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All right. Gentleman right here.
Q Hi, Mr. President. First off, thank you very much on behalf of everyone here for coming today. It really means a lot to us.
THE PRESIDENT: You bet.
Q My name is Alan Berchel (ph). I’m a Canadian. I just moved here about a year ago. And my question for you today is in reference to the Canadian tar sands. Now, we’ve heard you speak today about the importance of manufacturing things domestically for the purpose of exporting. We’ve heard you speak about the importance of domestic energy security, as well the importance of out-performing China in terms of the ability for us to manufacture wind turbines.
Now, I would like to know how you balance your commitment to the environment with domestic energy security, given that there has been recent domestic dissent from（不赞同） the idea of importing Canadian oil, and as well, keeping in mind that it does require energy in order to manufacture these turbines -- if you do not import the Canadian tar sands oil, you are opening the door to further investments by SunCor in Canada; as well you’re essentially offering up this very vast and politically stable oil -- energy resource to a country like China. I just want to know how you’re balancing all these different pressures.
THE PRESIDENT: Did you talk to this guy? (Laughter.) You know -- (laughter.) For those -- just to give background to folks, there are these tar sands in Canada than can produce oil. There is talk about building a pipeline into the United States to import that oil. I can’t comment on the specifics of this because the State Department is going through this complicated review process, and if it looks like I’m putting my fingers on the scale before the science is done, then people may question the merit（优点，功绩） of the decision later on. So I’m not going to get into the details of it.
I will make this general point, which is that, first of all, importing oil from countries that are stable and friendly is a good thing. So, for example, some of you saw I went down to Brazil a couple of weeks back. And I know people think I was going there to see samba dancers or something; they play soccer. I was going down there partly because Brazil is actually already doing a really good job with biofuels. They’ve got some of the best cellulosic ethanol（酒精） -- this ethanol that’s not made with corn, but it’s made with like sugar cane（甘蔗） stalks.
So I think a third of their cars already on the road run on biofuels. So I wanted to make sure that we learn from them -- this goes to the point about another way that we can lower gas prices. But they also just had these huge discoveries of oil off their shores underwater, pretty deep down. And can we start working with them using our outstanding technology -- some of the lessons we’ve learned in the Gulf -- to create another regular source or supply of oil.
Canada already is one our largest oil exporters, or that’s -- we import from Canada. These tar sands, there are some environmental questions about how destructive they are, potentially, what are the dangers there, and we’ve got to examine all those questions. It’s the same thing with natural gas here in Pennsylvania. Everybody has been hearing about the whole fracking issue, right?
Now, natural gas is a clean, relatively clean energy. It’s a fossil fuel, but it burns pretty clean. But we’ve got to make sure that as we’re extracting it from the ground, that the chemicals that are being used don’t leach into the water. Nobody is an environmentalist until you get sick. And it turns out, well, gosh, why didn’t somebody tell me that this might affect the water that we drink or the air that we breathe, or what have you? So we’ve got to do some science there to make sure that the natural gas that we have in this country, we’re extracting in a safe way. The same thing is true when it comes to oil that’s being piped in from Canada, or Alaska for that matter. We just got to do these evaluations, and we’re always trying to do that based on the science. All right?
Let me see. Let’s go right here in the glasses. Yes.
Q Hey, Mr. President. Welcome back.
THE PRESIDENT: Great to be back.
Q My children -- I have seven of my children and eight grandchildren. I was just wondering, like, what are we going to do about their education? Because we’re (inaudible) cutting this school, we’re cutting five schools, six schools here and all. I mean, that’s our future. If we’re cutting their heads off, then where are we going to be in 30 or 40 years?
THE PRESIDENT: It’s a great question. Can I just ask before I answer, though, is there some rule at Gamesa that you got to have a whole bunch of kids? (Laughter.) I mean, you got 10 over here, you got seven over here. Golly. (Laughter.)
Look, the single most important determinant of how we do as an economy is going to be how educated our workforce is. That’s our biggest competitive advantage, is having workers who are skilled. (Applause.) If we’ve got the best scientists, if we’ve got the best engineers, if we’ve got the best mathematicians, if we’ve got workers who know how to -- as they do here at Gamesa -- to use high-tech equipment, that’s what’s going to be our advantage.
Like I said, we’re not going to win the race just by driving our wages down, because we’ll never win that race. I mean, China doesn’t even have the lowest wages now. Some companies are now moving to the next country that’s got lower wages than China, because China’s economy is starting to grow. There’s always going to be some country out there with lower wages. But we can out-educate anybody. (Applause.) And we used to have -- we used to have the best education system in the world. We used to have the number one percentage of college graduates in the world. We don’t anymore. Our kids used to do the best on math and science exams; now we’re like ninth, 12th, 21st. And that means that other countries are going to pass us by.
This is why even in these tough budget times, where we need to cut the things that we don’t need, we can’t stop investing in education. We can’t stop investing in education. (Applause.) I put forward my budget proposal for next year, and almost every department I cut. One department I didn’t cut -- education. I did not cut education, I actually increased our investment in education. (Applause.)
Now, money is not the only thing that makes a good school, so we’ve also got to reform our schools. Some schools are not structured to make sure kids learn. There are schools out there where they’ve got enough money, but for whatever reason -- most of the time they’re in poor neighborhoods, but part of it is also that the teachers, the principals, et cetera, they’re not working together in as effective a way with the parents and the community to make sure that there are high expectations for the kids and everybody is performing.
So what we’ve said is, yes, we’re going to put more money in the schools, but we’re also going to reform the schools. And part of the money that we’ve done is -- what we’ve done is we’ve carved out some of this money and we’ve said, instead of it just going to every school district based on some formula, we want you to compete for it. Come up with a plan explaining how you’re going to reform our education system; how you’re going to make sure there are high standards for every kid; how you’re going to get the best teachers; how you’re going to train and retain those teachers; how you’re going to make sure that the schools are accountable. And if you do those things, we’re going to give you a little bit of extra money. And it gives an incentive（动机，刺激） for every state and every school district to start looking at what they’re doing to see if they’re using the best practices possible to educate our kids. So that’s on the K through 12 level. |
