In President Barack Obama’s address on American leadership in clean energy Oct. 23 at MIT, he challenged the nation to lead the world in developing and capitalizing on renewable energy. You can watch it and add your comments here on Slice.
“Energy supplies are growing scarcer and energy demands are grown larger and rising energy use imperils the planet,” Obama told the MIT audience. “The world is engaged in peaceful competition to determine the technologies that will power the 21st century….The nation that wins this competition will lead the global economy—and I want America to be that nation.”
President Barack Obama; flickr, via creative commons
Naturally the campus was in a flurry—with secret service and parking chaos and a tremendous excitement about the presidential visit. However, this not the first time Obama has recognized MIT’s energy leadership. President Susan Hockfield stood alongside the President at a March press conference in DC where he announced stimulus bill funding for new energy technology and energy efficiency of $39 billion overall, including $6.5 billion for R&D.
MIT, of course, is a hotbed of energy research these days. Research and education focused through the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) is revolutionizing the generation, storage, and use of energy, from technologies that turn windows into highly efficient, cost-effective solar cells to quantum dot light bulbs with five times the efficiency of incandescent ones. MIT is also framing the national energy debate with seminal reports to Congress on the future of coal, geothermal, and nuclear power, as well as cap-and-trade policy. And the MIT Energy Conference – launched and run by the 1,700 members of our student-led Energy Club – ranks as one of the nation’s premier energy events.
View a slideshow of images shot on campus during the morning of Obama’s talk:
October 23, 2009 at 11:13 am
Oh, WOW. LOL
October 23, 2009 at 11:23 am
I am so happy to see follow up to all too important energy issues that we are having. And what better place than MIT to make a statement. I hope that we can all do our part as faculty, students, alumni or staff to follow up on any challenges or efforts that come from this.
October 23, 2009 at 12:08 pm
Where is the video? Firefox is just showing me a static page. Internet Explorer tells me there is a bug in the code of the page.
http://amps-web.mit.edu/public/amps/webcast/2009/obama-2009oct23/
The speech will be over before the browser shows me anything.
October 23, 2009 at 5:41 pm
You could have turned on CNN and seen it almost live -just a 2 second delay!
October 23, 2009 at 12:12 pm
Well, it is slowly getting fixed. I can now at least get something in the Windows Media view although the flash was not working last time I tried.
October 23, 2009 at 1:11 pm
Finally a President who can appreciate and share in the excitement of the research and education going on at MIT.
October 23, 2009 at 2:11 pm
I’d like to see MIT’s efforts on the recovery of natural gas from shale highlighted. Please advise how you will accomplish this.
October 29, 2009 at 11:09 am
Technology Review’s cover story for November is about this topic! What timing.
October 23, 2009 at 3:16 pm
Access to Kresge was “extremely limited” and by special invitation only — no doubt restricted to those of the proper political persuasian. This is sad. I remember the days when MIT believed in open debate. The event included several hymns to the Religion of Global Warming and, although I didn’t watch the entire video, I’m pretty sure that inconvenient Science was not allowed to intervene in the festivities. It is also sad that MIT is being used in this way.
October 23, 2009 at 5:50 pm
I wonder what the MIT professors who don’t agree with the Religion of Global Warming thought of his speech…. were they even invited? …would love to hear from them.
Why isn’t anyone seriously talking about nuclear energy?
October 26, 2009 at 11:11 pm
Exactly — where is nuclear energy — and offshore drilling — and clean coal? Hearing from those who have alternative views?? what a radical concept!!
October 29, 2009 at 11:14 am
MIT has is on top of nuclear energy too. Here’s a recent major policy report: http://web.mit.edu/nuclearpower/
And the MITEI site has other research and major reports on clean coal etc. Here’s the MITEI site: http://web.mit.edu/mitei/index.html
October 23, 2009 at 3:21 pm
David,
I am sure MIT is sad that it is being used as a repository for millions of dollars in federal research funding. How are they ever going to dispose or recycle so much paper?
You think MIT got all those past DARPA funds by biting the hand that fed it?
I guess you didn’t take the course 29.1 Growing Up.
October 23, 2009 at 3:33 pm
Ah yes, ad hominem, the favorite refuge of the Left.
I agree with you completely, by the way, that MIT will be handsomely rewarded for being used.
October 23, 2009 at 4:03 pm
LOL Three-plus hours and my comment is still “awaiting moderation”. Guess I’m not sufficiently moderate.
October 23, 2009 at 7:31 pm
David,
I didn’t realize that telling you that MIT is run like a business and that a business doesn’t slap around a major customer was my way of promoting left wing concepts.
Telling you to give up childish idealism is an ad hominem attack?
Maybe your problem is not knowing right from left. Or is that ad hominem, too?
October 23, 2009 at 10:18 pm
I agree that the visit will be another politically correct, one-sided group grope about anthrocentric causes of global warming. It would be nice to have an address by someone holding another view. I don’t recall George W. Bush invited to the campus when he was president.
October 23, 2009 at 11:17 pm
There was little talk of global warming, which is OK. His key point is we are running out of fossil energy quickly and better find an alternative, or else. (what can’t go on forever, won’t, etc…) Since energy supplies are limited, we must conserve, or in other words, be more efficient. We have to reduce our energy consumption per capita by 25% to maybe over 50%. MIT could contribute tremendously in this area. There should have been more said.
