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Day Eighty-Eight April 18, 2009

The President spent the day at the Conference for Americas. He particpated in all the sessions with the leaders of the nations of the Central, South America and the Caribean. Many of the Presidents top advisors were with hin on the summitt including Larry Summers and Energy Secretary Chu. Dr Chu in a briefing to reporters descibed some of what the President spoke about :SECRETARY CHU:

"Before you start questions, I forgot to mention something. I just wanted to repeat what the President said in the plenary session on energy. The first thing he said is that the lowest-hanging fruit in decreasing the carbon footprint of the world is to emphasize energy efficiency; that, using the example of the refrigerators in the United States, due to increasing standards, the refrigerators have increased their energy efficiency four times -- fourfold, so that the average refrigerator in the United States today uses four times less energy than it did in 1975, even though the average size went up; that it doesn't cost more money. In fact, the inflation-adjusted price of refrigerators went down by a factor of two, because the better insulation meant you could build a smaller compressor, which is the most costly part of the refrigerator; that the amount of energy saved in refrigerators in the United States is significant. The energy saved, had we been using the 1974 standard refrigerators today, we're now saving more energy than all of the renewable energy in wind, solar, thermal, photovoltaic generation in the U. S. today. Over 3 percent of the energy in the United States is saved in refrigerators alone. "

On Saturday there was a public interaction with Venezualean President Chavez when the latter gave the President a book the exploitation of South America to read. By all accounts the President charmed the many leaders at the conference. There was a sense that the United States was listening to the concerns of the other nations.