What Did Bill Clinton Mean By "We Just Have to Slow Down Our Economy" to Fight Global Warming?

It is shocking that abc news would allow their name to be put on this type of misleading and incorrect reporting ... the NEW fox news?

This post is very misleading...
Read what Clinton said and decide for yourself...

This story illustrates a lot about our media and what passes for "news"

I listened to President Clinton's speech. Nowhere did he advocate slowing the economy to combat global climate change. What he did say was that slowing the economy was one way to do it, but that it was the wrong way to do it. He clearly and forcefully argued that combating global climate change could INCREASE JOBS here in the United States.

What President Clinton did was use a rhetorical device to set up his argument that combating global climate change could STIMULATE ECONOMY. For those who don't know, "rhetoric is the art (Latin) or technique (Greek) of persuasion through the use of oral, visual, or written language." --wikipedia.

To those of you who took what Tapper wrote at face value I have some questions? Did you actually watch, actively listen and critically listen to what President Clinton said? Did you watch and listen with an open mind, willing to be persuaded? Or did you just wait for the words you wanted to hear to confirm your preconceived ideas?

Its time to back Mitt Romney the only true conservative candidate. I agree with Sean Hanity

Is Bill Clinton the only person on the planet prepared to talk openly about a real global issue, one that is ominously looming before humanity on the far horizon?

What I find most surprising is this: even though Bill Clinton has "stepped it up" by talking about the need to slow the global economy -- given its leviathan scale and, perhaps, soon to become unsustainable growth rate -- there remains one problem, the proverbial "mother" of all global challenges, about which Republicans and Democrats, the self-proclaimed Masters of the Universe and ordinary people, the corporatists and environmentalists, leaders and followers remain in virtually total denial.... trenchantly unwilling to discuss openly:

OVERPOPULATION ISSUE OVERLOOKED BY PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES

THE CAPITAL TIMES, Madison, WI
Rob Zaleski -- 1/25/2008

Thanks for your attention. Comments are invited.

Good info much appreciated

Yes Chris is right-on it, we must keep the clintons out of the white house at all cost,remember whitewater monica lewinsky,filegate and they went on a petty thief binge when George replaced them, taking whitehouse silverware,sheets ,towels,soap,art works and anything that wasn't nailed down before the were odered to give it back,and yet pardon gate was wide open for thieves , money launderers,fraud,crooked ,lobbiest and any kind of criminal activities known to mankind. please get thee to the Obama for president polls asap
OBAMA 08 GO GO oBAMA

I found the comments about Europe and Kyoto simply laughable...Only someone who doesn't know the first thing about Kyoto could make such statements...to wit...1)No European country is in compliance with its Kyoto targets and while I have forgotten the numbers (easy enough to find)...they are mostly well in excess of their targets...2) This is especially laughable given the way the Kyoto baseline was set...Kyoto is a joke

Once again the MSM is making news rather than reporting it. It is truly disgusting.

Here is what Bill Clinton said.

-snip-

And maybe America, and Europe, and Japan, and Canada — the rich countries — would say, ‘O.K., we just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions ’cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren.’ We could do that.

But if we did that, you know as well as I do, China and India and Indonesia and Vietnam and Mexico and Brazil and the Ukraine, and all the other countries will never agree to stay poor to save the planet for our grandchildren. The only way we can do this is if we get back in the world’s fight against global warming and prove it is good economics that we will create more jobs to build a sustainable economy that saves the planet for our children and grandchildren. It is the only way it will work.

-snip-

Propaganda parading around as news should trouble the American people regardless of what presidential candidate you support. ABC should be more responsible.

Bill Clinton had his chance when he decided not to go for the Kyoto Protocol, when AL GORE WAS HIS VP. AL GORE, who had devoted decades to this kind of thing. Bill's idea was that it would slow down the economy. Seems like the European economies did just fine under Kyoto...

I'd just like to say everyone here needs to calm down, switch off their lights when not in the room, set their thermostat a degree or two higher in the summer and lower in the winter, and think for themselves. Bill Clinton is not advocating slowing the economy, and Tapper didn't claim he did. Its just that everybody overanalyzes every snippet of speech out there. Look, global warming is a man-made phenomenon (just ask the majority of scientists who are actually published in peer-reviewed journals). However, humans are very adept. While most governments and most americans aren't yet willing to sacrifice anything (even driving a *"£%^$ SUV), eventually they will. And money will be made by innovative companies that exploit this. That's Bill's point. Whether or not Hillary is the one to bring about this paradigm shift is very debatable, however. Peace.

