PORTLAND - The solutions to global poverty, to climate change, and to an end to the gospels of terrorism are within America's reach, former President Bill Clinton told a Portland audience Tuesday night.

“Because of technology, when people of limited means but large numbers band together, they can change the world,” Clinton said during a speech to the World Affairs Council. “When we take a deep breath, roll up our sleeves and go to work, there is still nobody better.”

In a broad-ranging speech that included a shout-out to the Oregon Ducks making it to the Elite Eight of the NCAA tournament, Clinton said the fundamental characteristic of the 21st century will be in the ever-closer connections across global communities, both culturally and economically.

That has both its positives and negatives, said the former president, who since leaving office has launched campaigns aimed at restoring the Gulf Coast post-Katrina and Southeast Asia post-tsunami, along with efforts to curb childhood obesity and stop the spread of diseases like AIDS, malaria and dysentery in third-world countries.

Cities like Portland, which has long looked to Asia as a trading partner, have benefited from the global interconnectedness, Clinton said. But the current concentration of wealth in only a handful of Westernized nations, along with widespread population growth and the spread of terrorism, points to an increasingly unstable, unsustainable and unequal outlook, he added.

Oil reserves are running low, the world's fisheries are depleted, water pollution is endemic and topsoil is eroding at alarming rates, Clinton said, “compromising our ability to sustain the people who are here, much less another 2.5 billion.”

That means change is not just an option, but a necessity, he told his audience, and at least some of that must begin with a worldwide conversation on security and stability.

Besides diplomacy, Clinton said the United States, and other Western nations, need to do more to address global poverty.