The Road To Change - Stockton College

On Saturday April 5, 2008 there was an Environmental Educational Forum at Stockton College. This was an all day event that included workshops, presentations, and a special guest appearance of Ralph Nader. My daughter and I got signed copies of Ralph's book "The Good Fight - Declare Your Independence and Close the Democracy Gap". We attended 3 presentations before sitting down to hear Ralph Nader speak. I will describe one presentation because it was good and then Ralph Nader's presentation because it was great (I am not a Nader follower).

We attended a presentation called Climate Change: Science and Solutions. It was given by Andrew Huemmler a Lecturer from the Earth and Environmental Science Department University of Pennsylvania. The presentation description was:

"Within the last two years, public perception about climate change has shifted. Once viewed with skepticism by many, climate change is now on many people's agendas whether it be at a personal, organizational, or political scale. The science of climate change will be briefly reviewed. Emerging policy responses, particularly carbon "cap and trade" legislation will be summarized. Solutions suggested by putting a price on carbon emissions will be discussed."

Andrew was very knowledgeable and a very good presenter. The time flew much too fast and the thoughts stimulated exceeded the time allotted for questions and answers.

I was surprised to learn that a carbon market was created a few years ago in Europe. It eventually collapsed because the share of allotted carbon credits was to large. Apparently Europeans produce less carbon than was realized at the time the market was established. However this experience was invaluable for tuning the market in the future in Europe and then rolling it out to the USA.

Andrew mentioned that as we were gathered at this meeting people were working on millions of lines of software code in England and other countries for eventual roll out to the USA. He basically said not if but when. He mentioned that this would probably start to roll out to the USA in about 2-3 years. Andrew drew an analogy to the existing hydrogen sulfide market in the USA that has been successfully in place for decades.

The Ralph Nader presentation was definitely the highlight of the day. I never saw Ralph I only knew him from the popular media. Needless to say the media image in my head was wrong. This is a very intelligent articulate man who has lived a long time and has something to say that we should attempt to hear. He spoke for almost 2 hours without any notes and completely energized the audience which included people like my 20 something year old daughter. There was no rhetoric. There was only problem identification then possible solutions. The solutions were all based on what people have done through history. I was especially sensitized to this because of my recent completion of a study to use software to analyze global warming documents for content. In that process we used the Internet to find tools that people have used to solve problems. So I was shocked to hear Ralph basically affirm the study of document analysis and separating rhetoric from real content.

Some of the tools Ralph mentioned are: regulation, prosecution, quality competition, civil litigation, tort law, litigation, class action law suits, mobilized consumers, international cooperation, prevention, coalitions, building coalitions.

This was obviously from the perspective of a lawyer. It was very powerful when he asked the audience to raise their hands if they have been part of any law suit on either end. No one raised their hands. He then said everyone claims that the lawyers are out of control. If that is the case why were there no hands. He then eloquently made the case that litigation is a tool available to a free people and that tool is key to maintaining freedom. He went down a list of other examples and tools. He eventually pointed to a book that he wrote which lists tools that people can use to engage as citizens and said that he donated copies to the Stockton Library. This was fascinating because I had just completed software to analyze policy documents and I used it to analyze 3 policy documents.

On the way back from the conference my daughter had one comment which I will try to recreate.

Why all the carbon stuff, why not just do the right thing and build things that minimize carbon. Why do you have to give people incentives to do the right thing. Why not just give the money to people who build things to just go off and build them instead of wasting it on all these paper pushers. The world is complicated enough it needs to be made simpler.

So there you have it... a profound system thinking system engineering reaction to the day of fun.

These are links of note from the event:

Atlantic County Utilities Authority
New Jersey Water Watch