Recently I heard M.I.T. President Susan Hockfield speak at a scientific conference about what may be the biggest challenge facing the world: How can the global community meet the needs of people who aspire to better lives — and do it without irreparably harming the planet?
She gave the remarks at the opening ceremony for the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), February 14 in Boston. Here’s how she framed it: “The question has two sides, of course. On one side, how do we in the developed world preserve the essential aspects of our quality of life, while navigating the massive shift to sustainable and renewable life styles? And on the other side, how do we together make it possible for the people of the developing world to acquire the basic comforts of modern life? How do we make it possible for others to enjoy the same gains that transformed America?”
Part of her solution included using the Internet to spread knowledge around the world to help people improve their lives, but the bulk of her talk was about how to meet the global energy challenge — one piece of the sustainability puzzle.
After reciting the litany of energy problems — “astronomically growing demand, insecurity of current energy sources, and the dire environmental consequences of current energy technologies” — she said we need both to develop new energy technologies and to value energy efficiency more than we do now. She declared energy efficiency should be elevated to the status of a “fifth fuel,” alongside coal, natural gas, nuclear and oil. We can make huge efficiency gains in our vehicles and buildings right now.
M.I.T. is pursuing both tracks and is focusing on solar for the long term. Why? Because, as she put it, “The sun is where the energy is. The amount of sunlight that reaches the Earth’s surface in an hour contains enough energy to meet the world’s current energy needs for a year.” In the short term, M.I.T. engineers are working on ways to use today’s fuels more efficiently and cleanly. Improvements in our current technologies can bridge us to a future that utilizes more renewable energy sources.
Toward the end of her talk she described how government, universities, private industry and the public will have to collaborate to come up with energy solutions. She also highlighted the need for federal funding for energy research, and noted that funding research offers a great return on investment. “Over the past 30 years, NIH invested $4 per American per year on cardiac research. In the process, they cut death from strokes and heart attacks in half. One has to ask: just how much would it be worth investing, to invent our way to an energy future that we, and everyone on Earth, can live with?”
Well said. I agree that we need to increase the historically low U.S. research and development budget for energy. We also need to use less energy where we can and use it more efficiently wherever possible.
If you want to conserve energy, check out the Energy Star site for tips and energy-efficient products.
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