The following is a transcript of President John F. Kennedy's speech at Rice University in 1962, where he announced his plan to put a man on the moon before 1970... an audaciously courageous moment in American politics.
I have made some changes...
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After a special address to Congress only a few months before, in which the President laid out a specific, ambitious and expensive scientific and industrial plan for breaking American dependency on oil by the end of this decade, he goes on a speaking tour to sell this vision to the country.
President Obama steps up to a podium in front of thousands gathered at the California Institute of Technology, or perhaps MIT... the crowd knows something big is in the offing but little in the way of detail has been released in advance of the speech...
The President begins:
I appreciate your president having made me an honorary visiting professor, and I will assure you that my first lecture will be very brief.
I am delighted to be here and I'm particularly delighted to be here on this occasion.
We meet at a college noted for knowledge, in a city noted for progress, in a state noted for strength, and we stand in need of all three, for we meet in an hour of change and challenge, in a decade of hope and fear, in an age of both knowledge and ignorance. The greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds.
Despite the striking fact that most of the scientists that the world has ever known are alive and working today, despite the fact that this Nation's own scientific manpower is doubling every 12 years in a rate of growth more than three times that of our population as a whole, despite that, the vast stretches of the unknown and the unanswered and the unfinished still far outstrip our collective comprehension.
No one can fully grasp how far and how fast we have come, but condense, if you will, the 50,000 years of humanity's recorded history in a time span of but a half-century. Stated in these terms, we know very little about the first 40 years, except at the end of them advanced humanity had learned to use the skins of animals to cover them.
Then about 10 years ago, under this standard, humanity emerged from its caves to construct other kinds of shelter.
Only five years ago we learned to write and use a cart with wheels. Christianity began less than two years ago.
The printing press came this year, and then less than two months ago, during this whole 50-year span of human history, the steam engine provided a new source of power. Newton explored the meaning of gravity.
Last month electric lights and telephones and automobiles and airplanes became available. Only last week did we develop penicillin and television and nuclear power, and spaceflight. Only in the last few minutes we have mapped the Human Genome. And now with a permanent human presence in space we will have literally reached the stars before midnight tonight.
This is a breathtaking pace, and such a pace cannot help but create new ills as it dispels old, new ignorance, new problems, new dangers. Surely the opening vistas of new energy sources promise high costs and hardships, as well as high reward.
So it is not surprising that some would have us stay where we are a little longer to rest, to wait. But this city of Pasadena, this state of California, this country of the United States was not built by those who waited and rested and wished to look behind them. This country was conquered by those who moved forward.
William Bradford, speaking in 1630 of the founding of the Plymouth Bay Colony, said that all great and honorable actions are accompanied with great difficulties, and both must be enterprised and overcome with answerable courage.
If this capsule history of our progress teaches us anything, it is that humanity, in our quest for knowledge and progress, is determined and cannot be deterred. The exploration and invention of alternate, clean and renewable energy will go ahead, whether we join in it or not, and it is one of the most important adventures of all time, and no nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in this race.
Those who came before us made certain that this country rode the first waves of the industrial revolution, the first waves of modern invention, the first wave of nuclear power, and the first waves into the cosmos. And this generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age of energy.
Yet the vows of this Nation can only be fulfilled if we in this Nation are first, and, therefore, we intend to be first. In short, our leadership in science and industry, our hopes for peace and security, our obligations to ourselves as well as others, all require us to make this effort, to solve these mysteries, to solve them for the good of all peoples, and to become the world's leading non-petroleum energy nation.
We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For energy science, like space science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on humanity, and only if the United States occupies a position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether this new vista will be a sustainable future for our species on this planet or a terrifying future of shortage and environmental despoilage, which we are now only beginning to realize.
I do not say that we should or will go unprotected against the misuse of oil, any more than we go unprotected against the hostile use of land or sea, but I do say that energy can be explored and mastered without feeding the fires of war or destroying our ability to inhabit this fragile biossphere; without repeating the mistakes that we have made in extending our writ around this globe of ours.
