Energy efficiency dominates Clinton speech to EU Socialist conference

World leaders must focus on investing in energy efficiency if they are to have any chance of tackling the economic crisis, according to Bill Clinton.

Addressing a conference on global capitalism organised by the Socialist group in Brussels on Thursday, the former US president said socialists must not renege on their climate change objectives in the face of the economic crisis.

He told delegates in the European parliament that it was also important to maintain sight of tackling global inequality.

“We're living in a world now awash with global financial crisis, which I would argue to you is a metaphor for the challenges we face in so many other areas,” he said.

Clinton was speaking at the PES global progressive forum (GPF), alongside group president Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, GPF chair Josep Borrell and Socialist group parliament president Martin Schulz.

He argued that progressives face a challenge in balancing the need to support a globalised world with defending the rights of people within the community.

“The question is how do we support a more integrated world where borders are coming down and still preserve a sense of social justice and fairness within each nation, within each community?” Clinton said.

It would be a mistake to see the current financial crisis as an excuse to “completely walk away from integration”, he argued.

“The question is, can we apply what we have always believed to the conditions of the current moment and be faithful to the people that we represent?”

“It's an unequal world and an unstable world. It's also unsustainable because of the threat of climate change.”

Green investment would not only help provide a sustainable future, it would also create jobs at a time when they are desperately needed, Clinton said.

“The way out of the economic crisis is to take millions of jobs by committing the world to changing the way we power economic activity by clean energy and energy efficiency.”

Tackling global warming would “build economic opportunity and jobs and help us to solve the current crisis”, he stressed.

Speaking as protestors gather in London at the G20 summit, he said that the financial system had left people feeling uncomfortable for a long time.

“This great uprooting has left people - long before the current financial crisis - with a sense of being insecure [and] uncertain,” he said.

“We still have to deal with the fundamental underlying problem that if you are part of a progressive movement your first job is to provide jobs and incomes and social stability and progress to the people you represent.”

Clinton insisted that governments should be spending stimulus money now and said he had backed Barack Obama's economic recovery plan.

While spending could not solve all of the problems, he argued that “an aggravated stimulus programme” could help to “keep people going”.

Speaking earlier, Rasmussen said a new stimulus was needed to create jobs.

“The G20 may pledge to do more to create jobs if necessary – but it is necessary now,” he argued. “Here and now it's about jobs, jobs, jobs.”

While he said the G20 was “not a failure”, he said it “should have done more”.

The PES president also criticised the commission's economic recovery plan.

“My question to [commission president José Manuel] Barroso is, where have you hidden your recovery plan?”

He added, “Our job is to ensure that conservative leaders are under constant pressure to do their job. They say that Europe has done enough, I say that Europe has a lot more to do.”

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