AWIS 40th Anniversary Meeting, Session Summary

UPDATE: TO BE PUBLISHED

The Frontiers in Sustainability Panel at the AWIS 40^th anniversary conference consisted of three speakers, all from different areas of environmental science.

The first speaker, Ms. Kristen Graf, is the Executive Director of the Women of Wind Energy organization (WoWE). Ms. Graf started out as an engineering major intent on developing wind technology, but realized the technology itself is already developed. However, fossil fuels and nuclear energy still dominate the generation of electricity over renewable energy sources. The relative proportions of nonrenewables and renewables have actually remained fairly stagnant even with all of the media buzz and politicking surrounding renewables. This has happened despite wind power growing in popularity worldwide. Puzzlingly, this stagnation has occurred despite the increase in wind turbine production in the U.S. So why is this?

NY = LA, more or less?

This was an exercise (at least the first few paragraphs were) for the Santa Fe Workshop I attended in May.

Geoffrey West wants to let us in on a little-known tidbit. New York and Los Angeles are basically the same city. You probably think that’s preposterous. New York is the land of the subway, L.A. is the land of the freeway. New York has city lights in the nights, L.A. has sunshine-drenched days. They’re different.

West audaciously gives us an additional morsel. Their sameness can be mathematically proven. Now you’re tempted to use this paper to line the birdcage. How could something as human as a city, in all its qualitative complexity, be quantitatively characterized?