The Roosevelt Institution
The Challenge: Roosevelt must develop steps to reduce fossil-fuel use that will end our dependence on foreign oil and meet our Kyoto protocol targets
How the proposed Challenge meets the challenge criteria:
1. There is no more global issue. Everyone's got to work together.
2. We've got to fight fossil fuel use where it happens -- in each of our communities.
3. Everything from designing research programs to encouraging people to bike to work is involved.
Vision or background behind the proposed Challenge:
So many of our country's problems stem from our addiction to oil. Our climate is changing at a reckless pace, leading to worse natural disasters here and economic and social devastation abroad where they have less ability to cope. Meanwhile, we're wrapped around the finger of dictatorships like Iran and Saudi Arabia, which use our oil dollars to continue repressing their people and create new terrorists.
Why Roosevelt should take on this Challenge over others:
Without leadership on the national level, states, cities, and counties have been taking over the battle with innovative bike path programs, hybrid and alternative fuel vehicles, public transportation, recycling programs, and reforestation to sequester carbon. Roosevelt must step into this exciting multidisciplinary area of policy to encourage each city, county, and state to start taking these steps and make it a national movement.
My worry is that this issue will seem a bit partisan, and it pretty much enumerated in 'An inconvenient truth" and www.climatecrisis.org - However, I rated High in importance and Feasibility, because its definately an arena we can make advances in, and its certainly an important topic, IMO.
I worry that any solutions to this will require a depth of climatology and engineering expertise which might put it meaningfully out of reach of most students.
I disagree, Jesse. The basic way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is to burn less fossil fuel. Anyone can come up with good ideas for how to do that. How to get more people to take public transportation, how to incentives companies to reduce emissions, how to get buildings to turn down their AC, all of these can meaningfully contribute to lowering our emissions and meeting the Kyoto protocols. It also leaves room for students who do work in the sciences to do technical research into climatology or emerging technologies for carbon reduction. Many of the proposed challenges don't have that opportunity.
Its the fault of Detriot and the mismanagement of AmTrak. (1)Detriot through their backwards business practices have driven themselves into debt, and since it costs an unbelievable amount to pay engineers they've continued to build huge inefficent motors. Its finally being addressed but we're still very far from seeing major decreases in green house gas emissions. (2)America is huge, and before Jetblue, Southwest etc, there was no real cheap way to fly. The other option is to drive one of the aforementioned vehicles detriot makes, or take the train. American train's with the exception of Acela are slow and frankly gross. It's not a difficult task, and one that I've addressed myself (several alternative fuel projects), it just requires a minor altering of the American psyche.
It seems pretty clear that the Federal Government isn't interested in leadership on this issue. This idea isn't exactly novel; many states have passed legislation to meet Kyoto at a sub-federal level. Nonetheless, reducing fossil fuel consumption could use all the grassroots support it can get. Many disciplines have something to bring to the table: Cox mentioned the hard sciences, this also touches environmental studies, economics, IR, social sciences, etc... I think this issue would benefit from our attention and debate, especially since our generation will soon inherit the planet, whatever state it is in.
This is an issue that is going to affect all of us, and that students all across campus can be involved in, from grassroots work to technical analyses. Just in 2006 we’ve seen a tremendous growth in news coverage on energy in the US, and we should contribute. At Stanford, the Center on the Environment and Energy is already working on policy that addresses this topic. However, the topic is so universal and important that I’d love to see collaboration with other centers as well: such as Education, International Development, Economic Policy, and International Security. This is a great Challenge for Roosevelt!