STANFORD COMES TO HAWAII

Well, not as grand as the title might sound, but a Stanford Sophomore College class is in Hawaii to tour our energy sites. (I should add that I have an addendum at the very end of this posting, raising the status of this students beyond their expectations.)

A rather pedantic course name--Energy in Hawaii:  Forefront of Clean Energy Technology and Policy.

We will explore practical, social, technical, and political issues surrounding energy production and use in Hawaii. Hawaii is at the forefront of changes in the electric grid and the uses of electricity, with an aspirational goal for 100% carbon-free electricity in 2045. Hawaii also has passed legislation that aspires to 100% fossil-free transportation by 2040.

That last goal, actually applies only to land.  Air transport remains farther into the future.  The students are led by Stanford Political Science Professor Bruce Cain, who also serves as the Director of the Bill Lane Center for the American West.  Has degrees from Oxford and Harvard.  Is the Charles Louis Ducommun Professor in Humanities and Sciences and Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment.

In associate charge of the group is Terry Surles, who, like me, is linked to the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute at the University of Hawaii.  We have both worked at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.  Terry has also been with several national laboratories, the California Energy Commission and once ran the Hawaii State Energy Office.  His wife Sally Benson is Professor Energy Science and Engineering at Stanford.

I might add that Kate Gibson, who coordinated everything, was wonderful.  In that group photo below, she is that standing person in the back.

The class has a fabulous itinerary.

We will spend the first week on campus learning about energy and its context in Hawaii, then travel to various field sites in Hawaii, including a wind farm, a utility-scale solar farm, an oil-fired power plant, a waste-to-energy facility, wave turbine, an oil refinery, a synthetic gas production facility, a biofueled thermal generator, a geothermal plant, and areas where natural resources are impacted by energy resource utilization.   We will meet with relevant policy experts and public officials from governmental agencies, utilities, universities, and public interest groups.

This is where I came in, for I was one of three speakers this weekend.  It was coincidental that all three of us graduated from Stanford.  We had an hour each, which allowed for a lot of interaction with the students.

Neil Hannahs recently concluded four decades of service to Kamehameha Schools, where he managed a portfolio of 358,000 acres of agriculture and conservation lands.  He has subsequently launched Ho'okele Strategies, a consulting enterprise to engage inspiring wayfinders in building society.  Serves on various boards, including the Polynesian Voyaging Society.

Henry Curtis spoke next.  He has been Executive Director of Life of the Land since 1995.  You can follow-up with him at his blog site.  Takes me far back, for when I first joined the University of Hawaii more than half a century ago, I recall working with Tony Hodges, Gavin Daws and Sophie Ann Aoki when they founded the advocacy group.  They had a confrontative style.  Curtis works behind the scenes to make things work for the benefit of the environment.

When I was introduced, I took a photo of the class for this blog, and jokingly told them that they will all become famous, for I'm heading for 3 million viewers, with 211 countries visiting that site.  I mentioned that this daily effort had gone on into now the 14th year, and that is as long as you have spent from kindergarten to your sophomore year at Stanford.

Further, your parents probably were not yet born when I left Hawaii for the first time in 1958 to go away to college.  Driven to campus, at the entrance of Palm Drive I noticed a sign indicating this was Leland Stanford Jr University.  I did not realize I had applied to a junior college.

I first showed a copy of Energy Self-Sufficiency for the State of Hawaii.

46 years ago, a class I taught at the University of Hawaii actually drafted a book on this subject, getting a National Science Foundation grant to publish it.  It was picked up by the Hawaii Department of Education to use as a high school textbook.  These students also performed an energy skit at the State Legislature, which so impressed the legislators that funds were appropriated for these students and me to travel to various schools throughout the state to repeat our show.  Maybe these Stanford students can update our book with current data.

Back to my talk, notice behind me in my photo with the green vest the title of my presentation:  The Blue Revolution and Other Visions for Your Action.  I emphasized, that point and showed Calvin & Hobbes.

I thus went into my usual Blue Revolution talk.  Here is the TEDx presentation I made on this subject this past December.  

But I wanted to share other visions, so showed them a slide from my Mensa talk.

As this was an energy class, I mainly focused on those topics.  I asked for their help in finding a billionaire to fund the Blue Revolution.  Whoever finds one thus will take the leadership position to eventually build the First Floating City to host the 2050 Blue Revolution.  If I'm then still around, I would be 110 years old.  In any case, I bestowed all the above visions to them and rest of the world, too.  Good luck.

Typhoon Muifa at 75 MPH missed Shanghai and is headed for Shandong.

I only very rarely return to my blog to make adjustments, except of course to correct typos and such.  However, after reflecting on my talk to those Stanford sophomores on Saturday, it occurred to me that this group became only the third to reach a certain level of respect and awe for me.  I've made presentations to the U.S. Congress, UNESCO in Paris, MENSA, distinguished academic gatherings and more.  However, what sticks in my mind is the rather startling quirk that sixth grade students and older women clubs most challenged my thinking.  The ingenuousness of youth results in questions that challenged my thinking, while, and yes, this seems kind of a gender and age discriminatory, but these women had reached a stage of life that they no longer are constrained by social norms, and they provided input that I would not have even considered, but did.  What made these Stanford students so much like them?  Got to think about that.  Maybe that will become a future posting.  Amen.

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