Climate change blog posts

I’ve written about 25 posts on climate change on the Th!nk About It and UNDispatch site.

I’ll also be blogging from COP15 in Copenhagen, so subscribe to the above links to get all my analysis and commentary.

COP15

I’m super excited to be attending the UN Climate Change Conference at Copenhagen in December this year.

Its called the COP15 because it is the fifteenth Conference Of the Parties. When the year started off great many things were expected as an outcome of the COP15. It’s quite clear now that most of those expectations will not be met, the climate issue has turned out be too complicated to be resolved soon.

It is one of the largest UN conferences ever and the Copenhagen will be the center of the world for two weeks. The city also promises to turn into a colorful place with lots of activists and environmentalists. The hippy in me can’t wait to meet young activist folk from all over the world. In my September trip to Copenhagen I figured out the places to eat, drink and chill out; so I’m going to have fun. A damper though, Copenhagen is possibly the world’s most expensive city, an American friend described the prices as “makes US look Mexico and India look like Nigeria”.

Climate Change podcast for Th!nk About It

I’m a blogger for Th!nk About It’s Th!nk2 Climate Change competition. This entitles me to a free trip to Copenhagen(!yay!), which is 11 days away as I write this post.

Even before the competition begins, few of us got together to start discussing our ideas and thoughts on climate change and putting them out as podcasts. I was in the second podcast which also included Domen Savič from Slovenia, Yordanka Stoyanova from Bulgaria and Joël Adami from Luxemburg.

It was very interesting to exchange ideas with smart and motivated youth from different parts of the world. I wasn’t very well prepared and was quite tired, so I’m not very satisfied with my thoughts. I’ve linked the podcast below for you to listen to or download. I can’t figure out how to embed it, so I’ve linked to a different page where it is embedded. It is a tad bit long at 46minutes, but I suggest listening to the first 20minutes of our discussion.

Description: What is climate change and how do we respond to it? How is the media covering the climate change, where is the political backing of the efforts and how effective are the NGOs who are working in this area?

download

http://www.dsavic.net/2009/08/29/thinkcast-002-climate-change-and-us/

Also expect a barrage of posts coming up in the future on climate change. I’ve been writing a lot of exciting stuff on climate change as a part of IYCN’s Agents of Change Policy working group member. I shall share some of my finished papers and articles soon enough.

Suggested Reading List

Here’s a list of non-fiction books that I read or I’m in the process of reading in Hyderabad, and I recommend. Please don’t expect me to lend these .

1. Economics – A Very Short Introduction by Partha Dasgupta: Partha Dasgupta is one of the best developmental economists around. This is a 150 pages book that briefly explains the motives of economists and introduces few important basic concepts. This is NOT a textbook, it contains everything that the rest of us need to know.

2. Supercapitalism- Robert Reich: I can’t recommend this book enough to people who want to understand our messed up world. Reich gives a brief understanding of the current form of capitalism, which is most efficient in generating money. It fails when it tries to be other things.

3. Making Globalization Work- Joseph Stiglitz: Stiglitz is my favorite economist. He’s worried about the negatives of globalization and free market economics. In this book he talks about fallacies of globalization and proposes solutions to handling challenges like third world debt, global warming, ineffectiveness of IMF & World Bank, etc

4. The Collapse of Globalism- John Ralston Saul: This a great account of failures of globalization with the ending chapters on what is and will replace our current free-market systems. I’ve not read Globalization and Its Discontents by Stiglitz, which is supposed to be a good book on similar lines.

5. Guns, Germs and Steel- J Diamond: I re-read an ebook of it this time and still loved it. It briefly explains our history and its implications on our present. He argues that geography and environment shaped our modern world. This one is hard to find in bookstores, look for scond hand ones.

6. The Discovery of India- Jawaharlal Nehru: Very well written account of Indian history with comments on the events by Nehru

7. Phantoms in the Brain- Vilayanur Ramachandran: Supposed to be the best popular science book on understanding our brain. Very fascinating to read and written well.

8. White Mughals- William Dalrymple: This book changed my impression of the British, who are typically thought of as oppressors. For a major period of history they mingled and lived freely with Indians and adpoted Indian cultures. The book is uses the tale of an affair between the British Resident of Hyderabad with a noble woman of the Nizam’s family, to describe more about the Deccan’s culture between 1700’s-1800’s.

9. Five people you meet in heaven- Mitch Albom: This is a good fiction book on life and how people influence ours unknowingly. Its about a man who makes sense of his life in heaven. Very beautifully written. Even though I’m an atheist and I stay away from motivational books, this book is poetic.

More books that I read, but thought were just decent:

1. Predictably Irrational- Dan Ariely: I didn’t really learn anything from this book. Its a short book, so if you find theTED talk by the author fascinating, buy it.

2. Black Swan- Nassim Nicholas Taleb: After loving his previous book ‘Fooled by Randomness’ I was let down by this. I found it popmpous, based on personal anecdotes, and not much substantial theory on taking advantage of a Black Swan, which the author say, is an extremely rare event. Buy Fooled by Randomness, don’t buy this one.

