Well thank you very much. I am so thrilled by that and I appreciate the opportunity to come here and, not just to receive that, but to say congratulations to all of you. This is your day and your parents and family are so proud of you as you already know. I got the enthusiasm and energy with which you stood and thanked them for making all of this possible. But congratulations on what you have accomplished here. And to Dr. Jimmy Cheek, the chancellor, and Dr. Jan Simek, president, Dr. Susan Martin, the provost at UT, Dr. Bruce Bursten, the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and to all of the members of the faculty and everyone who has made this great institution what it is. Thank you and thank you for having me here. I do want to acknowledge Dr. Dan Simberloff, the Nancy Gore Hunger professor of environmental science, ecology and evolutionary biology.

You know, you probably become well aware of the fact that the University of Tennessee is now recognized in the university community of our country as one of the preeminent leaders in its own environmental standards and the steps that have been taken to provide a demonstration of lower energy and environmental responsibility. I did want to acknowledge that.

I'm going to say a few words to you, but I want you to know that I am quite aware of what my role is here. I did think back. It's not the first commencement speech I've ever made. But, the first one, I tried to think back to my own commencement and I tried again before this one. And I remember my family being there and I remember the weather and the feelings of excitement and relief and the parties. And I have absolutely, I have absolutely no idea who gave the speech at my commencement. None whatsoever.

I gave a commencement speech one year at MIT and in doing research for it, I found that in their early years, their commencement speaker dropped dead right in the middle of the speech. Since it was more than 100 years ago, I figured it was okay to joke about it. I told them I was only the second stiffest commencement speech that they had ever had. But, you know, you probably heard the old cliche that a commencement is both an end and a beginning. And it is, but that is just another way of saying it's a transition event. It is a weigh station on the continual transfer of responsibility from one generation to the next. The passing of the diploma that will take place here is, in a sense, the passing of a torch. And it is sometimes seen, therefore, as an occasion, not only to congratulate you, but to make some kind of assessment of what you're getting into. And those who've come before you have done a pretty good job in so many ways.

Our country is the preeminent economic, military and political leader of the world. We've got the best higher education system and the strongest economy. And we've made great progress against the many challenges that we've had to confront. But there are some unfinished matters on America's agenda. And, as you look at the job market out there, I know that some of you are right now trying to make plans for what you're going to do. I talked to a young graduate last week. I said, "How do you feel about where you go from here?" He said, "Well I feel fine about it." And it reminded me of a story I heard from one of Dolly Parton's former colleagues at the Grand Ole Opry. Cousin Minnie Pearl, from Grinder Switch and, for young people who may not remember her, she was the one that had the straw hat with the price tag on it. Her real name was Mrs. Sarah Cannon and she was a highly educated, refined, wondeful woman. But her character was as country as country could be.

And 30 some odd years ago, Betty Ann Tanner driving in my old congressional district on a Saturday night. I was listening to the Grand Ole Opry and cousin Minnie Pearl told a story about a farmer who was involved in an accident. And he went to court and sued the other driver for damages. And the lawyer for the other driver put this farmer on the witness stand and cross-examined him and said, "Now isn't it true that right after the accident you said, 'I feel fine'?" Then the farmer said, "Well, it's not that simple. You see I was driving my cow to town in the back of my truck and this fella came drivin' across the center line..." And the lawyer said, "Wait a minute, we don't want to hear a long involved story. We're in the middle of trial here. Answer the question 'yes or no'. Did you or did you not say immediately after the accident, 'I feel fine'?" And the farmer said, "Well now, I was leadin' up to that. You see I was taking my cow to town in the back of my truck and this fella came driving across the center line and ran right smack dab into my truck. And knocked it over. Threw me out, threw the cow out. I was on one side and the cow was on the other. And the highway patrolman came up and took one look at that cow and said, 'Hmph, she is suffering.' Pulled out his gun and shot her right between the eyes. Came around to my side of the truck and said, 'How do you feel?' (laughter) "So I said, 'I feel fine.'" (laughter)

So keep in mind, the alternative to not sitting here and getting this diploma, is not acceptable. And you ought to feel great about it and the economy is now improving. But you'd be surprised if I didn't make at least brief mention of the one problem that I think is the biggest item of unfinished business on our agenda and that is the climate crisis. And to put it in perspective, this morning we heard the news that this oil spill down in the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, 50 miles off Louisiana, a mile under water, is gushing oil at a much higher rate than they had originally said. Maybe 10 times as much. And according to the estimates this morning, it's spilling out the equivalent of one Exxon Valdez oil spill every four days. Now, they told us it was safe to do that. And, without going into the particulars of why they were wrong about that, I want to note the fact that all this oil spilling out into the Gulf of Mexico is causing a lot of damage, but it is far from the only uncontrolled gusher of pollution into the environment.

Matter of fact, just 40 miles west of here, I passed by there on the way up here yesterday from Middle Tennessee. You remember that coal ash spill? What it has in common with the spill in the Gulf of Mexico is it's connected to our dependence on carbon-based fuels. About as far to the northeast as that is to the west, you see evidence of this mountain top mining crisis, which spills all the debris down into the valleys and poisons the creeks and the drinking water for many communities. But the biggest uncontrolled gusher of pollution, by far, is the global warming pollution we're putting up there all the time at the rate of 90 million tons per day. And they're telling us that's alright too. Each of the average coal-fire generating plants in the United States, everyday, puts three times as much global warming pollution into the atmosphere as that oil spill is putting into the Gulf of Mexico. And there are 1,400 of them in the United States alone.