This isn't really a discussion about global warming and if it is areal threat or not. It is about the right winged nutter media taking a stament that Bill made and twisting it around to sound like he wants to stop the ecconomy or stop the United States from working or what ever the heck they are trying to say. The fact is Global warming may be happening it may not be happening but how about this.....Suppose that global warming is in fact not a real threat what is the harm in doing something about what many perceive to be a major problem in most large cities of the world Carbon Monoxide build (see Bejing. Now lets assume that there is really nothing to worry about with smog or pollution except it is reall dirty and makes it difficult to breath and makes everything dirty and so on...Now I ask what is the problem with trying to make that filth disappear? The air will be cleaner, in all probability there will be new jobs created because of the technology that will be created becasue of the advancement in science (See US spce program circa 1960's). I also call this the automobile safety belt syndrome. When it was shown that safety belts saved lives did the Auto Industry go GOLLY WE REALLY NEED TO PUT THIS IN ALL CARS....NO! it had to be mandated byt OH MY GOD THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT!!!!!AHHHHHHHHHHH! Now I am not sure but wouldn't it be nice to know how many people are alive today because they had to wear a seat belt! There is always resistence to inovation and advnacement for the human race (see Ludites) and those who are getting in the way of realizing that we can do soemthing about the environment we live in weather it has anything to do with Global warming or not is of little cosnsequence. What matters is quality of life and for me I want clean air and water for starters!

I saw this speech last night and remembered very clearly how BIll presented this concept it was a HYPOTHETICAL!!What if we slowed down our ecconomy then what would happen???Other countries like china and india would say well we are not going to do that because we have to catch up. Then Bill said something to the effect well we all have to get into this fight together and create the new industries that are going to make life better for everyone including China and India etc.

Reputable science is showing that the between 96 and 100% of change in “global temperature is natural and not manmade. That means in the worst case if the earth temperature was to change 5° over the next 10 years we could attribute .2° to humans. Not enough to make noticeable difference in the sea level or anything else. For this the Clintons what to impoverish America? And besides since 1998 (2nd warmest year on record, 1934 was the warmest) the mean global temperature has been on a steady decline. Our records only go back to 1880, nothing in the world history. Prior to that the 11th century was far warmer then it is now or for the predicted future, even by the most pessimistic global warming model. In that century there were far less Atlantic storms, and far less plagues and famines then there were in the centuries before and after. Scotland was an agriculture center, and in England they made wine, too cold to do that now. So what is the problem if the Earth gets warmer? However, it is not, solar energy patterns (there is no human influence there) is indicating we are heading for a much colder period that could last for the next 40 to 60 years.

It should be noted that when a natural disaster strikes it is those depended on government who are the hardest hit. This is true for anyone, rich or poor and anywhere in the world. So what Bill Clinton is proposing is the perfect liberal solution to a non-problem, reduce prosperity, and increase dependency on government.

This is the best case I can make for Barrack Obama and its what every democratic voter should think about before they vote.

Im very worried about Hillary becoming the nominee. One of the biggest reasons being, the republicans. They are salvating at the thought of going up against her. They have been gearing up for this, for years. And I know so many Hillary supporters are saying shes been there before, she knows how to fight them and win. But to me thats the the whole piont. Yes, maybe she will win. But why on earth would we as democrats nominate someone that has to fight off years of controversy and questionable practices that she and her husband have been involved in. And if she were to win, how many more enemys will she have created in the process. And in the end will that give us the kind of bipartisan Leadership that this country desperately needs right now. I know any democrat that we nominate is going to be given a hard time by the republicans. But Im absolutely convinced that Obama has much firmer ground to stand on.
In point, This is the message voters need to be getting.

Thanks for the update 2.
Before you create update 3, please listen to the speech you are writing about. It might surprise you.

Sorry Jake, you got it 100% wrong. Clinton doesn't want to slow down the economy, he wants to spur the economy by encouraging the developement of 21st century technology. You obviously must be aware of this by now. We await your retraction.

