Two Presidents Address Climate Change

This year, a number of Wesleyan freshmen were recruited to model for the New York Times fashion section - although they were wearing $1,000 outfits rather than their own clothes. The article just came out and is featured on the homepage of our university - but everyone looks so sad in the photographs. Not exactly a bright and welcoming advertisement for Wesleyan - more like, "come here so that you can dress in ugly, overly expensive clothing while looking like your best friend just got run over by a truck." Or something like that.

Anyways, climate change is all over the news these days, even the very local news at Wesleyan. Our President, Micheal Roth blogged yesterday in response to a graffiti message outside of his office, "Micheal Roth, what are you doing about climate change?" He made a thoughtful reply which put the question out to students - what should Wesleyan as a community do about climate change? Students have concrete ideas - including having Roth sign the President's Climate Commitment, buying more energy from renewable resources and cutting down on waste. One student even wants us to stop serving bananas on campus because they come from tropical locations.

Check out the blog at:
http://roth.blogs.wesleyan.edu/2007/09/28/michael-roth-what-are-you-doing-about-global-warming-or-politics-at-wesleyan/#comments


The President's Climate Commitment





Just as our campus is struggling with this issue, politicians all over the world are thinking about the very same problem, how to address climate change. Most notably, this Friday President Bush attended a Washington Summit meeting of the 16 largest polluters in the world. After the meeting, he conceded that nations needed to set targets for lowering carbon emissions, but remained convinced that mandatory cuts in carbon emissions would harm the United States economy. He did say that the United States would participate in negotiations about climate change overseen by the UN. President Bush also mentioned a clean technology fund which would help developing countries reduce their carbon emissions.(1)

The initial world reaction has been skeptical - Bush is still refusing mandatory cuts (ie the Kyoto protocol or anything similar) and he did not outline his Clean Tech Fund idea very clearly. However, to be fair there is convincing economic research that shows that although a plan like Kyoto would benefit the world as a whole, it would negatively harm the US because of damages to the economy. At the same time, the US clearly needs to take a leadership role in preventing harm from increases in global mean temperature.




(1) Broder, J. "At Climate Meeting, Bush Does Not Specify Goals." The New York Times. September 29th, 2007.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/29/washington/29climate.html?ref=science

Shopping for a Job

Recently, I have had an insatiable urge to go shopping. I shop online during my boring classes (this only happened once, I promise!) and I made my friends go to the mall with me last weekend even though we all had better things to do. Why? A part of it is that I am beginning to think about my life next year and what type of job I want to have. Career searching is like shopping - I have a list of items I need to purchase, and at the end of the day I want to come home satisfied and feeling pretty damn hot. Now, as I wander down the huge, poorly decorated mall of career searching, I begin by consulting my shopping list.




1. The resume: If we are in a shopping mall of job searching, then the resume is your wallet. You have spent the last few years building up your credit (ie, getting that internship, or campus job that shows your leadership abilities, or working on that GPA, or excelling in debate team...) Now it is time to organize and show case your talents. The wallet should be organized, you know, rows of cards, a tightly-controlled change purse, neatly folded dollar bills. A few check points:

- It is a good idea to develop resumes for specific jobs positions. Ie, I
will have a more business oriented resume, a policy oriented resume, and a
general summary resume.

- In terms of formatting, find a few sample resumes at good job searching
websites and model your format after those. Remember to use strong action
verbs, concise language and an organized, easy to read format. The first
place to look for sample resumes is your campus's career resource website.
Wesleyan has an excellent site at www.wesleyan.edu/crc (accessible by
anyone) with helpful advice, lists of good verbs to use, and many sample
resumes. You can also look at collegegrad.com

- Have your resume proofread by someone who knows what they are doing.
Preferably this would be someone at the career resource center at your
school, but at the very least get a professional to look it over. One
tiny error in your resume can cost you a job (this has actually happened
to me).

2. Preparedness/The 'Do these jeans make me look fat?' stage: You should thoroughly research the companies you are interested in. Think of this as a first step interview - only here you are interviewing the company to find out if they are right for you. See my previous blog for idea of what to research. This part of the preparedness is also really important for interviewing.

3. The Interview.

I just went to a mandatory interview workshop run by the Career Resource Network at Wesleyan. I have a few take-home pointers for you all.

- Prepare, prepare, prepare. Research and rehearse possible interview
questions. At the very least, you should have thought about answers to
basic questions such as, "why do you want to do this?", "what are your
strengths and weaknesses", and "tell me about a time that you were
confronted with a problem and forced to problem solve." Interviewers
want to hear how your think - and it is much better to prepare answers
to these types of questions than to make them up on the spot. If
at all possible, do some mock interviews before the real thing - often
a career resource center will be able to video you during a mock
interview and help you see yourself from the interviewer's perspective.

