The Most Obvious Thing… MIT Sustainability Summit and the Brass Rat
Malaika Thorne MBA'10
Issue date: 5/12/09 Section: Student Life
Let me tell you this story. It's 6PM and raining outside, but there's still a dim daylight coming through the windows of E52. You're coughing (no, no, it's not Swine Flu). Maybe you have a slight fever though. Most Sloanies have left the building. They're driving home to have dinner, camped out in the library, or sipping wine at a networking reception. They're waiting to hear back from the judges of their business plan.
Tonight, you're in the Financing Energy Projects class and the guest speaker is an energy entrepreneur. He looks familiar. You study his teetering way of walking. Your eyes slide over his face, and then again, and again. Where have you seen him before? Just before he begins to talk, a flash of images speed across your memory… "Oh", you think, "he's the guy from the Energy Conference." He opens up his talk by asking "does anyone here not believe in climate change?"
Something happens to you. There is something in his tone you don't like-there's something akin to laziness in there. Something in the way he pronounces "anyone" that's just too much. Maybe it's that it's been a long day. Maybe it's the fever. Your thought process goes something like this: "Hmm... I wonder what he'd say if I raised my hand... Should I raise my hand?... Oh, what the hell..."
So you raise your hand.
Now most people whom know you know what you really believe. You've devoted a year of your life developing a business plan for behavioral change in consumer shopping behavior to create a low CO2 future. One of your friends has nicknamed you "Green Peace," and although you've never been nor are you now technically a hippy, as far as some classmates are concerned, that label would suit you just fine. In any case, you raise your hand expecting that one of your classmates will out you. What you do not expect is that the guest speaker will indignantly demand that if you don't believe in climate change, then you "should leave the room." This brief interaction in class really makes you rethink things.
Tonight, you're in the Financing Energy Projects class and the guest speaker is an energy entrepreneur. He looks familiar. You study his teetering way of walking. Your eyes slide over his face, and then again, and again. Where have you seen him before? Just before he begins to talk, a flash of images speed across your memory… "Oh", you think, "he's the guy from the Energy Conference." He opens up his talk by asking "does anyone here not believe in climate change?"
Something happens to you. There is something in his tone you don't like-there's something akin to laziness in there. Something in the way he pronounces "anyone" that's just too much. Maybe it's that it's been a long day. Maybe it's the fever. Your thought process goes something like this: "Hmm... I wonder what he'd say if I raised my hand... Should I raise my hand?... Oh, what the hell..."
So you raise your hand.
Now most people whom know you know what you really believe. You've devoted a year of your life developing a business plan for behavioral change in consumer shopping behavior to create a low CO2 future. One of your friends has nicknamed you "Green Peace," and although you've never been nor are you now technically a hippy, as far as some classmates are concerned, that label would suit you just fine. In any case, you raise your hand expecting that one of your classmates will out you. What you do not expect is that the guest speaker will indignantly demand that if you don't believe in climate change, then you "should leave the room." This brief interaction in class really makes you rethink things.
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