3. Outliers- Malcolm Gladwell: As much as I hate Malcolm Gladwell’s continual usage of anecdotal evidence to prove his theories, I still end up learning something out of his books. So I borrowed this one from a friend. I didn’t learn anything out of this book other than 10,000 hours is what is supposed to be the magical number of hours required for you to become successful in a certain field. I would suggest to gift this book to your friends and family who are convinced they need something special in their lives to succeed or be extraordinary.

Anything similar to these that I should read?

Experiences from the 39th St Gallen Symposium

I had been trying to write a post on the St Gallen Symposium, but I had so many things to say that it was hard to write anything at all. I think whatever I remember right now is what will stay with me for a long time. Everything else is either lost or hidden in my memory.

First about the symposium. It brought together 200 students from 68 countries along with a couple of hundred high quality business delegates and university professors. The idea is to create an atmosphere for debate and exchange of ideas between qualified and important stakeholders on an important world theme. This year was the 39th symposium and the topic was ‘Revival of political and economic boundaries’. The organizers pay for all the expenses of the traveling students. It is a free trip to Switzerland with no strings attached. Just write the essay.

Hanging out before the conference.

Because they can

Most students were accommodated in apartments of University of St Gallen students or in a youth hostel. My host was exceptionally accommodating and that made my experience very pleasant. I can’t thank him enough or stop talking about his wonderful thatched house.

The beautiful house my host lives in

I really loved the internationalism of the entire conference. The student participants all hailed from different backgrounds which created opportunities for lively dinner table discussions and debates, in addition to learning more about different cultures. And all of them had qualified through an essay competition which meant they were very smart, especially when it came to economics and business, which was the major focus of the symposium. I was in the mini-club of engineers and scientists at the symposium and in the smaller club of non-academically inclined. Most students were pursuing economics, political science, international relations, business, law, etc. Since I hardly have any friends who are in similar disciplines by virtue of interest, I enjoyed their company. In fact I felt they were my peers compared to my Pilani classmates, since I have very few friends I can have a stimulating discussion with on politics, energy or economics. Towards the end of the conference most of us agreed that an university that consists only of the symposium attendees would be an amazing place to study in! I will miss the people I talked to and learnt so much from a lot. Also a friend from Japan who till the symposium was planning for a masters in biotechnology, decided to instead get a masters in economics. That is the kind of influence this conference can have on lives!

Eating together

Good old coffee and conversations in the sunshine

One very comforting truth I realized there was that we all might have been from completely different cultures and value systems, but we all had so much in common; mutual respect, curiosity, passion for knowledge and genuinely trying to make this world better. Me and a French student had surprisingly so much in common not only in the way we thought but also in movies, music, websites or books we loved. The world really is such a small village. And for the first time I was actually finding a practical use for all the random trivia that I have stuck in my head. For example just being able to recollect the capital of Mongolia or the flag of Portugal is such an ice-breaker and comfort builder. I was very surprised by the amount of knowledge people had about India and their interest in the country. Also a few of them had traveled in India. My substitute for lack of traveling outside the country, was a fantastic recollection of country capitals, personalities from lots of countries.

One of the fun pre-conference activities

Not sure what's happening here

BRIC citizens

The quality of the conference itself was outstanding. They had a wide gamut of topics for discussion in either the keynotes or in the smaller special sessions. Topics covered themes of financial crisis, energy, government regulation, emerging economies, politics, automobile and aircraft industry, BoP, etc. It had something for everybody. With the financial crisis on everybody’s mind, there was quite a bit of focus on it. But it also meant that not too many peopel were over-optimistic or arrogant with their thoughts. And also students were the loudest mouths in the Q&A sessions. Perhaps the business leaders wanted some fresh ideas, so they were interested to listen. Not all sessions satisfied me, but some surprised, while others excited me. I listened to all energy sessions carefully, and though I was disappointed with a few answers to my questions, over all I got a lot of perspective on what my career could be and future of energy for the world. I would suggest going through the videos of the symposium to get bites of the sessions. 

One of the keynote speakers talking about oil security

One of the special sessions

About 20% of the time was dedicated to Q&A, which the students just loved

Finally I can’t help, but feel inspired by the ISC team which organized the entire conference. 24 undergraduates leading 300 others pulled off the entire conference, with a budget of certainly a few million USD. I’ve attended the Fortune Global Forum 2007, which had some of the most famous businessmen of the world and I can tell you organization-wise, this was way better. Everything was well planned and the students were friendly, calm and helpful. There was hardly a glitch! And my room was much better than the 27K INR-per-night suite at a 7star hotel. I was surprised that they had hired a few ex-airforce men to teach the committee how to handle stress!

 

One of the volunteers for the Food&Beverages team

They had these cute cars branded with the symposium logos to drive people around

They even dressed up in the cultural dress of the country they were serving food from. Here being taught the right way to serve something by the chef.

