What a day! This morning, as I was getting ready to leave for President Obama’s Earth Day speech in Newton (I managed to get a White House Press pass!), I got a message from Kevin Brubaker, ELPC’s Deputy Director, that my friend Juliana was in the Register with a guest opinion on rail service. You can find it here: http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20090422/OPINION04/904220339/1038/OPINION. If you like it, please log into the Register site and leave a comment!
After giving a celebratory ‘five’ to my co-worker Kerri, I took my Mapquest (yes, Mapquest) off the printer and headed out for the event. At Trinity Structural Towers, the component manufacturer that’s helping to revive the economy in Newton, I got stuck in the press line and wasn’t sure I’d make it in… and so was Brad Ehrlich of WHO, who I know from earlier interviews. So I felt a little better. He’s a good guy, and we had a few laughs while waiting for our credentials. After the Secret Service cleared us, I was in. Wow.
A little less nervous than waiting in the press line, there was still a touch of incredulity while I set up our small digital camcorder and tripod on the press riser just a few yards to the left of the stage. The stage whose podium had the Presidential seal. Pretty heady stuff.
Our camcorder is much, much smaller than all the TV station cameras on the platform, and I think the press people looked at me with both a touch of skepticism and envy. ‘New Media’, was the look they had… I just smiled and set up the shot. Hey, we’re the Iowa Global Warming Campaign, we get access!
Once I was ready there was time to kill, and everyone in the ‘room’ (room being the size of a small warehouse) was checking each other out. As you could tell from my ‘tweets’, about half of the audience were employees, right up front and center. The rest were a mix of VIPs, including Agriculture Secretary Vilsack, Congressman Boswell, Gov. Culver, state legislators and other officials, and of course the press. A lot of faces I recognized, and a few that recognized me – and we’re all looking at each other and waiting for something big. An Earth Day speech from a new President who knows Iowa and who understands the importance of clean energy. An Earth Day speech that matters.
And it didn’t disappoint. One line from the speech could sum up where we are and where we have to go: “the choice we face is not between saving our environment and saving our economy. The choice we face is between prosperity and decline”. And that’s where we are. So, what else was said, where are we going, where is this President trying to lead us? The rest of the speech is instructive, and it’s also inspiring.
Highlights? A ‘green light’ for an entirely new initiative to harvest energy from our oceans. Not just from offshore wind projects, but also tidal energy. There’s a huge opportunity to power our coastal areas, and I’m optimistic about the leadership stake that was announced here today. Another, and very crucial, announcement today: a ‘full court press’ on energy efficiency. We simply have to move on EE, and move quickly. It’s the first place we reduce greenhouse gases, and it’s the beginning of a trajectory that takes us into the future. And it was good to hear our new President say so.
One more key in the speech is modern transportation. That means more efficient vehicles; and it means passenger rail. We’ve been working on it here in Iowa for months, and President Obama stated very clearly that we have to make it a priority. I wasn’t the only one who noticed, either: the Register’s Twitter feed exploded with comments in favor of connecting to the Midwest Regional Rail Network – and I got a call from KCCI-TV asking for comment. It’s their top story of the night, and will be on in just a few minutes. If you get a chance, watch – I’m there representing your excitement and passion for transportation that works for us as well as the planet.
To watch the whole speech, visit our Mogulus channel at: http://www.mogulus.com/igwc. And if you haven’t yet, take action to make rail a reality for Iowa. Click here: http://actionnetwork.org/campaign/fund_iowa_rail
Happy Earth Day!
Andrew
