The Inauguration of Barack Obama

On Tuesday, January 20, 2009, President-elect Barack Obama was sworn into office as the first African-American president. I found two articles about Barack Obama' Inauguration speech and what it was like to be there on that day. The first article talks about how this Inauguration is supposedly the most green one in the history of the United States but is not really what it seems. 

As I said above, the first article I found talks about how this Inauguration is supposed to be the greenest in the history of the United States but is actually one of the most CO2 producing Inauguration. This is because of all the cars and private jets flying down to Washington for this historical event. The article states that "the millions of people coming to the inauguration will generate a half-billion pounds of carbon dioxide — 260 million pounds from the 600 private jets that will come to Washington, and another 260 million pounds from personal vehicles." It also says "the pollution amounts to more than 575 million pounds of CO2, which would take the average U.S. household 57,598 years to produce." Now that's a lot of CO2 produced. If this is supposed to be the greenest inauguration in history shouldn't there be no CO2 produced?

The second article I found talks about how Obama's Inauguration was the second most watched out of all the other presidents. The one with the most people tuned in on their televisions was Ronald Reagan' with 41.8 million people tuned in. Obama had 37.8 million people watching his Inauguration. The article states that "viewers for Obama's inauguration is 27% higher than that of Bill Clinton's in 1993 and 30% more than George Bush's in 2001. Right under Obama's inauguration rating is that of Jimmy Carter in 1977 with 34.1 million viewers, followed by Richard Nixon in 1973 with 33 million. Meanwhile, the least watched inauguration would be George W. Bush's second one in 2005 that withdrew only 15.5 million." I think that second place is an amazing achievement.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,480470,00.html

http://www.aceshowbiz.com/news/view/00021428.html