There was a student conference on global warming at Boston University this weekend with a day of lobbying in support of a bill in the state house on Monday, Mass Power Shift, a regional edition of an earlier national conference. I went to the plenary sessions on Friday and Saturday nights (who says I have no social life?) and the workshops during the day. Over 600 people, mostly students, registered but the plenary sessions, held far from BU at the Boston Convention Center, had audiences of maybe 100, almost all students except for a smattering of aged malcontents like myself.
Saturday afternoon, Senator Kerry and Representative Markey and various state legislators talked with the group. The Saturday evening plenary speaker was James Woolsey, the former Director of the CIA, on climate change and energy.
There were workshops on electronic organizing, barnraising solar, local agriculture, the nuts and bolts of lobbying, and many other subjects.
There were none on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and no speaker took our present war(s) as a central topic. The war, for all intents and purposes, did not exist at the global warming conference.
The only mention of the war(s) I heard was tangential. Woolsey was introduced by a young woman of Iraqi extraction who mentioned that he was for the Iraq war "for human rights reasons" and that he is supporting McCain in the presidential campaign. Woolsey himself mentioned the war but only in relation to the energy situation, about how the changes necessary to confront climate change are the same changes necessary to improve national security and resilience in case of terrorist attack. I was impressed by him and was surprised and gratified that he mentioned Gandhi and the idea of swadeshi, local production, in relation to energy. It made me think that he might understand my concept of solar swadeshi but, after talking with him about it, I'm not sure that's so.
I went to workshops on E2M, a community reinvestment model of a sustainable economy; was the only audience member for a session on zero emissions, another concept close to my heart; asked a series of questions about powering the One Laptop Per Child project (looks like the string pull dynamo is out, that Freeplay will be making a rugged hand cranked dynamo for the computer, and there are a number of solar chargers that will power it); and went to two sessions with Marty Kearns of Netcentric Campaigns, a very good presenter, to learn more about online organizing and social networking (<snark>will you be my Facebook friend or connect with my LinkedIn page?</snark>).
All day, I handed out Solar IS Civil Defense buttons, including one to James Woolsey, and wore my new T shirt emblazoned with an old WWII poster that is not only apt but shockingly blunt in these timorous times:
When I was talking with Woolsey, he didn't seem to notice, as most people did not. I regret that I didn't point it out.