World wide, every three or four seconds we're putting as much global warming pollution into the atmosphere as that oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is putting into the ocean every single day. And it causes consequences. It's not controversial that CO2 traps heat. And since we have expanded it at the rate of 90 million tons per day, it's trapping a lot more heat. The North Polar Ice Cap is disappearing. Virtually all of the mountain glaciers in the entire world are in the process of melting, disrupting the hydrological cycle. Average humidity has increased four percent already. So we get bigger downpours. And the scientists always say that it's a mistake to say a particular large weather event like the flooding of Nashville two weeks ago, is caused by global warming because, there is natural variability in normal weather, but we're loading the dice as the scientist say. We're dramatically increasing the odds of large down pours coming all, in a short period of time. Thousands of my neighbors in Nashville lost their homes, and did not have flood insurance. Why didn't they have flood insurance?, because they were assured when they bought their homes that they lived way outside the historic flood plain. So when the army core of engineers said this was a once in a thousand year rain, they might have felt justified in saying, well if it only comes once every thousand years maybe we don't have to worry about it.

But, all over the world, once in five hundred year events, once in thousand year events, are occurring more frequently. And they are having to change those tables because we have changed our relationship to the planet's ecosystem. We are now beginning to see the flow of refugees from some of the low lying islands nations. We're seeing the migration of tropical diseases to temperate latitudes. And there are many other consequences and yet we are still not doing much about it. Why is that? Well, one of my favorite quotes from President Abraham Lincoln during his second address to the congress, what we call the state of the union today, was when he said "the occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must dis-enthrall ourselves and then we will save our country."

That got me to thinking about the word "thrall." If you dis-enthrall yourself, that means you're getting out of thrall. I looked it up. Thrall, it comes from the norse word for slave and it was a form of voluntary slavery. And, of course, it has come to mean if you are enthralled with something, you are just entranced by it. And being dis-enthralled means throwing off that trance. It is easy for us, as human beings, to fall into habits and practices that just begin to feel automatic. And if there's risk involved, the thrall can blind us to the risk. One of the reasons the job market and the economy are so bad, as bad as it is right now, and, again, thank goodness it's improving, is because a lot of people in the financial sector became enthralled with sub-prime mortgages.

Now, I remember when I signed my first mortgage. I got it from Walter Glenn Burgwell Jr. from Citizens' Bank in Carthage, Tenn. And y'all may not believe this, but I - my wife and I had to make something called a down payment. And we had to show evidence that we could make the monthly payments. I kind of missed the memo when they got rid of those requirements, but they were enthralled some years back, with the idea of selling a lot more mortgages, but selling them to people that had no earthly way to pay them back. Much less make a down payment. And they were so enthralled they said the risk can be ignored because we can group them all together. And then we can securitize them and sell them into the global markets. Well, the old saying is there's nothing so powerful as an idea whose time has come. The most destructive thing in a market may be an assumption whose time has suddenly collapsed.

So we became dis-enthralled with sub-prime mortgages when the global economy went into crisis. Now, we have been enthralled with oil and coal and even after the spill began in the Gulf, the head of the American Petroleum Institute said, "Nothing has changed. We are still dependent on oil and gas." It reminded me of the day Elvis Presley died. When his famous manager, Colonel Parker got the news, he said, "This changes nothing." And, for the record, Elvis made 55 million dollars last year posthumously. But it does change something and it is time for us to dis-enthrall ourselves from this dependence on oil and coal and natural gas. And recognize the transformation to renewable energy sources and much higher levels of efficiency. Sustainable agriculture. Sustainable forestry. Sustainable architecture.

As the great challenge of our time and your generation is going to be the generation that succeeds in completing this transition. I remember as a very young boy, 13 years old, when I heard a challenge issued to our country by President John F. Kennedy calling for us to put a person on the moon and bring him back safely in 10 years. And I remember how many people said, "That's impossible to do. He shouldn't have made that pledge." But eight years and two months later, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin set foot on the surface of the moon. And the day they did, a great cheering went up in Houston, Texas at mission control. And the average age of those systems engineers cheering in Houston was 26, which means their average age when they heard that challenge was 18.

We're counting on you. You have a right to count on us. This university's motto, and I'm not even going to try to pronounce it in Latin. "Veritatem cognoscetis et veritas te liberabit." What is means is, "You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free." It comes, of course, from the Book of John. And the truth can be, indeed, inconvenient, but the single most important choice that any of us make as individuals and as a society is between the hard right and the easy wrong. And just as this occasion offers an opportunity to make an assessment of how those that came before you have done, the day will come, not too many years from now, when a future generation will assess what you and those of us that are still around, have done over these next few years and decades.

And if they look around them and see a world filled with chaos because the predictions of the scientists were allowed to come true, they would be justified in looking back and asking, "What were you thinking? Didn't the truth set you free?" But if they look around them and see that they live in a world in the midst of economic renewal with millions of good new jobs being created in this transition to a sustainable economy and a sustainable society. If they feel hope in their hearts and don't just feel fine, but they feel optimistic and enthusiastic about the challenges ahead and feel that each next, new generation's prospects will continue to improve, I want them to look back at this day in time and ask of us, "How did you have find the moral courage to rise up and solve a crisis that so many said was impossible to solve?"

I believe in my heart that we are going to solve this crisis. I believe that this is the greatest opportunity that our society has ever had and I'm excited about the fact that from this day forward, you're going to be a part of all of the great work that that our society is doing. I say congratulations to you and thank you again for having me here. We've got everything we need to succeed, with the possible exception of political will. But in the United States of America, political will is a renewable resource. Thank you and congratulations. (applause)