Bill Clinton Warns of Looming Disasters
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Saturday May 5, 2007 3:31 AM

By JESSE HARLAN ALDERMAN

Associated Press Writer

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) - Former President Bill Clinton said Friday that
disasters such as worldwide famine and an obesity epidemic threaten the
country's stability unless politicians begin to look ahead and cooperate.

Clinton, speaking at a forum sponsored by Harvard University's John F.
Kennedy School of Government, said governments fail to act even when
disasters are anticipated because leaders are distracted by fulfilling
campaign promises and scrambling to respond to immediate emergencies.
Big-picture planning gets ``crowded out,'' he said.

``This is coming,'' Clinton said. ``And I know there is no great
political constituency for it, but we can avert these disasters for not
very much money if they can be put into the public debate and people
understand clearly what's going to happen.''

The Kennedy School is spending $1.5 million over two years to study why
governments across the world have failed to act on threats such as heat
waves and hurricanes, even when they know they are coming.

 From looking back at Hurricane Katrina and forward to the absence of
firm plans to cool the planet or stem malaria, some of the school's top
researchers will study the roots of government inaction.

The studies will help Congress, presidential candidates and world
leaders learn from past mistakes and prepare for future action, said
Christopher Stone, a Kennedy School professor and head of the initiative.

The program was born in the botched response to Katrina - the hurricane
that experts had warned for years would ravage New Orleans' inadequate
levies and poorly sheltered coast.

 From looking at the failures, the world can better prepare for future
disasters, just as the architects of World War II righted the woeful
preparation for World War I, Stone said.

``Each of these are threats that we know are going to happen. This is
not like saying, 'What do we do if the president of China is kidnapped
tomorrow,''' Stone said. ``It's not even that there is really technical
disagreement about these things. It's just a matter of figuring how we
can get governments to act.''

Clinton warned presidential candidates of both parties - a group that
includes his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton - that it will be hard,
and likely unpopular, to prepare for foreseeable disasters.

He said the next president should solve the ``biggest, baddest
problems''; take small action when the whole problem cannot be
addressed; never appoint incompetent political allies to positions of
disaster response; never let political ideology blur scientific
evidence; and cooperate nationally and internationally.