President Obama arrives at Earth Day event with huge motorcade, helicopters
4/22/2012 8:16 PM Matt Rock -
President Barack Obama traveled to a State Park in Virginia today to deliver an Earth Day speech, which pundits are hailing as one of his finest and most poignant to date. And while the whole event only lasted for about eight or nine minutes, Environmentalists around the nation, including Al Gore himself, have praised the President's commitment to green policies and initiatives.
The event began for the President when Marine One, the President's private helicopter, flew him from the White House to Andrews Air Force Base, where the President and his key staff moved into a Presidential motorcade consisting of more than 20 vehicles, which transported them 511 feet to the front door of Air Force One, the President's private 747-sized jet. From here, he was flown 63 miles to the nearest airport to the state park (with two fighter jets and a backup 747 in tow), where his motorcade drove him 27 miles, in the direction of Andrews, to the event, where White House, Secret Service, and FBI advance teams, plus local and state police and emergency personnel, had already arrived, in 93 other vehicles.
The President then dashed up onto the stage, which was built in a field that had to be dug up to house the massive, power-sucking public address systems. A thousand citizens and a hundred press were checked in through the single-use, permanent buildings erected on the site, and a small, temporary garbage dump was designated in what used to be a garden area, which a dump truck would later haul off to a proper landfill thirty miles away.
“This Earth Day, we can really feel positive about just how far we've come from the first Earth Day, way back in 1970,” the President said, during his brief speech. “In these forty-two years, Americans have learned to be less wasteful. We appreciate the energy we use each day. We carpool to work in the morning. We turn the lights off when nobody is home. We only get one Earth, and all of us, you, me, everyone, need to do everything we can to conserve energy and keep our environment clean.”
After the speech, the President's motorcade took him back to the airport, where he got on board Air Force One, flew back to Andrews, rode in another motorcade back to Marine One, then flew back to the White House, where he walked into the Oval Office, where his lights had been on all day in his absence, where he sat down to enjoy a late afternoon snack of cheese and crackers, served with two forks, two spoons, a knife, two plates, and three glasses, all of which had just been washed specifically for his meal, and all of which would be washed again, even if he didn't use them. - Return to Previous Page
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