Carbon Nation Puts Renewable Energy in Perspective

As you might have known from firsthand experience, we watched a documentary by the name of Carbon Nation at our Tuesday meeting. If you weren’t there, you missed out on a great night—the only thing better than the pizza and desserts was the feature presentation!

Whereas some other documentaries look at the problems surrounding fossil fuels, Carbon Nation takes the opposite approach. It looks at the alternatives to fossil fuels, and how moving toward those alternatives does more than just help the environment and public health, but can also strengthen national security, boost the economy, and do so much more to help this nation and the world. It took us from coal plants in China to the frontlines with our soldiers to Washington D.C.! This movie not only gave everyone a reason to transition to clean energy, it gave us all a few good laughs along the way.

But it wasn’t all comedy and free chocolate (how better to spend Valentine’s Day, though?). This movie said a lot about our campaign, both the positives and the negatives. We all want Michigan State to move off of coal and onto cleaner, more efficient, and safer energy sources like solar and wind power. The documentary showed us how it can, and is being done. According to Carbon Nation, civilization requires 16 terawatts of energy to run. The documentary then goes into the potential of each source of alternative energy, where it’s already being implemented, and what it could mean for the future.

The documentary didn’t just talk in the abstract, it gave us solid statistics every step of the way. From efficiency percentages to how much oil was spent on air conditioning for troops in Iraq to how many terawatts of energy of solar power hit the earth. Having those numbers put many of these solutions into perspective.

The documentary reminded us of all of the reasons we got involved in the first place. We all have seen some sort of problem and wanted to fix that problem.  We knew that we couldn’t just sit and snack and enjoy an amazing movie: thanks to Carbon Nation, we found ourselves more fired up than ever. We want to thank all of you for showing up. We hope you learned a few things, and had as much fun as we did! Now that we know what can be done, it’s time to push the university to get it done!

Screening Carbon Nation on Valentines Day

At our weekly meeting this Tuesday, February 14^th at 7  p.m. on Natural Sciences we will be screening the documentary “Carbon Nation”. This is an excellent opportunity for you to learn what you can do personally, and what we can do on a global scale, to combat climate change. Carbon Nation is a documentary anyone will benefit from because it does not care whether you believe climate change is happening or not – the ideas that it describes to fight climate change would, and already are, benefitting other social issues.

So, invite your friends to movie night! All of us will come away with new ideas and inspiration, and we will also get in some high quality bonding time! Plus, there will be some free snacks . . . you can’t say no!

Additionally we will be wrapping up last week’s Media focus and discussing this week’s focus – Faculty Coalitions.

Come out, eat some food, and get inspired! See you there on Tuesday from 7 to 9 pm in 304 Natural Sciences.