[Mb-civic] Clinton in Canada, recieves standing ovations....

[Harold Sifton]

Former US president Clinton talks climate change, security in Canada 
Sat Mar 11, 11:46 AM ET 

To standing ovations and thunderous applause, former US president Bill Clinton ended a Canadian speaking tour joking about his popular role in America's northern neighbor.

Clinton quipped that he has been to Canada so often that if he comes "once more in this calendar year, I will be obliged to pay taxes."

The national Globe and Mail newspaper joked that Canadians would get "the idea that Bill Clinton is running for political office" in Canada.

Even "Freakonomics" author Stephen Dubner, who spoke before Clinton took the stage Friday at a day-long conference of motivational speakers, jested: "Its really great to be in a country where Bill Clinton is the president again."

But beneath the joviality America's 42nd president, who runs charitable foundations and has a lucrative career as a popular speakers, spent the week delivering sharp messages about the threat of climate change, human security, and Canada-US relations as a global model for cooperation.

Clinton predicted that climate change will cause global crises unless its curbed now. Oceans will rise if Greenland's ice cap melts, he said, and changes in ocean currents could cause severe cold spells in the northern hemisphere.

"We are only 15,000 years away from the last ice age on a planet millions of years old," noted Clinton, and said those who ignore the signs of climate change are forgetting that human civilizations are relatively new.

Climate change could erase some coastal areas including part of Manhatten, he said. Worldwide, "there will be tens of millions of food refugees, lots more violence, lots more trouble, lots more call for the soldiers of Canada and the US to go solve problems we could have prevented in the first place."

Clinton wrapped up his seven-city Canadian tour before a Vancouver audience of about 7,000 business people, at a motivational conference called "The Power Within."

The Vancouver audience applauded when Clinton thanked Canada for sending soldiers to Afghanistan, where in the past week two Canadians were killed and several others injured. "Thank you, as a citizen," he said. "This is important work, I know its hard for you."

Clinton urged rich countries to reduce disparity between rich and poor, and stressed that in a globalized world human security is complex. "Security is about more than terrorism and weapons of mass destruction," he said, adding that economic development would allow people worldwide to live peacefully "for a fraction of what it takes to fight militarily, in Iraq, Afghanistan."

In Vancouver and earlier stops in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, Saskatoon, Regina and Edmonton, Clinton leveled his trade-mark stare at his audience and each person has a responsibility to try to understand and better a world so complex its "like the political equivalent of the chaos theory in physics."

To create a worldwide commitment to peaceful democracy, social justice and market economics, he said in Vancouver, "You have more power to deal with all these issues, as private citizens, than any group of private citizens in history -- and you have more responsibility to do it."

Clinton downplayed the souring of Canada-US relations in recent years. Polls suggest that Canadians strongly disapprove of current US President George W. Bush; Canada and the United States are embroiled in a bitter trade war over softwood lumber, and hot-headed politicians on both sides have been enraged over Canada's refusal to join America's Iraq invasion.

But Clinton said the problems are minor. "We have the (worlds) longest unguarded border, the biggest bilateral trade relationship, the most complex interconnections ... if our only problems are softwood and a difference of opinion over the invasion of Iraq, I'd say were doing pretty well."

He said the Canada-US relationship, which survives despite different political and economic systems, is a model for cooperation in the rest of the world. "Our relationship is mostly good ... its interdependent. Were like married people who occasionally have an argument, except we don't have divorce as an option."

Clinton called the Canadian-US "marriage" an economic and cultural "metaphor for the larger world (which) is increasingly interdependent."
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