- Dress to impress. This part is actually difficult for me - but the CRC
strongly recommends that you wear a suit to any interview. One of the
classic places to buy a suit is Ann Taylor (see ad below taken from
their website).



But if "suiting" (dear lord, who knew that it was a verb?) is not an "art"
for you - try outlet shopping. I mean, I don't intend to spend $500 on a
suit that I am only (hopefully) going to wear a few times in my life. But
that's just me. There's also salvation army, Target, and ebay. I suggest
you all make the internet your friend.

Internship in Renewable Energy

I found a summer program in renewable energy which may interest some of you. It is run by CDS International and involves taking young college students from the US and sending them to work for renewable energy companies in Germany. The rationale behind this is that Germany is a few years ahead of the US in developing its alternative energy industry and that it is beneficial for US students to get experience in the more mature German industry. Of course, there are a number of drawbacks. The best part of the program is that it will find a good internship for you, but you must pay $700 to enroll. Additionally, the nature of the internship requires that you be able to speak German. There are a limited number of stipends available for a 1 month training course in German before you arrive for your internship. You must secure (aka pay for) your own housing in Germany, but you can specify receiving a paid internship. The program will guide you through getting all the necessary work papers and visas - which is probably very helpful if you cannot (yet- speak German).

You also have to pay for airfare over to Germany. Overall, this seems like a mediocre deal to me - but it might be ideal for the student who has some extra cash, wants to work in Germany and get experience in alternative energy, and who can't speak German. If you can speak German, it might be cheaper to research internship opportunities in Germany yourself.

One important qualification: you are only eligible if you are a current university student AND WILL BE NEXT YEAR AS WELL. This means no seniors (sad face).

Anyways, check it out at:
http://www.cdsintl.org/fromusa/sip.htm

Be sure to click on the link to the New Renewable Energy program.

That's all for now!

The Car I want to own

Like many others at Wesleyan, I often feel judged when I get my bagel from Pi Cafe in the morning. I order my whole wheat bagel with cream cheese, and then squirm under the level gaze of the nice woman working there while she decides whether I will receive 1 cream cheese packet, or 2. Cream cheese packets are one of the mysteries of the universe for me- something I ponder along with my eternal question- why is Heintz Ketchup so far superior to any other brand of ketchup? Seriously - has anyone noticed this? Anyways, the deal with cream cheese packets is that 1 is never enough and 2 is slightly too much. Today, I only recieved one packet and had to sneak back to get another one while pretending to peruse the jelly selection.

On to more relevant subjects. How do people feel about the fact that Google is taking over the world? There are now so many facets to Google that there is a book in our university bookstore entitled "Google-pedia: a guide to google." See, already entire books are being written about this unique corporation. I just found out today about Google.org, which is the philanthropic arm of Google. They focus on three main issues, one of which is climate change (the other two are public health and development). Anyways, they are pouring some crazy money into projects which will help combat climate change - including one called RechargeIt - which gives grants to companies that are working make plug-in hybrid vehicles feasible. This includes rsearch, groups working to influence policy (PlugIn America) and a company called "Hymotion" which has developed Battery Range Extender Modules which allow hybrid vehicles (right now, only the Prius or Ford Escape) to become a PlugIn hybrid vehicles - thus extending the viable range of the car, and decreasing the consumer's direct reliance on fossil fuels.







The above images came from the company's website, which can be found at:
www.hymotion.com
or click on :

Seems pretty cool to me - these modules are going to be released in early 2008. My only question is, how expensive will they be?

The Coolness Factor

I have a new hat (see above). It looks a bit like I am wearing a dead rabbit on my head and is extremely amusing. Maybe it will get old in time, but seeing people do a bit of a double take and then stare is giving some spark to an otherwise very sleepy sunday night. Plus it keeps my head warm. Additionally, notice my insanely cool Economist t-shirt in the pic above. Somebody stop me.

I went to the Career Resource Center a few days ago, since they had recommended that anyone interested in graduating with a job should become well acquainted with the people there. They said it in a very cavalier manner, as though they didn't really expect that anyone WOULD be interested in graduating with a job, as if various relatives are not already asking us what we will do after we graduate. The problem with a place like Wesleyan is that lots of people already have plans which are much cooler than mine. My friend L is graduating early, and may go live in Japan before applying to the CIA, or the foreign service. Another friend is planning to travel from organic farm to organic farm in Europe - farming his way across the continent. Me? I will probably end up in DC, Boston or NYC, living with roommates, making money and trying to do something original in green business. Actually, that excites me as much as travelling to Japan - and it is something that I have wanted to do for a while. The CRC advised me that I should currently spend 10 hours a week researching jobs - and when I have a list of about 15 jobs that interest me, I should investigate the following about the corporations in question:

- the name and job description of the entry level position available
- clients of the corporation/recent deals, acquisitions, ect.
- special interests of the corporation
- size and niche of the corporation
- where they are located
- who is on the board of directors (BOD) and what the backgrounds of some of the people are
- who the CEO is, and what his/her background is

In short, when you go in to interview, it is best if you know as much as humanly possible about the corporation. That way, you can show that you have spent time and are truly interested in that particular place.