There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in the quest for alternate energy as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all humanity, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation many never come again. But why, some say? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 80 years ago, fly the Atlantic?
We choose to create renewable clean energy. We choose to create renewable clean energy, not because it is easy, but because it is hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.
It is for these reasons that I regard the decision to shift our efforts in energy from low to high gear as among the most important decisions that will be made during my incumbency in the office of the Presidency.
In the past few years we have seen great expansion in exploration of wind and solar energy technology. Our universities and centers of industrial research have experimented with biofuels, turning animal waste into electricity, using plant based products for alternatives to petroleum. We are experimenting with hydrogen fuels in unprecedented fashion. Our nation's auto makers are beginning to embrace electric, hybrid and alternate fuel technologies.
We have initiated research at the world's largest and most powerful laser facility to unlock the secrets of nuclear fusion, the energy which powers the very sun. We are seeing research in high energy physics that promise to unlock the very building blocks of our universe.
We have had our failures, but so have others. To be sure, we are behind, and will be behind for some time in sustainable energy. But we do not intend to stay behind, and in this decade, we shall make up and move ahead.
The growth of our science and education will be enriched by new knowledge of our universe and environment, by new techniques of learning and mapping and observation, by new tools and computers for industry, medicine, the home as well as the school. Technical institutions, such as Cal Tech, will reap the harvest of these gains.
And finally, the energy effort itself, while still in its infancy, has already created a great number of new companies, and tens of thousands of new jobs. Alternative energy and related industries are generating new demands in investment and skilled personnel, and this city and this state, and this region, will share greatly in this growth.
What was once the furthest outpost on the old frontier of the West will be the furthest outpost on the new frontier of science and technology. Cal Tech, in your city of Pasadena, with its National Center for Renewable Energy Research, will become the heart of a large scientific and engineering community.
During the next 5 years the Department of Energy expects to double the number of scientists and engineers in this area, to increase its outlays for salaries and expenses to $1 billion a year; to invest some $20 billion in plant and laboratory facilities; and to direct or contract for new energy efforts over $100 billion from this center in this city.
To be sure, all this costs us all a good deal of money. This year U.S. oil consumption is approximately 21 million barrels/day, yet domestic production is only 6 million barrels per day.
After all, oil is a finite resource. We consume more than 20% of the world's oil, but have less than 2% of the world's oil reserves. And that's part of the reason oil companies are drilling a mile beneath the surface of the ocean - because we're running out of places to drill on land and in shallow water.
The consequences of our inaction are now in plain sight. Countries like China are investing in clean energy jobs and industries that should be here in America. Each day, we send nearly $1 billion of our wealth to foreign countries for their oil. And today, as we look to the Gulf, we see an entire way of life being threatened by a menacing cloud of black crude.
For decades, we have known the days of cheap and easily accessible oil were numbered. For decades, we have talked and talked about the need to end America's century-long addiction to fossil fuels. And for decades, we have failed to act with the sense of urgency that this challenge requires. Time and again, the path forward has been blocked - not only by oil industry lobbyists, but also by a lack of political courage and candor.
However, I think we're going to do it, and I think that we must pay what needs to be paid. I don't think we ought to waste any money, but I think we ought to do the job. And this will be done in the decade of the Teens. It may be done while some of you are still here at school at this college and university. It will be done during the terms of office of some of the people who sit here on this platform. But it will be done. And it will be done before the end of this decade.
And I am delighted that this university is playing a part in putting our nation beyond oil in a great national effort of the United States of America.
Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it. He said, "Because it is there."
Well, this energy technology is there, and we're going to climb it, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there. And, therefore, as we set sail we ask God's blessing on what may turn out to be the most important and greatest adventure on which humanity has ever embarked.
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This is the speech I wanted to see.
Guess I shouldn't hold my breath?
mojo sends
