Malaika Thorne, MBA '09

Sustainability, tunnels and ice skating

Sleepy gray, chilly.

This morning was one of those chilly gray mornings. The little weather app that I installed into my Mozilla browser said it felt like 34 degrees Fahrenheit. I was up early to volunteer for and attend the Alliance for Global Sustainability conference. This year's conference,
Designing Pathways for a Sustainable World: at Scale, in Time, and for All, is hosted at MIT in the Stata Center. The keynote speaker was Dr. R.K. Pachauri, Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and General Director of The Energy and Resources Institute. The IPCC was awarded the 2007 Nobel Prize for Peace last December, along with former United States Vice President, Al Gore, "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change".

In this morning's program Dr. Pachauri talked a lot about the consequences of climate change. Some of the contents of his report were familiar:

• The Arctic region is warming twice as fast as the rest of the globe.
• There will be a major clamor for natural resources in that region, which can easily lead to political conflict, and which make up part of sustainable development concerns.
• We need to be concerned about 0 to 5 degrees Celsius temperature increases because of the impact that warming will have on water resources. These include decreases in water availability in mid-latitude and semi-arid latitudes, complete ecosystems threatened by the loss of water, reduced food production capability in some areas, and the hundreds of millions of people exposed to drought.
• Our inertia in reducing CO2 emissions means that we will have to adapt to the consequences which will result from decades of global warming that will continue after we decrease or cease emissions. We need to start developing an early warning system to help us adapt and identify the most vulnerable locations and develop their adaptive capacity.

He also reported some new information:

• Adaptation:
  • We will have develop ways to cope with water scarcity, develop disaster preparedness programs and establish measures for good governance.
  • Our adaptation efforts must include building the infrastructure to cope with extreme weather and events. Other efforts must include developing new strains of crops that are more resistant to  temperature changes. For example, there is evidence from Northern India that yields of wheat are negatively affected by climate changes in the area.
  • Adaptation will also have to include changes to the ways that people earn their livelihoods, since, basically there will have to be new ways en masse for people to make a living.
  • Adaptation alone won't be enough because beyond a certain point it, will be too costly and too severe to try to adapt to the new elemental, social and economic conditions that will result from climate change.
  • Continued CO2 emissions at our current level will lead to between 1.8 to 4.0 degrees Celsius increase in temperature for the next two centuries. The rising sea levels that result from global warming will effect vulnerable regions like the tundra, mountains and coral reefs, small islands, delta regions like Shanghai, and large parts of coastal Africa and Asia.
  • There are irreversible consequences to continued global warming for places like Greenland and West Antarctica, where water level will rise several meters, and force some populations to migrate to other regions because of the loss of land. It is also likely that 20-30% of species will become extinct due to warming exceeding 1.5 to 2.5 degrees Celsius.
  • We only have a small window of time before sea levels begin to rise, due to thermal expansion in the oceans.
  • It is essential to invest in public transportation and promote correct R&D, especially in developing countries, create incentives and technology flows so that the portfolio of technologies currently available or in development make it to the market.

The conference runs throughout the week so I'm sure there is more information coming.

Last week I took one cool IAP course that was an intro to mobile device development. I was hoping my dad, who was in town briefly, would be able to attend with me, but his schedule didn't allow it. Other Sloan students have taken advantage of yoga and meditation courses offered during IAP. I also got to sit in on various courses that didn't require pre-registration, and were open to anyone curious on the subject. In retrospect, my days were a little too packed with courses, but there was a lot to learn and get exposed to. In fact, I doubt that any Sloanie who took IAP courses had an experience like the one Dylan Howard reported in www.learningtoloveyoumore.com.

IAP has also given me the chance to explore the campus a little further. For example, I've found and traversed the tunnels that go from one end of campus to another, and in the process, come across what looked like an IAP glass-blowing lab. Emerging from building E25, after what seemed like hours later, I felt strangely proud.

I also got to go ice skating! A few friends and I were kicking around ideas about what would be fun to do together, and my roommate introduced me to the skating rink on campus. And I only fell once, thank you very much. 

Independent Activities Period

Overcast and snowing.

If you haven't heard the metaphor about drinking from a firehose yet, let me share it with you: being at MIT is like drinking from a firehose. It is not like sipping tea or leaning into the trickle flowing out of the water fountain. IAP is no different.

Although these few weeks have been a little slower-paced than the core semester, there's still a lot happening. Many students are participating in "externships" with companies or interviewing for the more traditional career tracks--consulting and banking. Others, like me, participated in the E&I Silicon Valley Trek (see the Boston Globe story) and the Massachusetts Energy, Bio and Tech Trek. Both Treks were packed with company visits including innovators like Google, VMWare and EnerNOC, more traditional companies like NSTAR, and opportunities to meet alumni and VCs. Personally, the visit to the Brayton Point Power Plant--a coal-fired power plant--was a dream come true, not only because I would have not been exposed to the power-generation process up-close otherwise, but also because of the capital investments they have made to be environmentally sustainable.

Night view of San Francisco photo by Chester Liu, MIT Sloan MBA Candidate, Class of 2009

Aside from exposure to so many business models and technology innovation in Silicon Valley and Massachusetts, the most valuable part of the Treks was being able to spend time with my classmates and getting to know and work with them.

Nadia, to respond to your questions about the E&I program: this IAP I am taking classes which include the Nuts and Bolts of Business Plans, several  programming courses and one statistics course. Although we aren't required to have a business plan before entering the E&I program, there is an expectation that throughout our time at Sloan, the E&I-ers we will create or participate in the creation of at least one. We are given many opportunities to do that through the MIT 100K Entrepreneurship Competition, MIT IDEAS Competition, and the new and awesome $200,000 Grand Prize MIT Clean Energy Entrepreneurship Prize Competition. We also have on-going exposure to what's happening via seminars like the Energy Futures Week and resources like the MIT Technology Licensing Office.

I have been able to sneak in some much-needed family time both in Cambridge and Puerto Rico, catch up with a friend from high school and college in San Francisco who is working on a cool project called See How You Feel, go to a friend's baby shower and get the update on the Build a School in Africa Project. The Project has helped to build the third school in the village of Koloni-Foulala for grades 7-9. Because there are very few "higher grade" schools in the entire country, this school is a very big deal in Mali.

Meanwhile, it's snowing here--the first snow storm of 2008. During this IAP--a breather of sorts--I can enjoy the little things that make up life's soundtrack. There's the soft drone of the news on the radio. I hear the old man who lives in the house next door shoveling the walk way.