President Obama's MIT Energy Speech

President Obama's energy speech at MIT is now being webcast live. Rebroadcast will be available shortly after the speech. [Update: streaming rebroadcast is now available at the link.]

In the relatively short speech (about 15 minutes) to an enthusiastic audience, the President focused on the economic need for clean and sustainable energy, but he also mentioned the overwhelming body of scientific evidence regarding climate change:

The naysayers, the folks who would pretend that this is not an issue, they are being marginalized. But I think it’s important to understand that the closer we get, the harder the opposition will fight and the more we’ll hear from those whose interest or ideology run counter to the much needed action that we’re engaged in. There are those who will suggest that moving toward clean energy will destroy our economy — when it’s the system we currently have that endangers our prosperity and prevents us from creating millions of new jobs. There are going to be those who cynically claim — make cynical claims that contradict the overwhelming scientific evidence when it comes to climate change, claims whose only purpose is to defeat or delay the change that we know is necessary.

The full text of the speech is available here.

The speech followed a tour of MIT's energy research laboratories.

Photo from The Tech, "MIT's oldest and largest newspaper & the first newspaper published on the web"