States and all over the world reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. We are working with Mexico City, Delhi, Lagos, and others to close landfills, improve public health, and generate electricity through methane capture; with Los Angeles to replace old streetlights with LED fixtures, which will realize annual energy and maintenance savings of $10 million, pay for itself within 7 years, and avoid the emission of 40,500 tons of CO2 per year; and with several cities to retrofit more than 250 large buildings. For example, the retrofit of the Empire State Building will save $4.5 million in utility bills annually and reduce emissions by 38 percent – the equivalent of taking 19,000 cars off the road. At Copenhagen 14 of the C40 cities committed to increase the number of electric cards in city fleets and to establish user friendly networks for recharging private electric vehicles.

In India, we are working with the government to develop solar parks with large solar thermal generators that can cut the cost of producing solar power substantially. We are also helping nations in Latin America, Asia, and Africa to avoid the deforestation that accounts for nearly 20 percent of our global emissions.

The Center for American Progress released a report earlier this year asserting that the US can reach half its goal of reducing emissions 80 percent through energy efficiency alone. Retrofitting 40 percent of our buildings over 10 years would create 625,000 sustainable jobs. But if we were to retrofit all of our large buildings and millions of homes in five years, we would create millions of jobs at a time when unemployment in the construction industry is 17 percent.

To do that, we must finance the projects so that building and home owners can pay for them out of the savings in lower utility bills. There are several options: utility companies could finance them and allow consumers to pay back the cost over time on their utility bills; local governments can finance them and recover their costs through property tax assessments; and bank financing for home retrofits can be repaid through a mortgage, as provided for in federal law, or, for large buildings, from energy savings guaranteed by large, financially sound energy service companies. The nation’s banks have about one trillion in cash available for lending. If the federal government were to establish a loan guarantee program for large buildings, modeled on the SBA loan guarantee program, then large retrofits would in effect be backed by a double guarantee, making the projects extremely attractive to lenders. A $15 to $17 billion loan guarantee program could unlock $150 to $170 billion to quickly create one million jobs.

Everyone can participate in the clean energy revolution. Replacing standard incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs can save 75 percent more energy. They last about 10 times longer, and each bulb will pay for itself within 6 months; after that, the consumer reaps all the savings. At our second meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative for college students, a University of Houston student made a commitment to recycle cooked vegetable oil to fuel lawnmowers and generators on campus.

These are the kinds of things we should do regardless of what the world’s governments agree on, but we do need a good global agreement and strong national legislation to get the incentives, financing options, and economies of scale necessary for the sweeping changes the climate crisis requires. Every nation must do its part, including China, India, and Russia. And Congress should respond to the President’s call to pass responsible climate change legislation. For the United States this is an economic opportunity and a national security imperative. We cannot afford to trade our dependence on foreign oil for dependencies on solar and wind technology produced elsewhere.

We should all get busy. Increasing efficiency, using more clean energy, and reducing deforestation and waste throughout the world will speed economic recovery, reduce poverty, enhance security, and save the earth for future generations.