The President also pointed to overpopulated lowland nations such as Bangladesh, where millions of people will be engulfed. He allowed that islands like the Maldives that will "disappear from the map," unless there is immediate worldwide given to the elimination of inappropriate technology.

In his speech Clinton reflected on an international conference held five years ago in Rio and where a "simple but revolutionary proposition" was advanced, namely that today's "progress" must not come at tomorrow's expense.

The United States, the President admitted, "must do better." Though America has only four percent of the world's population, he explained, "we already produce more than 20 percent of its greenhouse gases." He boasted about "air quality" action he'd taken June 25 as a "positive first step" but acknowledged that many more such steps would still be necessary.

Some environmental activists responded warily to the President's latest show of concern, pointing to what they considered now-forgotten political difficulties encountered by former President Jimmy Carter who, during the first year of his presidency, called for "the moral equivalent of war" on the international oil cartels.

"It was nothing more than Carter's challenging call to battle that forever made him a declared foe of the country's oil-rich moneyed classes. It was all down-hill for him after that. They campaigned overtime to get him out of office, painting him in 1980 as unforgivably weak because of otherwise principled non-violent responses to the Iranian-hostage crisis," said Bruce Cosentino. "Thereafter these oil barrons assured themselves of non-interference by working to elect a Republican, the business-friendly Ronald Reagan."

Clinton, sounding less confrontational about oil, told the U.N. that the world "must create new technologies and develop new strategies like emissions trading that will both curtail pollution and support continued economic growth." The President "personally" promised to play a critical role "to help us meet new quality air standards."

In contrast to pro-oil propaganda issued regularly during the Reagan and Bush administrations, Clinton said that it has become imperative that his government begins the task of convincing the American people and the Congress that "the climate change problem is real and immanent."

Energy efficiency, he said, and alternative energy sources must be developed. Without mentioning oil, the Democratic president allowed that there must be quick improvements in resource management "to promote growth that does not have an adverse effect on the climate."

In the past few years, the President declared that the good economic news garnered since he took office has been offset by "an increase in greenhouse-gas emissions in spite of the adoption of new conservation practices."

"So we must do better," he said, "and we will."

The President told U.N. delegates that the United States has worked "to clean up a record number of our toxic dumps," and that Americans plan to "clean 500 more over the next four years."

The President asserted that his clean air proclamation of June 25 ranks as "the most far reaching effort" to improve air quality "in our nation in 20 years, cutting smog levels dramatically and, for the first time ever, setting standards to lower the levels of the fine particles in the atmosphere that form soot."

In America, the President lamented, "the incidence of childhood asthma has been increasing rapidly."

While the pursuit of clean air remains among his his priorities, the U.S. leader predicted that in the 21st century "climate changes will disrupt agriculture, cause severe draughts and floods and the spread of infectious diseases, which will be a big enough problem for us under the best of circumstances."