On Night 2 of the Democratic National Convention, references to the green economy were frequent, including by Hillary Clinton. Venture Capitalist Nancy Floyd from Nth Power got a prime-time spot to talk about economic, national security and environmental benefits. Transcript at http://www.demconvention.com/­nancy-floyd/­

Zeroing on our favorite subject, plug-in hybrids, this crowd and a national audience heard about them from the conference keynoter, former Virginia Governor Mark Warner and from Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer. Judging from the response to Schweitzer, he may be a future keynoter. (Recall that Barack Obama first gained wide attention from his 2004 keynote address, The Audacity of Hope.) Here are details:

MARK WARNER, candidate for Senate): this ex-entrepreneur talked about the economic and geopolitical opportunities from technology, including:

"You know, America has never been afraid of the future, and we shouldn't start now. If we choose the right path, every one of these challenges is also an opportunity. Look at energy. If we actually got ourselves off foreign oil, we can make our country safer. We’ll start to solve global warming. And with the right policies, within 24 months, we'll be building 100 mile-per-gallon plug-in hybrid vehicles right here ­ with American technology and with American workers." -- transcript http://www.demconvention.com/­mark-warner or watch it at http://www.youtube.com/­watch?v=bsUURGS82PY (includes text on screen; PHEVs are at 8:50 of the 18:41)

Warner also talked about PHEVs in an interview published yesterday at Grist.org: http://gristmill.grist.org/­story/­2008/­8/­25/­133418/­997

BRIAN SCHWEITZER: He was followed not long after by Montana's Governor, who woke up the crowd and got them all cheering and standing up. (Schweitzer first came to our attention in January 2008 -- see http://www.calcars.org/­calcars-news/­897.html for our report about his phone call to us and his proposals to the National Governor's Association.) The early media reports said this folksy rancher was the discovery of the evening: he "energized the convention" (Forbes and Newsweek) delivered a "barn-burner" (Macleans), "brought down the house" (Rocky Mountain News)

At the convention, Schweitzer was not content with one mention of PHEVs: after mentioning them once, he returned to them as part of the bigger picture:

"Barack Obama understands the most important barrel of oil is the one you don't use. Barack Obama's energy strategy taps all sources and all possibilities. It will give you a tax credit if you buy a fuel-efficient car or truck, increase fuel-efficiency standards and put a million plug-in hybrids on the road."

"Invest $150 billion over the next 10 years in clean, renewable energy technology. This will create up to 5 million new, green jobs and fuel long-term growth and prosperity. Senator Obama's plan will also invest in a modern transmission grid to deliver this new, clean electricity from wind turbines and solar panels to homes, offices and the batteries in America's new plug-in hybrid cars.'

We encourage you to watch this one. Here's why: at Youtube http://www.youtube.com/­watch?v=I8iatxuU3OU the sentence about PHEVs came at 10:30, and "new plug-in cars" marked the end of the "remarks as prepared for delivery". But the speech went on to 15:33, as he tossed off lines like "The petrodictators will never own American wind and sunshine, and we should never again be beholden to their barrels of crude." The transcript of the first section is at http://www.demconvention.com/­brian-schweitzer/­ .

TOWN MEETING: we hope that the DNC video channel at YouTube http://www.youtube.com/­profile_videos?user=DemConvention will soon post the Town Meeting on the Economy/Energy we mentioned yesterday, which none of the networks or cable stations broadcast as far as we could tell. (See a brief report and photo at http://www.freep.com/­apps/­pbcs.dll/­article?AID=/­20080826/­NEWS15/­80826102/­1215 )