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Bill Clinton looks toward global future, cautiously

The ex-president came to town and fired up a group of engineers in the first of two local speeches.

By Curt Brown, Star Tribune

Last update: June 18, 2007 - 11:41 PM

Tiptoeing between pep talk and gloom and doom, former President Bill Clinton told a group of scientific engineers Monday in Minneapolis that their work will help steer the world either "through a train wreck or to a better tomorrow.

"I really believe the 21st century will, more likely than not, be the most exciting time ever in all of human history to be alive," Clinton told more than 1,000 people at the 100th anniversary meeting of the Michigan-based American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers.

The 15-minute chat was the first of two Clinton speeches at the Minneapolis Convention Center. His fees for speaking weren't disclosed. The main event for his trip was a private afternoon talk at a leadership seminar called "The Power Within." According to ethics reports filed by his wife, U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, the same group paid Bill Clinton an average of $325,000 for two speeches in 2005, the Washington Post reported. Clinton said he agreed to speak to the engineers because he was in Minnesota and knows someone connected to the group.

How agricultural and biological engineers respond to climate change, resource depletion and the world's mushrooming population will be the three-pronged key to the world's future, Clinton said.

"Substantial and largely unwelcome consequences" of climate change will make the next 50 years especially important for scientific engineers, he said.

Depleted resources, from topsoil for farming to oil for jet fuel, are "a big, big problem," according to the 60-year-old former president.

He pointed out that Jericho is the oldest city on Earth at 10,000 years and said, "If the optimists are right and we have 100 years left of recoverable oil, that means we have 1 percent of all of civilized history to figure out what to do without oil."

And with the globe's population expected to soar from 6.5 billion to 9 billion by 2050, Clinton prompted a chuckle with a mention of immigration legislation.

"If you have been an interested observer of the illegal immigration debate in the United States Congress, you just wait," he said. "You ain't seen nothing yet."

Where 2.5 billion newcomers are going to go to earn a living and eat, Clinton said, will be up to folks like those in the audience. "It's an engineer's dream," he said. "Get more kids to follow in your footsteps and just realize: It's great to have that kind of responsibility, and it certainly will be an interesting time to be an engineer."

Curt Brown • 651-298-1542 • curt.brown@startribune.com

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