A nation that lives as a community must value all its communities.  For the past five years, we have worked to bring the spark of private enterprise to inner city and poor rural areas with community development banks, more commercial loans into poor neighborhoods, cleanup of polluted sites for development.

Under the continued leadership of the vice president, we propose to triple the number of empowerment zones to give business incentives to invest in those areas.  We should.  We should also give poor families more help to move into homes of their own, and we should use tax cuts to spur the construction of more low-income housing.

Last year, this Congress took strong action to help the District of Columbia.  Let us renew our resolve to make our capital city a great city for all who live and visit here.

Our cities are the vibrant hubs of great metropolitan areas.  They are still the gateway for new immigrants from every continent who come here to work for their own American dreams.  Let’s keep our cities going strong into the 21st Century.  They’re a very important part of our future.

Our communities are only as healthy as the air our children breathe, the water they drink, the Earth they will inherit.  Last year we put in place the toughest-ever controls on smog and soot.  We moved to protect Yellowstone, the Everglades, Lake Tahoe.  We expanded every community’s right to know about toxics that threaten their children.

Just yesterday, our food safety plan took effect, using new science to protect consumers from dangers like e. coli and salmonella.

Tonight, I ask you to join me in launching a new Clean Water initiative, a far-reaching effort to clean our rivers, our lakes and our coastal waters for our children.

Our overriding environmental challenge tonight is the worldwide problem of climate change, global warming, the gathering crisis that requires worldwide action.  The vast majority of scientists have concluded unequivocally that if we don’t reduce the emission of greenhouse gases at some point in the next century, we’ll disrupt our climate and put our children and grandchildren at risk.

This past December, America led the world to reach a historic agreement committing our nation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through market forces, new technologies, energy efficiency.

We have it in our power to act right here, right now.  I propose $6 billion in tax cuts, in research and development, to encourage innovation, renewable energy, fuel-efficient cars, energy-efficient homes.  Every time we have acted to heal our environment, pessimists have told us it would hurt the economy.  Well, today our economy is the strongest in a generation, and our environment is the cleanest in a generation.  We have always found a way to clean the environment and grow the economy at the same time.  And when it comes to global warming, we’ll do it again.