It's happened: the candidates are now facing off
on PHEVs. For the previous round, see our July 1
posting, "Obama/McCain/GM/Ford Maneuver for
Support on PHEVs" http://www.calcars.org/calcars-news/968.html ).

Now Barack Obama has become more specific -- as
we'd hoped he would -- plus he has addressed Sen.
McCain's ideas and offered more. Both campaigns
have advisors who favor plug-in cars, and many
advocates are sending them suggestions and
talking points, so we are expectantly watching what comes next!

Below we present the best clips, followed by the
full text of the speech as prepared for delivery
to a town hall meeting at Stivers School for the
Arts in Dayton, Ohio, including our [bracketed
inserts] showing significant additions and
applause and [timings] for the speech as
delivered. You can watch the 24-minute speech at
YouTube at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_htFLt01ntU&feature=user
-- you'll as delivered it's a bit more
colloquial. And we hope both campaign staffs will
take note that the largest applause lines came
for PHEVs, auto jobs, and the seeing this as a
"Pearl Harbor" moment. Before the transcript, we
include a post-speechc interview where Obama
talks about how automakers could retool their SUV
plants to produce hybrids, saving thousands of jobs.

And finally, we've squeezed in two links: to
OPUS, the first syndicated cartoon on PHEVs, and
to a stirring plug-in agenda by Jack Hidary.


EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: our compilation of favorite
sentences from the speech. (We've already seen
creative video editing in this campaign: if
someone is inspired to make a 2-minute video of
the best clips and put it on YouTube, we'll spread the word far and wide!

We must end the tyranny of oil in our time, in
this generation.... When I arrived in the U.S.
Senate... I also passed a law that will fuel the
research needed to develop a car that can get 500
miles to the gallon.... My plan is going to
fast-track $150 billion of investment in a clean
energy fund to help create the fuel-efficient
cars and alternative sources of energy that will
secure this nation and jumpstart a green
economy.... we can by reducing our consumption
save the same amount that we import from all the
OPEC nations. That's the direction we've gotta take....

First, we'll double our fuel mileage standards
over the next two decades utilizing much of the
technology we have on the shelf today - a step
that will save this country half a trillion
gallons of gasoline, the equivalent of cutting
the price of a gallon of gas in half. And I will
provide tax credits and loan guarantees for our
automakers to help them make this
transition....Second, we'll launch a Venture
Capital Fund that will provide $50 billion over
five years to get the most promising clean energy
technologies out of the lab and into the
marketplace. A principal focus of this fund will
be continuing the work I began in the Senate and
investing in plug-in hybrid batteries that will
allow cars to get up to 500 miles per gallon. By
the way I'm glad that Senator McCain now
understands the importance of this battery
technology, but it's gonna take a lot more than a
cash prize, a Reader's Digest Sweepstakes, to
achieve this goal. It will take some serious
investment on the part of the federal government,
in partnership with the auto companies, with
research universities, with states like Ohio and
Michigan and Indiana that have a long history of
working in the automotive field. Fourth, we'll
use our clean energy fund to invest over $1
billion a year to re-tool and modernize our
factories and build the advanced technology cars,
trucks and SUVs of the future - so that the jobs
and industries of the future are created right
here in the United States of America....

Most importantly, this plan will ensure that we
control the energy we use with resources and
technology that are available today. The steps I
just spoke about are not far-off, pie-in-the-sky
solutions, they are here and they are now....In
the last century, during the days that followed
the attack on Pearl Harbor, the American people
were asked, almost overnight, to transform a
peacetime economy that was still climbing out
from the depths of depression into an Arsenal of
Democracy that could wage war across three
continents. Many doubted whether this could be
achieved in time, or even at all. President
Franklin Roosevelt's own advisors told him that
his goals for wartime production were unrealistic
and impossible to meet. But FDR simply waved them
off, saying, believe me, "the production people
can do it if they really try." That was FDR's
attitude: "Don't tell me we can't do it. Yes we can."


