Student Sustainability Summit S3 Regina 2008
I've been selected to be a delegate for the University of Regina Science Department at the 2008 Student Sustainability Summit. This is the first time this event has been hosted in Canada, and there aren't many people from Canada who are attending.
Monday
I showed up early; the only people who were there so far were a few from the UofS and Saskatchewan Highways. I sat at their table. Later on, I would be joined by Ivy(Biology), another UofR student(Ed-Science), a MIT student(biosciences), and a masters student from austria/germany, who is doing a work term in regina.
There was delegates from 27+ countries including developing countries(the delegates from kenya, tanzania I met; we hit it off right away, but didn't get too much time before the crowd tore us apart)
Most of the people present seemed to be around second year students(with a salting of masters students and Uregina profs/businesses for good measure).
There was a band that played too loud in the background. Their best song seemed to be 'Machine Gun', a Jimi hendrix cover.
Pat Fiacco(mayor of regina) skipped the event(booo) but he did send a representative.
His rep mentioned
* The tarsands in SK are indeed going forward full steam, but at least at the Regina level, where there is pretty much no major industry, that they want to sustain their living conditions
* the Saskatchewan PARC/Uregina petroleum engineering department is researching CO2 injection as a method of getting up to 95%(instead of the current 5%) return of tarsand oil, all without the use of very much water(which is what they use right now). Besides not starving us for water, it would also serve as a sink for more CO2 than we'd be burning in all of our automobiles in the province. they tried to spin this to make SK look like a carbon-neutral political entity, but it ignores the fact that tarsand oil must be burned to be useful, and even with the CO2 that we put in the ground we won't be anywhere close to neutralizing that amount of oil, even with their own figures. I also worry about a Lake Nykos situation, but who knows whether that'll happen.
* (I knew about this) Saskatchewan is also doing surveys into next generation wastewater and power generation systems. Assuming the conservatives will allow us to do any infrastructure at all, we could easily find ourselves with decentralized power, and a more biologically sound wastewater system(than our current 'dump it in the fresh water supply'). Same with the dump; Right now our dump is spoiling our main acquifer; we need to fix that.
There was a little bit of a language gap, especially with the people who were brought in for speeches. One was an author of the Brundtland Report (also the sound system sucked, so I could barely hear him, which made things incomprehensible to my table). Most of the language problems came from people who were regina residents, though; the international crowd tended to be very clear, and well spoken.
I am terrified. Like KULT, there's so much potential here. Very Smart people, who are there on behest of powerful institutions(the ticket price was 300$---Everyone other than me was in a suit; I was in backwards scrap leather). There's definitely a chance things could go wildly right, here.
There's a lot of people who want to change the world, highly skilled people, but they just don't know where to start. That's where tuesday's events come in.
Tuesday
(I may be able to go in more detail, if you're interested comment)
Other Related Groups to s3:
Oikos,
Taking IT Global,
YES,
AGS,
ImagineEarth, 2008, Japan
Uregina local sustainability group
More talking with swedish guy; seems like everything I say in response to him is out of context. Language problems.
Lots of Chinese propaganda from the chinese students, and I can't really blame them. This is a hard time for them with the olympics, and their fellows being killed in an earthquake. They are really pouring on the love for the world and China though.
Green Bejing; XiXi_Wei
Average Car in western world; 10,000km/y
Average Car in Bejing, due to poor layout; 20,000km/y
Furthermore 40-60% of cars are "useless"; only one passanger
Increase of 10% vehicles/y(doubling time of what, 4ish years?! They are already at the level of the US)
4% increase of road/y
Intelligent traffic system, "odd/even license number travel restrictions"
Bejing is a Circular traffic system with connections connecting the rings. At those connections are major traffic bottlenecks
Smartcard system for bus with subsidy led to 55% increase in use of bus.
Car 10L
Bus .54L
Subway .5L
Marie from Tokyo was very nice; she's one of the organizing committee for s2:Tokyo.
Informal Water Sanitation in Cape-Town; Jess Schulschenk, stellenbosch, SOUth Africa, sun.ac.za
Informal settlements on periphery; seggregation is still de facto in rule. 40 year (!) wait list for housing. Free houses are given away, however.
More intense storms with climate change, they are learning to use ecosystems & services ; they live in a flood plain
The distribution chains for traffic, people, materials ALSO are designed to carry water. Clever.
* Compitition in Science Education(guyIcannotpronouncenorwritebecauseitisarabic Egypt)
Kosovo; politics are dealt with, what they need is Economic Sustainable Development, right now, needed Right now.
* it's still developing world
* Peacekeepers still needed
I really dropped the ball on her. I don't know why, but I just fumbled my words, maybe? It was at this point where I stopped being able to connect with people very well; I mean, we just weren't understanding eachother; she was from a wartorn state, I from a developed country. Neither really understood the other's feild, although I admired her for her work in fighting against human trafficking.
