SPEAKERS:
John B. Heywood: Sun Jae Professor of Mechanical Engineering
Sloan Automotive Laboratory site
Center for 21st Century Energy Site
Stephen Ansolabehere: Elting R. Morison Professor of Political Science
Professor Stephen Ansolabehere
Cal Tech/MIT Voting Project
ABOUT THE LECTURE:
Both small, private and large, public actions are essential if we’re to have any hope of addressing global warming and achieving a sustainable energy future.
John Heywood lays out three options for making some immediate inroads: conservation, which he says has somehow become a “bad word;” improving mainstream technology; and finding new ways to produce and use energy. First, the public must put aside delusions that new technologies “will save us.” Hydrogen fuel cells and plug-in hybrids “are not there in terms of practicality.” So, says Heywood, we “must get on the broader path that says the energy you and I use in the individual, small-scale sense must be far less per task.” Why heat a 2000- square-foot home when “the square footage I occupy is two?” wonders Heywood. Improve the fuel consumption of the current internal combustion engine, and press auto manufacturers for small cars that can get 200 miles per gallon. Run the numbers on your home’s energy costs, encourages Heywood, and tell your neighbors to switch off their lights.
We’re “humans with appetites,” and we need market-based incentives to change. We need help from regulatory and fiscal policies as well to shape up. “It’s me and you, what we do, what we buy, how we use it – all these things – that will start us down the path,” says Heywood.
One giant obstacle to our self-reform, says Stephen Ansolabehere, is the fact that “energy is abundant and cheap.” The U.S., like China and India, sits on a huge pile of coal that could very well power our lives for the next 300 to 3,000 years – if global warming doesn’t first destroy the world’s economies. We’ve been lulled into complacency, and so carbon emissions per person in the U.S. continue to rise, with China and India on the same trajectory.
Right now, the menu of alternative energy sources like solar panels and hybrid cars don’t appeal to Americans because they cost more than the usual fare. The key is to “make coal on the same scale of price with other technologies,” says Ansolabehere, “to make other technologies competitive.”
So, asks Ansolabehere, “How do we get the U.S. under control, and then engage China and India?” His simple answer: “Taxes change behavior.” Europe and Japan successfully demonstrate this approach. They acknowledge the costs coal imposes on society by taxing pollution, and have a much lower rate of emissions per capita than the U.S. One small, promising sign, he says, is that American consumers seem slightly more open to a carbon tax (a fee paid by companies, and then passed on to consumers) today than they were three years ago. The cap and trade system offers a gentler push on companies to lower carbon emissions, but citizens must forcefully lobby their political representatives to support this alternative. Without these larger efforts, it will be extremely difficult to reduce our collective carbon emissions as we cling to comfortable lifestyles.
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NOTES ON THE VIDEO (Time Index):
Video length is 1:35:58.
John Durant, Director of the MIT Museum, introduces the event and its co-sponsors, and describes upcoming Soap Box gatherings.
At 4:54, he describes previous episodes in the Soap Box Sustainable Energy series, then introduces the evening’s speakers.
At 8:18, John Heywood begins.
At 21:49, Stephen Ansolabehere begins.
At 31:56, Durant asks about the relative availability of different technologies in England and the U.S.
At 37:22, Durant reads questions formulated by the audience.
At 42:35, an audience member asks about energy audits.
At 49:26, an audience member points out how MIT wastes energy. The speakers and other audience members discuss how to live more efficiently at home and at work.
At 57:20, an audience member notes how China and India want to emulate the U.S. in energy usage. Speakers discuss ways of implementing emission reductions in business, and how to make cleaner coal-fired power plants.
At 1:02:14, an audience member asks why the U.S. doesn’t have the same kind of leadership in energy issues as Britain.
At 1:10:20, an audience member inquires about energy co-generation -- selling power back to the grid.
At 1:15:14, an audience member asks about how feasible it will be to achieve a 50% savings in energy. Ansolabehere discusses the savings possible just in freight transport. Heywood talks about a tripling in vehicles in the next 50 years and the difficulty of achieving energy use reduction given this inevitability.
At 1:25:33, participants discuss insurance as another possible check on energy-squandering behavior and how distant the threat of global warming seems to most Americans.
At 1:32:05, Durant asks his speakers to pretend they are powerful politicians and inquires what measures they would enact right now.
At 1:35:05, Durant concludes the event.
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The information on this page was accurate as of the day the video was added to MIT World. This video was added to MIT World on 2007-01-18.
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