INTERVIEW WITH OBAMA ABOUT CARS & JOBS
Obama: Dayton could be leader in green future
Dayton Daily News, Saturday, July 12, 2008 By Laura A. Bischoff, Staff Writer
http://www.daytondailynews.com/n/content/oh/story/news/local/2008/07/11/ddn07120\
8obamainterview.html

DAYTON — Dayton and other parts of the Midwest
should be the hub of new green energy jobs, given
its location and skilled work force, Democrat
Barack Obama told the Dayton Daily News on Friday, July 11.

"One of the benefits of being in the Midwest is
that we should be at the center of the action,"
Obama said in a brief interview following his
town hall meeting at Stivers School for the Arts.

When asked what he would do as president to bring
jobs back to Dayton, Obama said, "Dayton and
other portions of the Midwest that have been
hard-hit by the loss of manufacturing should be
some of the centers for building this new green
economy that has to be one of our priorities
moving forward. It's critical that we develop a
car that's getting much higher mileage. It's
critical that we are developing biofuels that can
help drive our economy and loosen our dependence
on foreign oil. And Ohio and cities like Dayton
have the skilled workforce, the experience in
manufacturing, the research facilities that allow
them to be centerpieces for the major investment
— $15 billion a year, as I talked about. I also
think that Dayton has a distribution hub
historically and can benefit from infrastructure
improvements of the sort that I've called for."

With the high gas prices and slumping economy,
General Motors announced last month that it is
closing its sport utility vehicle assembly plant
and eliminating 2,500 jobs. Aiming for the
long-term goal of energy independence does not
have to mean sacrifice and pain in the near term
for auto towns like Dayton, Obama said.

"The problem is, had we said to the automakers
20, 25 years ago, 'We are going to work with you
to make more fuel efficient cars but that's the
direction we have to go,' car makers would have
adapted. But they were resistant and we didn't
have the political will to do it," Obama said.
"And so, instead of that SUV plant, we could have
had a Prius plant or the U.S. equivalent of a
Prius plant, a hybrid plant. We can't double back
on that lack of foresight but at least moving
forward we can make sure that we are planning for
the future so that 20 years from now, people are
looking back and saying Dayton has been a city
that sees the future and America is a country that sees the future."


OBAMA'S SPEECH IN DAYTON
Watch it (23:50 minutes) at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_htFLt01ntU&feature=user
Remarks of Senator Barack Obama, provided by his
press officer as as prepared for delivery in Dayton on Friday.
Posted by Plain Dealer staff July 11, 2008
12:55PM
http://blog.cleveland.com/pdextra/2008/07/transcript_of_barack_obamas_sp.html

I've often said that the decisions we make in
this election and in the next few years will set
the course for the next generation. That is true
of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's true of
our economy. And it is especially true of our energy policy.

The urgency of this challenge is clear to anyone
who's tried to fill up their tank with gas that's
now over $4 a gallon. It's clear to the legions
of scientists who believe that we are nearing a
point of no return when it comes to our global
climate crisis. And with each passing day, it is
clear that our addiction to fossil fuels is one
of the most serious threats to our national security in the 21st century.

For the last eight years, this Administration has
narrowly defined security as fighting an
open-ended war in Iraq. But in the interconnected
world of this new century, new threats come from
stateless terrorists, loose nuclear weapons, the
spread of pandemic disease, an inability to
compete with rising powers in the global economy,
the threat of global climate change and our
dependence on foreign oil. I'll be talking about
these threats next week and in the weeks to come,
and today I'd like to begin with those related to energy.

We now know that the carbon emissions released by
countries across the globe are warming our
planet, which leads to devastating weather
patterns, terrible storms, drought, and famine.
In fact, studies show that by 2050, famine could
displace more than 250 million people worldwide.
That means people competing for food and water in
the next fifty years in the very places that have
known horrific violence in the last fifty:
Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. That is a threat to our security.