I guess ABC is now officially "The Least Trusted Name In News"

The Republican National Committee further mischaracterized Bill Clinton's comments. In an "Update" to his post, Tapper quoted the following statement from spokesman Alex Conant: "Senator [Hillary Rodham] Clinton's campaign now says we must 'slow down the economy' to stop global warming. ... Clinton needs to come back to Earth. Her 'tax-it, spend-it, regulate-it' attitude would really bring the economy crashing down. No amount of special effects will hide Clinton's liberal record."

Sen. Clinton's (D-NY) presidential campaign responded to Tapper's post by writing that Tapper "parsed President Clinton's speech," adding, "Actually the full quote shows that President Clinton was making the opposite point. He rejected slowing down the economy, and advocated for sustainable economic growth." Tapper responded to the campaign in a separate blog post, but did not address the substantive point:

The Clinton campaign did not provide for me, as requested, an explanation of what he meant.

Instead, the response from the Clinton campaign is to post an item on its "fact" hub and accuse me of "parsing."

I will plead guilty to "parsing" -- the dictionary definition of the word -- "To examine closely or subject to detailed analysis, especially by breaking up into components" or "To make sense of; comprehend."

But I suspect the Clinton campaign thinks of the word "parsing" in its more colloquial sense -- as in "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is." I guess I should defer to their expertise.

After Competitive Enterprise Institute senior fellow Iain Murray -- in a January 31 post on National Review Online's "The Corner" -- asserted in part that "Tapper isn't entirely accurate in characterizing what Bill said," Tapper added the following update to his post responding to the Clinton campaign:

UPDATE: Bill Clinton finds a defender/explainer over at the National Review, where Iain Murray takes a look at what an effort to reduce greenhouse gases would do to the U.S. economy and concludes that "while Tapper isn't entirely accurate in characterizing what Bill said, he's pretty accurate in summarizing the effects of the policies he recommends. Bill Clinton's economic stimulus plan is to slow down our economy."

This is the much more important issue here. Any serious effort to reduce greenhouses gases will have an impact on the economy and, initially, that impact could be negative.

There are ways to work towards having the impact in the long-term be neutral or perhaps even positive. But any serious effort will cost a lot of money and slow the economy, whether the world is in it together or the U.S. and industrialized nations go it alone. (I stand accused of saying that former President Clinton spoke honestly about that.)

That's not to say it should not be done -- it's just to acknowledge that, as with all things ambitious, there will be a cost.

In a January 31 post on his ABCNews.com blog, Political Punch, ABC News senior national correspondent Jake Tapper falsely suggested that former President Bill Clinton, during a speech in Denver the previous day, advocated "slow[ing] down our economy" as a strategy to combat climate change. In the post -- titled "Bill: 'We Just Have to Slow Down Our Economy' to Fight Global Warming" -- Tapper wrote of Clinton: "In a long, and interesting speech, he characterized what the U.S. and other industrialized nations need to do to combat global warming this way: 'We just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions 'cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren.' " Tapper then wrote: "At a time that the nation is worried about a recession is that really the characterization his wife would want him making? 'Slow down our economy'?"

In fact -- as also noted by the blog, Sadly, No! -- Clinton's full remarks on global warming during the speech, which Tapper included toward the end of his post, make clear that Clinton did not propose "slow[ing] down our economy" as a strategy "to combat global warming." He said that "rich" countries could take that approach; but then he said why he thought it wouldn't work, asserting that the "only way" to fight global warming is to prove that doing so "is good economics that we will create more jobs to build a sustainable economy":

CLINTON: And maybe America, and Europe, and Japan, and Canada -- the rich counties [sic] -- would say, "OK, we just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions 'cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren." We could do that.

But if we did that, you know as well as I do, China and India and Indonesia and Vietnam and Mexico and Brazil and the Ukraine, and all the other countries will never agree to stay poor to save the planet for our grandchildren. The only way we can do this is if we get back in the world's fight against global warming and prove it is good economics that we will create more jobs to build a sustainable economy that saves the planet for our children and grandchildren. It is the only way it will work.

The Drudge Report linked to Tapper's post under the similarly misleading headline, "Bill Clinton: 'We Just Have to Slow Down Our Economy' to Fight Global Warming ..."