In his inaugural address, President Barrack Hussein Obama did not shy away from making serious statements. We live in serious times and President Obama’s speech reflected that in a call on all to step up in addressing those challenges. And, amid his words, the President gave weight to issues of energy and global warming.
each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.
In the first paragraphs of his first speech, the 44th President signaled clearly that denial of our challenges of global warming will no longer be acceptable in the the halls of the Executive Branch.
We will restore science to its rightful place
Change has arrived!
The problems are real. The problems are there. The problems will be answered:
I say to you that the challenges we face are real, they are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this America: They will be met.
The seriousness of these challenges cannot be underestimated, the seriousness required to address them cannot be overestimated, but Obama reminded us all that we can, that we have risen to challenges before.
Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions — who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short. For they have forgotten what this country has already done; what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose, and necessity to courage.
Within this powerful speech, the President highlighted multiple energy-related actions that are on the top of the agenda. And, that these issues are not some casual economic issue (“addiction to oil”) but core to the most serious national security concerns.
With old friends and former foes, we’ll work tirelessly to lessen the nuclear threat and roll back the specter of a warming planet.
And, President Obama certainly spoke to American exceptionalism, including our exception profligacy of energy and other resource use, including the opportunities and responsibilities due to wastefulness — including responsibility to poorer nations.
To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds. And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to suffering outside our borders; nor can we consume the world’s resources without regard to effect.
The call, the emphasis for changed relationships was a theme throughout the speech. While there was a serious reaching of hands ‘across the aisles’, there also was a tone of: join the effort or get out of the way.
For everywhere we look, there is work to be done.
The state of our economy calls for action: bold and swift. And we will act not only to create new jobs but to lay a new foundation for growth.
We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together.
Note, “the electric grids” are critical for moving toward a more efficient and capable movement of power across the nation and enabling a significant increasing of renewable power contribution to electrical power production.
We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories.
Hmmm … nothing about drilling more holes in the ground? What might the nation’s top energy expert, Sarah Palin, think of this?
All this we can do. All this we will do.
John Romm certainly captured the speech:
I think this was an astonishing speech, a clarion call to act on a variety of great tasks in the strongest possible terms, most especially on clean energy, resource efficiency, and global warming.
And, as Joe emphasized, “Finally, most important, it was a call to all Americans.”
To all Americans …
And Joe continued:
It bears repeating again and again and again — if we do not preserve a livable climate, if we do not stabilize atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide at 450 ppm or below, then our children’s children will say we were tested and failed. Indeed, they will probaby curse our names.
Thankfully, we have a president who clearly understands the challenge and the opportunity, a president who is willing to use his considerable rhetorical and political talents to save even those who don’t think we need saving.
Good luck, Mr. President.
Well, first, good luck to all of us, all of the U.S.
Even more importantly, we must not wish “good luck”, we must fight to create the circumstances for that ‘good luck’ to occur. The future of the planet is too serious to simply leave to chance.