Speeches

Remarks by Ambassador Patricia M. Haslach
on the occasion of the Ford Motor Company
Conservation and Environment Grants Award
February 7, 2006

Ambassador Patricia M. Haslach Attend  to Ford Environment Grants Award Ceremony

I am most pleased to come here today to ta lk to you bright young people. Lucky young people, too, I think, to be receiving environmental grants from the Ford Motor Company.

The damage being done to this beautiful country right now, by defores ta tion and wildlife poaching especially, and damage soon to be done by fuel dumping into the Mekong River, is almost irreversible.

People who choose careers in which they fight for the environment have an uphill battle, but it is the good fight. It's work of which you may be proud.

Young people like you represent the only hope Laos has for a real economic future, for real development.

Why did I refer to development? Isn't development bad for the environment? It can be, but I want to point out something about environmental work that you may already know: That development and business do not have to harm the ecology.

However, environmental preservation and resource conservation never happen unless people have economic incentives to pursue goals that contribute to them.

If people have reasons to behave in ecologically sound ways, they will do so. Environmental issues must be given an economic dimension that shows people how they may profit from supporting conservation and from preventing
pollution and the destruction of biodiversity.

For that reason, I hope some of you are also interested in business, and will become business people here later. In fact, any and all higher education is to the good, but what Laos needs most right now is business – and businesses that mili ta te to protect the unique eco-systems in your country.

Business is not bad. In fact, it is business that has brought you here today. One of the world's biggest businesses, the Ford Motor Company, an American corporation.

The Ford Company is a model that suits you to a T as you begin in environmental studies. Henry Ford began with very little and built one of the greatest corporations in history. He lived to see it become the largest car manufacturing company in the world.

His secret was that he aimed to build a car every person could afford. Nothing too fancy – but cheap and reliable.

That was a magic formula, and Ford brought the United States out of the horse-and-carriage age and into an era of horsepower, of widespread personal transpor ta tion and a nation-wide network of trucking companies - all private and all competing. Transportation was a big part of the economic revolution of the 20th Century.

You may note that the internal combustion engine also caused much of the pollution in the developed world. That's true, but it's Ford's exemplary drive and his passion for efficiency that I recommend to you.

Efficiencies are what you must look for. The environment can recover if we find efficient – meaning less polluting – ways to inhabit it.

Maximizing efficiency across the board in business, in energy use, in transportation, is the only way we're ever going to accomplish that.

Follow Henry Ford's example in maximizing efficiency and you have harnessed the power of the economy to pull in a more environmen tally sound direction.

Recent history in the West and in Japan shows clearly that a developed economy eventually turns its attention to environmen tal conservation.

Recent history in much of East and Southeast Asia, but particularly in China, shows that a developing economy destroys irreplaceable natural habitats very fast.

There is no good reason why Laos cannot eventually share in the economic development currently enjoyed by your neighbors, and you do not have to destroy your environment to do it. That prosperity is, for the most part, dependent upon light industry, carried out by private companies.

Your sponsor, Ford, is a good model to follow.