Green Energy Reporter

President Barack Obama addressed a crowd at MIT this afternoon on America’s green energy future. The video is available here, sorry no embed link yet. The president’s full remarks are here.

 Environmental Capital’s Keith Johnson has a quick response, noting that Obama didn’t make the case for climate legislation and talked more about jobs and innovation. (WSJ’s Washington Wire speculates the trip to Boston was less about climate change legislation than about the fundraisers that will follow) What is striking however is that he threw his weight behind Sen. John Kerry’s partnership with Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham and made mention of “creating safe nuclear power”.

Johnson doesn’t see anything new here and he registers disappointment that, one day after a Pew poll found that global warming is becoming less of an issue to Americans, Obama said little about curbing greenhouse gas emissions. We believe that this is a tactical move, designed to tie climate change legislation to issues that Americans actually care about, such as the economy and security.

For example, Obama talks about “the passage of comprehensive legislation [Boxer-Kerry, Waxman-Markey)  that will finally make renewable energy the profitable kind of energy in America.” He talks about the Pentagon declaring “our dependence on foreign oil a security threat.”

Some choice bits of the speech follow after the jump. Read More »