Bill Clinton Warns of Looming Disasters - Bible Prophecy News

Message from discussion Bill Clinton Warns of Looming Disasters
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*Perilous Times

Bill Clinton Warns of Looming Disasters
*

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.