As Obama's new Energy Secretary, Steven Chu is probably the single most important figure in world environmental politics right now. Paul Quinn snags a 60-second interview for RSA Arts & Ecology at the Nobel Laureate Symposium to get a glimpse of the challenges he's facing — and finds a man who's singularly upbeat about the tasks ahead.
When rumours started flying at the end of last year that Dr. Steven Chu was in the running to be President Obama's new Energy Secretery, green movements worldwide were lit up by the idea that Ombama's promises on climate might actually add up to something. Chu has a reputation not only a brilliant scientist, but as someone who is energised by the gravity of the challenge that climate change presents.
His appointment, says Margie Alt, executive director of Environment America, "represents a 180-degree turnaround for the United States on the environment and energy policy."
He's a brilliant University of California academic, but can someone with as frank as Steven Chu — who was happy to declare as recently as 2007 that "coal is my worst nightmare" — survive the minefield of energy lobby interestes that is Washington? Five months into the job, with the American Clean Energy and Security Act starting to make its painfully slow progress to the House of Represenatives and then to the Senate, many enivornmentalists fear that too many compromises have already been made, and that the cap-and-trade approach at its heart is more about delay than action. Chu, however, stands by the Act as "our best shot".
Dr Chu is a Nobel Prizewinner for his work as a physicist, working on trapping atoms with laser light. Paul Quinn caught up with Chu briefly at the Nobel Laureate Symposium on climate change's Gala Cultural Evening at London's Science Museum, to find him upbeat about his task, convinced he was going to emerge from his time at the Department of Energy "with integrity".
I know, I know. And there’s more. The Titanic’s sister ship went down a few years later and there’s concern that the steel and the bolts in both ships had an issue that in cold weather they became very brittle. But anyway, the issue is not the details of "glancing blows" or
anything… But I’m going to have to look for a better analogy. I still have these discussions with the messaging people at the White House, about what I think works and what they think works.”
Does it feel odd, having been part of the scientific lobby trying
to convince government on climate change, now suddenly being on the
"other side"?
Well, I’m still on the scientific lobby side, I’m just on the inside now. You have to try your best to work on the inside to get the desired effect you wanted on the outside.
But in the end, when I leave this job, I have to leave with my integrity — and the good news is, I will be able to do that.
Furtherfield.org: The Zero Dollar Laptop
Nice to see Bruce Sterling picking up on the excellent media arts collective furtherfield.org’s Zero Dollar Laptop project.
Working with clients from St Mungo’s homeless charity, they’re helping people break up old laptops and build new ones, adding free opensource software to help them build new computers for themselves entirely free of charge.
It’s a great project. [...]
On houses that fall into the sea
Earlier this week the papers were full of stories of Ridgemont House in Devon – a house bought for 150,000 by auction, only to see its garden plummet down towards Oddicombe Beach.
The story brought together the national obsession with house prices with the fact of increasing coastal erosion due to climate change.ArtistKane Cunningham is jealous [...]
Pothole gardens; opportunity from decay
This via Thriving Too:
“An ongoing series of public installations highlighting the problem of surface imperfections on Britain’s roads byPete Dungey, aGraphic Design student at the University of Brighton.”
On Dungey’s web page the photos are accompanied by the quote: ”If we planted one of those in every hole, it would be like a forest in the [...]
Arts
Royal British Society of Sculptors: 18@108:Found
Kate MacGarry Gallery: Ben Rivers
The Book Club: Rich Hendry's Ice Age exhibition at Marvel Bar
Gimpel Fils: Splitting in Two / Downstairs: Review Part II
Duckett and Jeffreys: Sally Taylor - Mouths with Triangles
Stephen Friedman Gallery: Wayne Gonzales
Diemar/Noble Photography: Marcus Doyle: The House Martin and the Cinema
Environment
The forest scheme that fails to protect trees
Charges against sushi chef who served whale
Solar PV failed in Germany and will fail here
Egg boss jailed for 'free range' fraud
England's lost species by region
Does switching off an escalator at Victoria station really save energy?