Financial Times: Gore calls for ‘global Marshall plan’
By Daniel Pimlott in New York
Published: September 26 2007
Al Gore, the former US vice-president, on Wednesday called for a “Marshall plan” to make job creation and measures to address climate change compatible and urged President George W. Bush to commit to mandatory cuts in carbon dioxide emissions.
“This is an emergency,” Mr Gore told the opening session of the Clinton Global Initiative. “I think that the key to fighting global poverty is to have the wealthy nations and the developing nations join together to reduce global warming … I think what we need is a global Marshall plan to make the creation of jobs around the reduction of carbon the central principle for how we develop this.”
Mr Gore said Mr Bush should follow the example of former US president Ronald Reagan, who after an initial delay responded to the 1985 discovery of a hole in the ozone layer by supporting a marked reduction in chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs. “We have to have a binding reduction on carbon,’’ he said....
Bill Clinton, the former US president whose organisation is hosting the philanthropic forum for world leaders and top businesses, also called on the World Bank to promote ways of dealing with climate change to the governments it deals with. He argued that the organisation needed to persuade developing countries that they could grow in ways that would alleviate damage to the environment and benefit economic growth.
“We don’t have a right to ask anybody in the world to stay poor, but if you can show them that they can get rich quicker … by pursuing a cleaner energy path… that would be a valuable role for the World Bank,” he said. “People can’t seize options they are not aware of.”...
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/633d030a-6c5d-11dc-a0cf-0000779fd2ac.html