So in brief about the symposium:

1. Its a free trip to Switzerland

2.  Its as international as you would want it to be

3. Brilliant speakers and sessions on business, economics, and politics

4. Posh treatment and hospitality

5.  One of the best experiences you would have as a student

6. And it is a lot of fun

I am applying again next year and I see no reason why you shouldn’t. It is totally worth the pain you would go through writing the essay.

ps: Ah and one last thing about my essay. I was reading essays of a few people I met at the symposium and compared to theirs mine looks so mediocre. Not in terms of facts or my style of writing, but rather in terms of actually contributing to the dialogue and discussion of the theme. Mine reflects the most obvious view point, which is decreased Globalization, without presenting any good case in its favor. A very journalistic account of things, perhaps I should have spent more time on making my thoughts clearer. I am glad that there are others who’ve got optimistic ideas for the direction the world should move in. I’ve personally always been quite libertarian in terms of how indviduals in a country should be treated, but I’ve been more leftist, inclining towards increased regulations in cross-border affairs. I don’t think this is against the spirit of economic Globalization.

Yesterdays

The next book I’m reading is ‘The Five People You Meet In Heaven’. I’ve seen this book so many times in stores, but really any book with ‘heaven’ in the title is generally not for me.

Anyways a friend posted this quote on FB and its all I’ve been thinking about all day. And changed my mind about reading this book.

“I figure it’s like in the Bible, the Adam and Eve deal?” the Captain said. “Adam’s first night on earth? When he lays down to sleep? He thinks it’s all over, right? He doesn’t know what sleep is. His eyes are closing and he thinks he’s leaving this world, right?

“Only he isn’t. He wakes up the next morning and he has a fresh new world to work with, but he has something else, too. He has his yesterday.”

The Captain grinned. “The way I see it, that’s what we’re getting here, soldier. That’s what heaven is. You get to make sense of your yesterdays.”

Beautiful.

St Gallen essay

I wrote an essay with the title of ‘Economic Globalization: End of Inevitability’ for the St Gallen symposium. It will be exciting to discuss politics and business this year with the financial crisis and Obama as the new American President.

The file link is http://abhishake.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/gallen1.pdf (warning: first page is empty)

Comments on the essay are welcomed.

Why I don’t blog much here.

I don’t blog much here, because I hate writing stuff that’s only adding more noise to our world. And recently I’ve started appreciating how important it is to shut up and just listen. Our world would be a better place if most of us did that.

Of course my mundane thoughts are streamed through twitter. Its mostly pointless banter, so please don’t follow me.
So no, I don’t write my thoughts or opinions anywhere on the web. I’m not qualified to write breakthrough lines and words on any topic (other than myself of course). And I find writing anything else an utter waste of time, and too much noise(blog posts take time to write. You wouldn’t think so reading most blogs, but yes they do take time!). And like a wiseguy once said, “The day I stop thinking and talking about myself, is the day I will start thinking”.

The only thing interesting and original I’ve written in 2009 is this essay on Globalization for St Gallen Symposium. Took me about 3-4 days to write it and 10 days of research and reading. I wish I could have published the drafts which had about 12,000 words. I had to cruelly cut down to 2000 for the competition.

Happy.

I realized today that perhaps I am happy. I can’t describe it well enough; but its a light headed feeling, a feeling of being alive, a feeling that you’ll be feeling like this even in the next moment.

I can’t recollect feeling like this in a long time. Maybe when I was much younger and too innocent to differentiate between unhappiness and happiness, pursuit of which defines adult lives.

I can’t believe how much good taking a semester off has done for me. Right now, I’m doing something that I chose to do. Something that wasn’t enforced on me by societal pressure or by lack of other opportunities. I chose to do this.

And this feeling of happiness is not rooted in a victory over competitors or in the act of rebellion of dropping a semester or in the feeling that life’s perfect. Thankfully not.

I think the day that I realized all the following, I finally started doing things that I really really want to.
1. I have very limited needs. I can live on minimum money.
2. I’m not applying for higher education for the next 5-6 years.
3. My parents are super cool.

Realizing all that took all the pressure off my back. Phew!

So when last semester in Pilani, I was unhappy with everything that was going on with me, taking a semester off to explore just seemed right. And by explore I didn’t intend to travel around, meet new people, and live a bohemian life. I’m pretty sure I want to run world changing businesses. What I needed was a direction to move forward in, not a plan, but a direction.

Renewable energy  was something that had been giving me quite a few sleepless nights ever since I spoke to Alexis from Indian Youth Climate Network and Devin, my summer internship boss and dear friend. So I decided to take the semester off to work in an organization that would give me a panaromic view of the entire renewable energy sector in India. New Energy Finance seemed like a perfect fit and it sure is!

So right now I’m doing what I love. Getting paid enough to live well. And there’s no pressure. Finally.

Yes, I am happy.

I hope all of you can feel this, at least once.

Adventures in solitude

In Hyderabad experimenting.

Dedicating this post to few of my friends who are as cryptic as possible in English language on their blogs. Next year I’m gifting them personal diaries.