* Biomass China talk, there are crop tailings; they are now converting these to biofuel
* Economic Value
* Protects the environment(it's not being burned, no forest fires)
* Free energy
* Gets rid of rwaste
Very cheap gas; 1/1000th the price of regular gas. HOWEVER it's only about 10% as potent. The guy obviously needed a course in biochem to go further, since he didn't understand the process behind it. Which is drastically better than some of the other presenters, mostly the corporate ones.
Windows created economic loss in the thailand presentation. The thailand girls were awesome, though; they took me and let me play piano for them, and had a 'thai boxing' match, wwe style for the culture show
The french version of sustainable future was basically a sustainable future FOR the french. And other minority groups. Which is fine, although it seemed to me to be either counterintuitive or somehow regressive; They were all about centralizing their culture, not liberation and decentralization. Probably okay if you're faced with extinction, but if you're not? Also; they were proponents of marketing. I think they may have been employed by a marketing firm. I pointed out what was wrong with that, they got it but disagreed. My french is even worse now than it was last year.
Do the means of production have a langauge?
Education, POlitique & Judicial, Foyer et spiritualite, Sports et loisirs, Sante, Economie, Culture, COmms
INcerase Influence, Improve Service, help instituteions, augmentation de 'influence due leadership sur lensmble de la province
Encliquetage, c'est la politique, judigce
Wisdom of the crowds?
Communites of Tomorrow Very impressive, well researched presentation. the eyearly infrastructure deficit in Canada grows by 500$/person. USA it's 5300$/person, china 1000$/person. 20 years; water infrastructure is in need of replacement. SUstainable infrastructure is a must; regina is a Lab; "the living lab"
SHEC labs. Patents ahoy! So much for PV technology until 2012-2027. Worthy of ignoring. They singlehandedly kept the US 10 years behind the state of the art in solar power for almost a decade, and helped fuel the past decade of SUVs, and terrible energy efficiency there.
Dave Sauchyn Climate Change, SK/N CHile, Was an author of the IPCC, and the Canadian Equiv(CGCM3). Won a nobel peace prize. Parliament ignores him. IPCC 2001. AESA SUstainability, ken weins
Saskatchewan, like australia, was a dry climate before europeans came here. Even until 1890 it was very dry. THe past 60 years are atypically wet; water, especialyl in teh summer, is not as abundant as it has been for my parents entire life.
Government leadership is required.
IPCC 4th report has 800 authors; IPCC 4th Assessment report
Greater Access to info, more tech in less technical areas is required.
The highschool kids hadn't heard of SDA. I linked them.
Saskatchewan is going to be butchered by global warming, however, we have the wealth, technology and science to prevail. All we need is the political and economic resolve.
Developing countries are not so lucky, even if they aren't going to be hit as severely as us.
Regina; could use grey water, almost immediately. Farms; can store water.
Report; natural resources canada, impacts, adaptation, report
Informal waste management, wipapan adulcharoen, Pornpimol ruangprach, supatra malairodsiri, saranpat piriyaprasit, nat sangkasab, saranya changpasuk. Interesting. Applying freecycle to thailand
Springboard West is either evil, or pure incompetent. Their core business is in "IP", sucking on the government subsidy and tax releif teat.
It's not even clear that large corps are poor at innovation.
That being said, she at least admits that her generation is over with, and that this conference is a sign that we, what she calls the "green" generation, are ready to grab control of the world.
As you can see, lots of panel discussions. Some I've mentioned here, some I missed. There were a couple of people who seem to bond well together; cliques have formed and it's hard to get a word in edgewise in some of them. Not too serious though; some I think are genuinely friendly(like the kosovar), but I somehow feel that I'm not worth their time.
There was a 'culture show'. The regina Women Could Dance. Totally showed up the chilaens and the thais. Although the thai boxing was cute. There was a video on death in first nations community as a spiritual event. A million pictures. And then another million.
I also played piano to a few of the women from thailand before they went to sleep.
today, at the crack of dawn, we go to Craik, Saskatchewan. I need to sleep, if I am to make it.
I'm too exhausted right now, but I'll try to make more notes, make the ones I have more sensible, especially now that I'm being linked to by the summit.
There were spiders falling from the ceiling in Craik.
ChrisP is making a torrent of all the photos.
I have been invited(At the very least) to spend some time in India. This may take awhile, but I think I'm going to go for it. This may require a 4-month (minnimum!) hindi course, on top of my degree, and professional certs. Ie, this is a Long Term Objective, but ought to be completed before my parents get too old. Oh time constraints...
what a gift?
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