An even more immediate and direct security threat
comes from our dependence on foreign oil. The
price of a barrel of oil is now one of the most
dangerous weapons in the world. Tyrants from
Caracas to Tehran use it to prop up their
regimes, intimidate the international community,
and hold us hostage to a market that is subject
to their whims. If Iran decided to shut down the
petroleum-rich Strait of Hormuz tomorrow, they
believe oil would skyrocket to $300-a-barrel in
minutes, a price that one speculator predicted
would result in $12-a-gallon gas. $12 a gallon.

The nearly $700 million a day we send to unstable
or hostile nations also funds both sides of the
war on terror, paying for everything from the
madrassas that plant the seeds of terror in young
minds to the bombs that go off in Baghdad and
Kabul. Our oil addiction even presents a target
for Osama bin Laden, who has told al Qaeda,
"focus your operations on oil, since this will
cause [the Americans] to die off on their own."

If we stay on our current course, the rapid
growth of nations like China and India will rise
about one-third by 2030. In that same year,
Middle Eastern regimes will be sitting on 83% of
our global oil reserves. Imagine that - the very
source of energy that fuels nearly all of our
transportation, controlled almost entirely by
some of the world's most unstable and undemocratic governments.

[4:45] This is not the future I want for America.
We are not a country that places our fate in the
hands of dictators and tyrants - we are a nation
that controls our own destiny. That's who we are.
That's who we've always been. It's what led us to
wage a revolution that brought down an Empire.
It's why we built an Arsenal of Democracy to
defeat Fascism, and stopped the spread of
Communism with the power of our ideals. And it's
why we must end the tyranny of oil in our time [in this generation].

This is a debate we've been having in this
campaign, but it's also an issue we've been
talking about for decades. We have heard promises
about energy independence from every single U.S.
President since Richard Nixon. We've heard talk
about curbing our use of fossil fuels in nearly
every State of the Union address since the oil
embargo 1973. Back then we imported about a third
of our oil. Today we import over half.

Now, a few days ago, Senator McCain said, "Our
dangerous dependence on foreign oil has been
thirty years in the making, and was caused by the
failure of politicians in Washington to think
long-term about the future of the country."

I couldn't agree more. The only problem is that
out of those thirty years, Senator McCain [should
look in the mirror because he] was in Washington
for twenty-six of them. And in that time he has
achieved little to help reduce our dependence on
foreign oil. He's voted against raising our fuel
mileage standards and joined George Bush in
opposing legislation twice in the last year that
included tax credits for more efficient cars.
He's voted against alternative sources of energy.
Against clean biofuels. Against solar power.
Against wind power. Against an energy bill that
represented the largest investment in renewable
sources of energy in the history of this country.

So when he talks about the failure of politicians
in Washington to do anything about our energy
crisis, understand that Senator McCain has been a
part of that failure. When he proposes policies
that give $4 billion in tax breaks to oil
companies but only pennies a day to Americans
struggling with high gas prices, understand that
that's not part of the solution in Washington,
that's part of the problem in Washington. When he
offers a plan that doesn't make any real
investment in alternative sources of energy, that
represents a failure to think long-term about our
nation's future. That's what we've had [enough
of] in this country for too many years, and
that's why we need change in November. [That's
why I'm running for president, to change
Washington, to change this policy. [applause]

I won't pretend this change will be easy or that
it will come without significant cost or some
measure of sacrifice from the American people.
Achieving energy independence is one of the
greatest challenges we've ever faced, and it will
be the great project of our generation. [But I
believe that progress is not only possible but imperative.]

When I arrived in the U.S. Senate, I worked with
Democrats and Republicans to pass a law that will
give more Americans the chance to fill up their
cars with clean biofuels.[9:36] I also passed a
law that will fuel the research needed to develop
a car that [can get] 500 miles to the gallon.
[applause] And I reached across the aisle to come
up with a plan to raise the mileage standards in
our cars for the first time in thirty years - a
plan that won support from Democrats and
Republicans who had never supported raising fuel standards before.

