Hamburg - Former US president Bill Clinton, 61, told an audience Sunday in Hamburg, Germany that the battle against global warming was not a cost factor but a business opportunity. He said one example was Denmark, which had achieved major economic growth in recent years without increasing its emissions of the greenhouse gases blamed for climate change.
Germany was also an example as a world leader in solar energy technology, he said.
"If we don't reduce greenhouse gases, some very bad things are going to happen," he warned in a speech to an audience of several hundred invited guests.
Clinton, who won two terms as president from 1993-2001, also appealed for more efforts worldwide to develop poor nations, saying it would prove far less expensive to pay for children to go to school than to send soldiers to war.
He said the best way to halt the population explosion would be simply to provide all girls with schooling and vocational training.
Clinton's wife, Senator Hillary Clinton, is seeking the centre- left Democratic Party's nomination for the 2008 US presidential election.
