Storms, droughts, wildfires ‘wreaking havoc,’ Hillary Clinton warns

LAS VEGAS – Hillary Rodham Clinton, former United States Secretary of State, warned Thursday of the threat of climate change and contended that the U.S. should become what she called the world’s 21st-century clean energy superpower, during the National Clean Energy Summit in Las Vegas.

Clinton cast the threat of global climate change as real and “the most consequential, urgent, sweeping collection of challenges” faced by the nation and the world.

“The data is unforgiving,” the former New York senator and first lady said to a standing-room crowd of more than 800 people at a Las Vegas Strip resort. “No matter what the deniers try to assert. Sea levels are rising. Ice caps are melting. Storms, droughts and wildfires are wreaking havoc.”

“The threat is real, but so is the opportunity,” she said.

Clinton, widely considered a leading Democratic candidate for president, used her speech to plug her book “Hard Choices” and the work of the Clinton Climate Initiative arm of a foundation established in 2005 by her husband, former President Bill Clinton.

She also segued into the topic of the day in Nevada at the seventh annual green energy conference hosted by U.S. Senate Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Clinton credited northern Nevada’s selection for a $5 billion Tesla automobile battery plant to the emergence of Nevada as a leader in solar, wind and geothermal energy projects.

Clinton’s speech to a standing-room crowd of more than 800 marked her return to the Las Vegas Strip hotel where a 36-year-old Phoenix woman was arrested in April after throwing a shoe but missing Clinton on stage. Security was tight, with federal agents and local police visible, and there was no similar disruption on Thursday.

Once, Clinton referred to the 112 countries she said she visited as secretary of state. She said she came away optimistic about what the U.S. can do “when we decide we’re in the futures business in America.”

“If we come together to make the hard choices, the smart investment in infrastructure, technology and environmental protection, America can be the clean-energy superpower for the 21st century,” she said.

Hillary Rodham Clinton, United States Secretary of State from 2009-13, New York Democrat Senator 2001-09 and wife of former President Bill Clinton. Photo courtesy of the Clinton Foundation