Today, with oil and gas prices this high, we hear
a lot of plans and proposals coming out of
Washington since politicians are finally paying
attention. The problem is, they're reacting
instead of acting. They're searching for easy
answers to get them through the next election
instead of serious, long-term solutions that will
offer real relief and real security for America.

I understand the politics. In a country desperate
for action, ideas like a gas tax holiday or
expanded oil drilling in the waters off our
coasts are popular. And I'll say this - if there
were real evidence that these steps would
actually provide real, immediate relief at the
pump and advance the long-term goal of energy
independence, of course I'd be open to them. But so far there isn't.

As good as they sound, the history of gas tax
holidays is that the prices go up to fill in the
gap, and the big winners end up being the
retailers and oil companies - not the American
people. That's what happened when we had a gas
tax holiday in Illinois that I supported, and
that's why we ended up repealing it. It didn't
work. And it would also drain the federal highway
fund of billions of dollars and cost hundreds of thousands of American jobs.

When it comes to offshore drilling, even Senator
McCain [and George Bush's office of energy have]
acknowledged that it won't provide short-term
relief. In fact, if we started drilling today, we
wouldn't see a drop of oil for seven years, and
even then it would have little if any impact on prices.

Meanwhile, the oil companies currently have the
rights to drill on 68 million acres of land and
offshore areas that they haven't touched. I
believe that before we give the oil companies any
more land, it's time we tell them to start
drilling on the land they already have or turn it
over to someone who will, because we need that
oil. We should also invest in the technology that
can help us recover more oil from existing
fields. And we should also look to our
substantial natural gas reserves to tap a source
of energy that's already powering buses and cars here and around the world.

In the long-term, however, we have to remember
that these domestic resources are finite. Even if
you opened up every square inch of our land and
our coasts to drilling, America still has only 3%
of the world's oil reserves. Senator McCain may
believe otherwise, but that is not a real solution to our energy crisis.

What we need are real ideas to give hardworking
Americans relief from high gas prices, and
serious, long-term investments to permanently
reduce our dependence on foreign oil. That's exactly what my plan does.

To provide immediate relief, I've proposed a
second, $50 billion stimulus package that would
send energy rebate checks to every American. I've
asked Senator McCain to join me in passing such a
plan, and I extend that invitation again today.
I've also proposed a $1,000 middle-class tax cut
that will go to 95% of all workers and their
families. And I'll crack down on oil speculators
who may be artificially driving up the price of oil.

[15:57] But to truly reduce our long-term
dependence on foreign oil, my plan [is going to]
fast-track $150 billion of investment in a clean
energy fund to help create the fuel-efficient
cars and alternative sources of energy that will
secure this nation and jumpstart a green economy.
It's a plan that will reduce our oil consumption
10 million barrels per day by 2030, which is more
than all the oil we're expected to import from
OPEC nations in that same year. [Think of that,
we can by reducing our consumption save the same
amount that we import from all the OPEC nations.
That's the direction we've gotta take. Now here's how we'll do it.]

First, we'll double our fuel mileage standards
over the next two decades utilizing much of the
technology we have on the shelf today - a step
that will save this country half a trillion
gallons of gasoline, the equivalent of cutting
the price of a gallon of gas in half. And I will
provide tax credits and loan guarantees for our
automakers to help them make this transition. [applause]

Second, we'll launch a Venture Capital Fund that
will provide $50 billion over five years to get
the most promising clean energy technologies out
of the lab and into the marketplace. [applause]
[17:50] A principal focus of this fund will be
continuing the work I began in the Senate and
investing in plug-in hybrid batteries that will
allow cars to get up to 500 miles per gallon.
[appause] [18:09] [By the way] I'm glad that
Senator McCain now understands the importance of
this battery technology, but [it's gonna] take a
lot more than a cash prize, [a Reader's Digest
Sweepstakes,] to achieve this goal. It will take
[some serious investment on the part of the
federal government, in partnership with the auto
companies, with research universities, with
states like Ohio and Michigan and Indiana that
have a long history of working in the automotive field.] [applause]