That's all the career tips for tonight. Night guys.

The Vegan Cookie Analogy

It is the first blog of the semester, and yet I sit here feeling somewhat dissatisfied as I stare at the computer screen. The source of my dissatisfaction is the $3 vegan cookie that a recently-turned vegan friend of mine seduced me into purchasing by claiming it was "the best cookie she had ever had." It certainly looked delicious - sitting there on the shelf, plump and chocolately. But now I have that weird post-vegan dessert feeling sitting in my mouth - that bitter, baking soda taste. And I reflect that, however much we want them to be, vegan cookies are never as tasty as non-vegan cookies. They are simply too good for us to also be delicious.


(Logo of the failed vegan cookie).

What does this story have to do with the blog? Well, what this blog aims to do is treat environmental and energy news sort of like a vegan cookie. We take a bite, we want to try new, healthy options, but then we are justifiably critical when they taste funny. And we don't ignore the funny taste just because vegan cookies are PC, or our friends like them, or what have you. Here on this blog, one senior Science in Society major (me) tries to take an honest bite out of environmental and energy news.

The other thing that I will try to do is deal with the fact that I will be graduating in a year (gasp of horror) - and when I graduate I want to have a job lined up for me already. The Career Resource Center has informed me that this will take an extra 10 hours of my time per week, since "job searching is a full time job." Yeah right, like I have an extra 10 hours to spare in between my classes, writing a thesis, and working 15 hours a week. Oh yeah, and enjoying my senior year, like in all the movies where no one seems to ever go to class. Anyways, I have some ideas about this career search already - and I will share them with you here. I also plan to research internships, fellowships and other opportunities within the energy and utilities/environment sector - and to share the fruits of my labor with you. I am going to blog twice a week this semester - so look forward to one news-oriented blog and another career-oriented one.

Now that all that information is out of the way: here are two small tidbits of environmental news that I picked up. The first quote is from a Reuters article, written about a new report on global warming released by the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Included in the report was this little analogy, which of course made headlines:

Check out the full story at:


""The most recent international moves towards combating global warming represent a recognition ... that if the emission of greenhouse gases ... is allowed to continue unchecked, the effects will be catastrophic -- on the level of nuclear war," the IISS report said."

Ummmm. Climate change is pretty daunting, a challenge for all of humanity to deal with - but comparable to a nuclear war? Frankly, this seems insane to me. A nuclear war would immediately kill thousands-hundreds of thousands of people depending how many bombs were implemented (war implies more than 2). Climate change on the other hand has much slower effects which will probably negatively effect the world economy, may cause water shortages and more severe storms - but the effects happen slowly enough that there is room for adaptation - people can give up their coastal properties over time as insurance rates increase, or we can start growing new kinds of heat-adapted crop plants. Attributing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people directly to global warming is unwarranted based on the estimates of current scientific models.

The report also said that by 2100, the crop yields of 65 countries will loose 15% of their agricultural output. Where do I begin with the problems I have with this statement. How about:
a) What countries are they talking about, because many countries may be
naturally moving away from an agrarian based society.
b) World wide, food production has been increasing since the advent of
monoculture and industrialized agriculture (which has its own problems)
and shows no signs of stopping. Increased drought and temperatures
in some areas would shift crop production, but I feel that GM crops
and the opening up of new, northern farmland would make up for the
difference in all but the very severe conditions. The real problem
is not the amount of food we have, but the fact that FOOD SECURITY -
the ability of people, especially in developing nations - to reliably
get food - is projected (by some) to decrease. In my opinion, this
again is not really the fault of global warming in itself, but of
the our failure as a world to address the issue. That being said, hunger
rates in most countries are expected to decrease in the future. (1)

People, climate change is not a dump-truck where we can conglomerate all of the world's problems and attribute them to fossil fuel burning. Many of the most severe problems that MAY result from climate change will be more severely exacerbated by things unrelated to the weather - like poor distribution of medicine and food, high drug prices, hatred, inefficient governments, terrorism, ignorance ect.

Hope that gave some non-vegan food for thought.


(1) No, I did not just make that information up - I found it in a report called "The Food Policy Report" issued by the International Food Policy Research Institute" and written by Per Pinstrup-Andersen, Rajul Pandya-Lorch, and Mark W. Rosegrant. You can find it online at: