The following remarks announcing the launch of the President's Council on Sustainable Development were delivered by President Bill Clinton on June 14th, 1993 at 4:35 p.m. in the Rose Garden at the White House.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for being here. It has been a year since the Earth summit in Rio. I think you might be interested to know that a year ago at the Earth summit in Rio I placed a call to Senator AI Gore of Tennessee to get a report on the goings-on there from him and from Senator Wirth of Colorado and to begin the process by which we came together as a team. Not very long after that I asked Al Gore to join the Democratic ticket, and the rest was history.
I don't want to make any bones about it. When we had our first very long meeting, one thing that then-Senator Gore said was that he wanted to be part of a ticket that, if elected, could put the environment back on the front burner in American public life and do it in a way that would be good for the economy, not bad for the economy, do it in a way that would bring the American people together, not divide them. All the policy positions that the Vice President just announced that we have taken to change the direction of the previous administrations and, more importantly, to go beyond politics to embrace a new philosophy of uniting our goals of preserving the environment and promoting economic growth would have been very difficult to achieve had it not been for his leadership and constant involvement and faithfulness to this cause. And the American people owe him a great debt of gratitude......
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