[18:45] Third, to create a market for alternative
sources of energy like solar, wind, , I'll
require that 25% of our electricity comes
renewable sources by 2025, and that we produce
two billion gallons of advanced cellulosic
biofuels by 2013. We'll also invest in finding
cleaner ways to use coal, our nation's most
abundant energy source, and safer ways to use
nuclear power and store nuclear waste.

[19:22] Fourth, we'll use our clean energy fund
to invest over $1 billion a year to re-tool and
modernize our factories and build the advanced
technology cars, trucks and SUVs of the future
[applause] - so that the jobs and industries of
the future are created right here in the United States of America. [applause]

Finally, one of the fastest, easiest, and
cheapest ways to conserve energy and use less oil
is to make America more energy efficient and more
competitive with the world. That's why, when I'm
President, I will call on businesses, government,
and the American people to make America 50% more energy efficient by 2030.

When all is said and done, my plan to invest $150
billion in alternative energy will create entire
new industries, thousands of new businesses, and
up to five million new, green jobs that pay well
and can't be outsourced. [applause] And we pay
for all of it by taking away tax breaks for oil
companies and putting a price on carbon pollution
- a step that will also reduce our carbon emissions 80% by 2050.

[21:03] Most importantly, this plan will ensure
that we control the energy we use with resources
and technology that are available today. The
steps I just spoke about are not far-off,
pie-in-the-sky solutions, they are [here and they
are] now. Today, there are waiting lists for
fuel-efficient cars. There's an old steel mill in
Pennsylvania that has become the home of a new
wind turbine factory. I've seen a small business
in Nevada powered entirely by solar power. Across
the planet, countries like Germany and the United
Kingdom have already implemented clean energy
polices that are reducing their carbon emissions
right now, and leaders like Tony Blair and Angela
Merkel have done a great job of raising the
visibility of climate change within the G8. Now
it's our turn to lead - to show that this future is possible for America.

[22:05] In the last century, during the days that
followed the attack on Pearl Harbor, the American
people were asked, almost overnight, to transform
a peacetime economy that was still climbing out
from the depths of depression into an Arsenal of
Democracy that could wage war across three continents.

[22:26] Many doubted whether this could be
achieved in time, or even at all. President
Franklin Roosevelt's own advisors told him that
his goals for wartime production were unrealistic
and impossible to meet. But [FDR] simply waved
them off, saying, believe me, "the production
people can do it if they really try." [That was
FDR's attitude: "Don't tell me we can't do it. Yes we can."] [applause]

The [challenges we face from our energy
dependence are] great. Meeting it will take time,
and it will not be easy. But if we're willing to
work at it, and invest in it, and sacrifice for
it; if we're willing to summon the same spirit of
optimism and possibility that has defined this
country's greatest progress, then I believe that
we too [can] do it if we really try. [Yes we
can.] And I look forward to trying with you,[Dayton]. Thank you.

TWO CURRENT LINKS: HIDARY AND OPUS
Here's "Oil Gone Wild" by Jack Hidary
(entrepreneur, chairman of
SmartTransportation.org, which brought hybrid
taxis to New York City and co-creator of the new
Congressional Freedom Prize:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jack-hidary/oil-gone-wild_b_112446.html

Here's the first nationally syndicated carton
featuring PHEVs: OPUS by Berkeley Breathed, July
6, 2008: http://wpcomics.washingtonpost.com/client/wpc/wpopu/2008/07/06/


-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
Felix Kramer fkramer@...
Founder California Cars Initiative
http://www.calcars.org
http://www.calcars.org/news-archive.html
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --