Making Change-From the Lab to the Field

"I am about to graduate from college and I want to change the world, but I don't know how to do it. Do you have any advice for someone like me?"

The young man directed his question to a panel of experts on climate and transportation at the Engineers for a Sustainable World (ESW) National Conference last February in San Francisco. His earnest tone reminded me of my own four years ago.

"Here's what you do: Find an interesting problem and work on it." Energy and Resources Group (ERG) professor Alex Farrell responded in a succinct and direct manner that revealed his military training. "Find out what the hardest part of that problem is, and work on that. Find the hardest part of that part, and that's the space you should work in."

Since arriving in Berkeley almost three years ago, I have been surrounded by student activists from ERG and from ESW with the young man's tone in their voices, striving to use their time and education to tackle the most important global problems. Coming of age at a time when global climate change, extinctions, deforestation and industrial agriculture have pierced the notion that our species can continue its lifestyle without consequence, my generation has been served a banquet of problems to address. However, after selecting the right challenge, the question becomes: How do we balance immediate local change with long-term, radical change?

Members of my interdisciplinary graduate group come down on all sides of that question, but all seem to have used Farrell's methodology to arrive at their dissertation topics. Fermin Reygadas addresses rural people's need for clean drinking water in Mexico by working on the design and dissemination of the UV Tube, a technology that uses ultraviolet light to disinfect water. Malini Ranganathan has just returned from a year in Bangalore, India, in which she began to unpack why water and energy services do not reach those who need them most.

In contrast, Derek Lemoine does most of his work with paper and pencil. His research proposed a new paradigm to allow us to better reduce global CO2 emissions: greenhouse gas property. In this conception, carbon is owned from the point of its terrestrial extraction through its expulsion from the atmosphere, and owners can be taxed as long as their carbon is in our shared global atmosphere.

Cyrus Wadia performs most of his work in the laboratory. He is designing a new generation of solar cells made from metal sulfides, aimed to overcome solar's current barriers to widespread adoption by using materials that are cheap, non-toxic, and abundant.

Recognizing that technology alone cannot solve our problems, Gabrielle Wong-Parodi studies public perceptions of risk associated with various energy technologies, including carbon sequestration. Rich Plevin and Andy Jones are exploring the uncertainties in the environmental impacts of biofuels and the crucial second-order effects of their adoption, such as increasing food prices.

Adam B. Smith (who insists on using the "B" so as not to be associated with other prominent Adam Smiths) is trying to answer what he calls "The Most Important Question": What does a species-poor planet look like for humans?

I write to you about these colleagues because they inspire me, and because they answer the question "But what can I do?" better than I could in words.

Lest I leave you with the impression that only graduate students can apply their academic work to the pursuit of environmental change, I'll tell you how ESW-Berkeley projects are born and raised. Ashley Murray was traveling in India a few years ago and noticed that the people living in the slums of Mumbai were drinking dirty water. She started "Haath Mein Sehat" ("health is in your hands"), an organization that now employs Berkeley and Mumbai undergraduate students to work on designing effective water-treatment technology and implementing effective health education programs that ensure long-term change. The four-year-old effort has been wildly successful, thanks mostly to the undergraduates who spent their summers and their winters volunteering.

Similarly, public health undergraduate Lia Marshall had an internship in the Ecuadorian Amazon her freshman year that led her to start the Shuar Health Project, a three-year effort to partner with indigenous communities to improve access to drinking water and sanitation. A good idea with a healthy dose of motivation goes a long way.

I gave a talk a couple weeks ago to Alice Agogino's freshman engineering eesign class and one person asked me a question. He said, "I want to get involved, but I am only a freshman. Is there anything I can do?" I recognized the tone in his voice, and emphatically answered, "Yes!"

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