October 24, 2009 at 9:29 am
Let me take a wild guess… Professor Lindzen was not invited to this event. Somehow, dissent is no longer the highest form of patriotism.
November 1, 2009 at 1:44 am
You have it exactly right, Brave Dot.
October 24, 2009 at 2:18 pm
Funny – Dead Economist Adam Smith Rants About Obama’s Energy Speech at MIT
http://02e56fa.netsolhost.com/blog1/index.php/2009/10/24/adam-smith-rants-about-obama-s-energy-sp
October 24, 2009 at 11:45 pm
Wow, skepticism abound in these comments. I can be as skeptical as anyone… but really guys, this was a tremendously inspirational speech! Yeah, so not every MIT student could go, but at least every MIT student could hear the extraordinary praise and challenge from President Obama to improve today’s energy situation.
Here’re a few resources to get more info:
Video of speech – http://amps-web.mit.edu/public/amps/webcast/2009/obama-2009oct23/ondemand.html
Transcript of speech – http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/24/us/politics/24obama.text.html?pagewanted=all
MIT student coverage (including info on how the tickets were doled out) – http://tech.mit.edu/V129/PDF/N47.pdf
October 29, 2009 at 1:26 am
Who cares about the speech. Here is an administration that has already done more and will do more to KILL the entrepreneurial spirit. So MIT trades its soul for a few $. It’s absolutely ridiculous. I am coming up to a major reunion and I can tell you that this appearance by the charlaton masquerading as president and using our alma mater as a platform for his ridiculous showcasing is causing me to, for the first time in many decades, terminate my pledge and donations to MIT. President Hochberg can make up the difference with an Obama-check.
October 25, 2009 at 3:08 pm
Repeat: An A+ to the President for encouraging innovation and its long term consequenses to continue technology and economic leadership. Hopefully there will be enough risk capital in the private sector. However USA green energy efforts short term will increase the cost of our goods in an intense global commpetition. Thus we need an international “level playing field” to improve the global environment agreed by all concerned. Very little was said about efficient USE of energy. Urban transportation in particular is a neglected wide open field for innovation at the systems level. We are still tinkering with dressed up 100+ year old mass transit concepts which under real conditions do little if any to save energy. Automobile improvements are welcome, but where are the roads to relive stifling congestion? A truly new look is needed, probaly in the direction of automated personal systems on efficient narrow electrified guideways. How can MIT help?
October 28, 2009 at 5:46 pm
I am disappointed to see MIT used by this communist who holds the office of president.
October 28, 2009 at 5:47 pm
Moderation? Does that mean checking for PC?
October 28, 2009 at 9:36 pm
I want to see the beef in the federal policy that is going to make the U.S. a leader in renewable energy. Just saying it isn’t enough. We’ve had enough of that approach in the last 9 years. It’s too bad the Nobel Peace Prize Committee jumped on the bandwagon to affirm the illusion of progressive change through atmospherics.
October 29, 2009 at 10:47 am
William F. Steagall, did you major in creative writing at MIT? You certainly couldn’t have been educated in one of the hard sciences.
Maybe your powers of observation have atrophied over the years since you graduated.
I certainly wouldn’t hire you to do any engineering for me. Your inability to see the plain facts in front of your face would disqualify you for anything but a marketing job.
October 30, 2009 at 1:45 am
There’s that old ad hominem again…
What are these “plain facts in front of your face”? Why are your comments all written in code? (And what is wrong with marketing???)
October 29, 2009 at 1:09 pm
SAVE ENERGY instead of wasting it.
I feel inspired to think also small things may help, like create a PC OS system to find out what parts of a operating system are necessary. You will find out, only a fraction is needed for the day to day business. Find at MIT a way to reduce Windows7 to that, built adequade PCs and save some 100 Nukes wordwide.
October 29, 2009 at 1:09 pm
Here’s the Obama visit from a student’s point of view…from the Admissions blogs.
http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/misc/miscellaneous/if_the_obama_were_a_unit_of_me.shtml
October 29, 2009 at 1:33 pm
As an MIT graduate, I am proud and excited Obama was at MIT. As the co-host of The Fairness Doctrine on WDIS-AM, Norfolk/Boston, it gives me and my coservative co-host, Chuck Morse, a nice local event to mix in with our commentary about national politics.
Dr. Patrick O’Heffernan
October 29, 2009 at 1:36 pm
Why is there no mention of the Williston Basin referred to as the BAKKEN? Using existing technology there is enough fossil fuel to power this country for the next 2000 years. Just think what new technology could produce. Check it out at http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=1911.
I am disappointed in MIT being used as a political forum. Lets face it, that was all that it was.
October 31, 2009 at 4:15 pm
Thank you for that link! That is exciting — much more so than an Obama speech at MIT. Energy policy should focus on developing technologies to exploit known resources like this one … and keeping the Greens out of the way.
November 11, 2009 at 5:03 am
[...] leadership in clean energy. The event generated discussions all over campus and the web (see our blog and Facebook comments from that [...]