A first-hand taste of a searing southern heat wave prompted US President Bill Clinton to warn of catastrophic climate changes.
"After this summer, don't you believe that the climate is warming up?" Clinton asked guests at a fundraiser Saturday in his sizzling hometown of Little Rock.
Intense heat and drought have scorched crops and claimed the lives of at least 85 people across the southern United States. Wildfires have raged in Florida and flooding has submerged swathes of Tennessee.
Clinton referred to his announcement earlier Saturday that Washington planned to buy surplus wheat from beleaguered US farmers.
In his weekly radio address, the president said the plan to buy up more than 80 million bushels of wheat for an overseas food aid program could lift prices by as much as 13 cents a bushel.
"For many of our farmers, heat or flood or pestilence have created this crazy condition," he said, adding: "Things are changing."
Global warming is a favorite theme for Clinton of late as he seeks to persuade US industries -- and their Republican allies who control Congress -- to sign on to the international climate treaty concluded in Kyoto, Japan last year.
The accord calls on industrialized nations to reduce emissions of so-called greenhouse gases from 1990 levels between 2008 and 2012 by an overall 5.2 percent.
The United States, the biggest polluter, must reduce gases to seven percent below 1990 levels, while the European Union has agreed to cuts of eight percent from 1990.
The pact would go into effect after 55 countries -- including developed countries accounting for most of 1990 global carbon dioxide emissions -- ratify the Kyoto protocol.
Dozens of countries have signed the agreement but none has yet ratified the treaty and issues such as burden-sharing and the role of developing countries must still be worked out.
Clinton is hoping to persuade Congress that the targets can be reached without harming the economy but the White House says there is no chance of any action this year.
Clinton has blasted the Republicans for denying him funds to hold seminars on the problem and noted that on his recent trip to China his environmental efforts were well received.
"I talked about climate change and how we had to work with the Chinese to see them grow their economy without using energy in the same way we did," he said.
"Otherwise we could burn up the atmosphere and it would be hard for us to breathe, which is already a big problem over there," he added.
The president is here visiting family and engaging in his favorite pastime -- golf -- despite the soaring temperatures.
He is also dodging the heat in Washington, where the Supreme Court's chief justice on Friday dealt him a blow by rejecting his last-ditch effort to prevent Secret Service agents from testifying in the White House intern sex scandal.
Three agents testified Friday and others are expected to take the stand in the coming days along with Linda Tripp, who secretly taped Monica Lewinsky talking about having sex with the president when she was a 21-year-old intern.
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