Welcome to the best of the left podcast with clips today from This American Life, Slate.com.

Wait, wait, don't tell me Radio Lab, NPR, and The Unchirp's.

This is not the most important speech Barack Obama gave in November.

Didn't get much press coverage. In fact, it wasn't even important enough for Barack Obama

to show up in person to deliver. He pre-tapped a video. But for the people who saw this speech,

it was a big, big deal. This is at the opening session of an international conference on global warming

that had been convened in Los Angeles by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Mary Nichols is in charge

of creating California's climate change policies and is closer to some people in the Obama camp.

She was one of the few people attending who knew that the video was on the program.

Barack Obama had just been elected two weeks before. A lot of us were still kind of absorbing the

reality that we actually were going to have a new president. And I really wasn't expecting much more

than a welcome and congratulations. And I'm so glad you're doing this kind of message.

I really wasn't expecting anything of substance. So we're in this gigantic ballroom. And you know,

there's hundreds of people from all over the world from I believe over 50 states, provinces,

and countries. This is Anthony Egert, a senior policy advisor for the California Air Resources Board.

But then Governor Schwarzenegger basically introduced the conference. Welcome to delegates.

When the welcome you all to the Governor's Global Climate Summit,

and then we said we have a welcome message from our president-elect.

A video from our president-elect Barack Obama just to show to you.

And then the video comes up. You know, there's Barack Obama just facing the camera and starting to talk.

When I heard him come on, it was really shocking.

Lucia Green-Wisco works promoting low carbon policies in China. And she attended the conference

...