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In the rich world, the environmental situation has improved dramatically. In the United States, the most important environmental indicator, particulate air pollution, has been cut by more than half since 1955, rivers and coastal waters have dramatically improved, and forests are increasing.

There are more effective ways of tackling environmental problems including global warming, proliferation of plastics, urban sprawl, and the loss of biodiversity than by treaties, top-down regulations, and other approaches offered by big governments and their dependents.

The most meaningful engine of change, powerful enough to confront corporate power, may be not so much environmental quality, as the economic development and growth associated with the effort to improve it.

We created the Cabinet Committee on the Environment to review the environmental implications of all government initiatives. I think what made us successful was the fact that it was a sustained approach. We did something new every year.

There are a tremendous amount of environmental issues that are on the table.

We have increased conservation spending, enacted legislation that enables us to clean up and redevelop abandoned brownfields sites across the country, and implemented new clean water standards that will protect us from arsenic.

I think an old style of addressing environmental problems is ebbing, but the rise of the so-called conservative, political movement in this country is not a trend towards the future but a reaction to this very broad shift that we are undergoing.

Our nation has abundant clean energy resources, and tapping them will generate jobs, make the air safer to breathe, and tackle climate change - the greatest environmental crisis of our time.

If you look internationally over the last 50 years there have been improvements in the third world, but in the last 20 years the reverse has happened, with debt crises and increased poverty.

In my 31 years in Congress, I have seen a lot of changes. We made some substantial policy changes that have improved our parks system and our public lands.