A Threat So Big, Academics Try Collaboration

[flashl]

It is a basic tenet of university research: Economists conduct joint studies, chemists join forces in the laboratory, political scientists share ideas about other cultures — but rarely do the researchers cross disciplinary lines.

The political landscape of academia, combined with the fight for grant money, has always fostered competition far more than collaboration.

But the threat of global warming may just change all that.

Take what’s happening at the Rochester Institute of Technology. In September the school established the Golisano Institute for Sustainability, aimed at getting students and professors from different disciplines to collaborate in studying the environmental ramifications of production and consumption.

“The academic tradition is to let one discipline dominate new programs,” said Nabil Nasr, the institute’s director. “But the problem of sustainability cuts across economics, social elements, engineering, everything. It simply cannot be solved by one discipline, or even by coupling two disciplines.”

Neil Hawkins, Dow Chemical’s vice president for sustainability, sees it that way, too. Thus, Dow is giving $10 million, spread over five years, to the University of California, Berkeley, to set up a sustainability center.

“Berkeley has one of the strongest chemical engineering schools in the world, but it will be the M.B.A.’s who understand areas like microfinance solutions to drinking water problems,” Mr. Hawkins said.

That realization is spreading throughout academia. So more universities are setting up stand-alone centers that offer neutral ground on which engineering students can work on alternative fuels while business students calculate the economics of those fuels and political science majors figure how to make the fuels palatable to governments in both developing nations and America’s states.

NY Times - Read Full Text

Hopefully, their works will be fruitful and we will not have to face these dire predictions:

The Post-Oil Economy: After The Techno-Fix

"Even when grappling with the idea of economic disintegration, Americans attempt to cast it in terms of technological or economic progress: eco-villages, sustainable development, energy efficiency and so on. Under the circumstances, such compulsive techno-optimism seems maladaptive."
— Dmitry Orlov, "Our Village"

The path beyond petroleum begins by considering five principles: that

1. alternative sources of energy are insufficient
   
2. hydrocarbons, metals, and electricity are inseparable
   
3. advanced technology is part of the problem, not part of the solution
   
4. post-oil agriculture means a smaller population
   
5. the basis of the problem is psychological, not technological
   

Everything in modern industrial society is dependent on oil and other hydrocarbons. From these we get gasoline, heating fuel, fertilizer, pesticides, lubricants, plastic, paint, synthetic fabrics, asphalt, pharmaceuticals, and many other things. Speaking in more general terms, we can say that we are dependent on hydrocarbons for manufacture, for transportation, for agriculture, for mining, and for electricity. The peak of world oil production is (or was) about 30 billion barrels a year, supporting a human population of nearly 7 billion. In the entire world, there are perhaps a trillion barrels of oil left to extract — which may sound like a lot, but isn’t. By 2030, annual oil production will be less than half of what it was at its peak.

...

We cannot come to terms with the fact that as a species we have gone beyond the ability of the planet to accommodate us. We have bred ourselves beyond the limits. We have consumed, polluted, and expanded beyond our means, and after several thousand years of superficial technological solutions we are now running short of answers. Biologists explain such expansion in terms of "carrying capacity": lemmings and snowshoe hares — and a great many other species — have the same problem; overpopulation and over-consumption lead to die-off. But humans cannot come to terms with the concept. It goes against the grain of all our religious and philosophical beliefs.

Countercurrents - Read Full Text

[bread_and_roses]

1. A center paid for by Dow Chemical is "neutral ground?"

I don't think so. And what's that "microfinance solution to drinking water problems," eh? More of the same old steal water from the poor and then make them pay for it?

I certainly agree that we need a multi-disciplinary approach to what looks liklier every day - catastrophic dislocations stemming from catastrophic climate change - but I seriously doubt that a center funded by Dow and ilk to have the "neutrality" to come up with anything that doesn't, in the end, benefit Dow, etc. more than humanity.

[flashl]

3. We are both in agreement about the multi-disciplinary approach

compartmentalization of information never worked for our collective benefit.

The "microfinance solutions to drinking water problems" is troubling given that there is a 'global water utility' corp in the works.

[sam sarrha]

2. i think theyre deliberately destroying th economy . just so we cant do anything about global heating

[dysfunctional press]

5. could david ickes have been right all along...?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reptilian_humanoid



According to David Icke, reptilian humanoids are the force behind a worldwide conspiracy directed at manipulation and control of humanity. He contends that most of the world's leaders, from William Jefferson Clinton, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama and George W. Bush to members of the British royal family, are in fact related to the 7-foot (2.1 m) tall, blood-drinking reptilians from the star system Alpha Draconis...

[flashl]

7. The species in the below statement

We cannot come to terms with the fact that as a species we have gone beyond the ability of the planet to accommodate us. We have bred ourselves beyond the limits.

is the target of de-population as in: National Security Study Memorandum 200 or the Kissinger Report

[dysfunctional press]

4. what could be better than having m.b.a.'s deciding drinking water issues...?

:wtf:

[entanglement]

6. Fundamental error there - MBAs are usually a part of the problem, not the solution

At best, they are a part of the obstacles that lie in the way of a solution.