Obama: “I Am Always Jealous Of European Trains”

During the president’s town hall meeting in France today, he took the opportunity to speak very frankly about his longstanding envy of the Continent’s rail system. In the video clip, skip ahead to 5:30 if you’re not in the mood to hear once again about how America will defeat Al Qaeda. Here’s what he said:

I do think that in — in crisis, there’s always opportunity, if it’s used properly. So for example, in the United States, we decided to pass a large stimulus package to help growth at a time when, you know, the private sector was having a very bad — difficult time.

Now, we could have just spent the money on the same old ways of doing things. But part of what we decided was if we’re going to be spending a lot of government money anyway, why not spend it to double the amount of renewable energy? Why not spend it on retrofitting existing government buildings so that we drastically reduce their energy consumption?

Why not start building high-speed rail? One thing that, as an American who is proud as anybody of my country – I am always jealous about European trains. And I said to myself, why can’t we have — (applause) — why can’t we have high-speed rail? And — and so we’re investing in that, as well.

So on the transportation front, on — with respect to building construction, on a whole range of issues, we are investing in new technologies that will make us more energy efficient. And that is one of the building blocks that’s needed in order for us to reduce our carbon footprint and to work with other countries to achieve the climate change goals that I think are going to be so important.