Re: Is it fair to ask developing countries go green?

Description: Developing countries can go green, but we have to be delicate about leading them.

Is it fair to ask developing countries to go green?

Hill:        Well it’s a very difficult . . . it’s a very difficult question.  I mean it certainly . . . It’s very understandable that they could say like, “What are you doing telling us what to do?  Look what you’ve done.”  And you know, “We want our . . .  You’ve had your time in the sun.  We want ours.”  It’s very . . . it’s understandable, but it’s also very important.  So I don’t know.  I think that the . . . whether it’s Gandhi or Michael Jackson saying, you know, “Start with the man in the mirror,” I think . . . I think it’s really important that we do our thing and lead by example.  And I think that the U.S. should be . . .  The U.S. is a very powerful country, and one that can . . . can change, and one that can lead.  And I’d really like to see us lead.  And I think we’re . . . we’re starting.  And hopefully that will help developing countries see there’s another way of doing things.  And hopefully that can leapfrog and not sort of go through all that.  It’s a very challenging thing.  It’s a very understandable thing that these other countries wanna achieve a lifestyle that we’ve been living.  And so who are we to really say?  So I think we have to influence as much . . . much as we can and also lead by example.  We have to practice what we preach.

Hill:        Well I don’t think it’s very fun to be pessimistic, even if that might be the reality.  So I prefer to be an optimist.  And we just get . . . it’s there.  We just gotta have the will to do it.  And I think we just, like . . .  There are more and more leaders that are turning up, and we just have to do it.  And I think it’s . . . you know that’s fun!  Like we haven’t had our Apollo Project or Manhattan Project.  And that was like really a negative one, and people got . . . really got behind it.  So you know I’d really like to see us have this positive Manhattan Project, you know?  Let’s show the rest of the world that we can reinvent the way that we do things.  And in so doing create a great economy and really help our health overall, and you know build a better society.

Recorded on: Oct 16 2007