This week, our guests at the Rose Cafe were Shanjun Li, Greg Poe, and David Wolfe.  They came to speak to us about environmental issues and to clue us in more about what we can do about them.

The talk began with the panel addressing our first few questions about our concerns about the environment.  The first concern we raised was global warming, an issue that we are all somewhat familiar with.  I was informed that this year, in the presidential debates, is the first time that global warming was actually a debate topic, which shows some progress in our government dealing with the issue.  I doubt that any discussion during a debate will really end up aiding in the fight against global warming much because as we know, politicians tend to make promises that they cannot keep.

This subject segued into a discussion about nuclear power, and then about fracking, which I had not known much about prior to this talk.  But the biggest takeaway I got from this talk was learning how environmentally conscious Cornell is trying to be as a university.  I did not know that the dorms on West Campus are cooled by deep water cooling from Lake Cayuga, a much more environmentally friendly way to cool our dorms.  I didn’t realize that Cornell is aiming to be a coal free campus in the future.  All of these things gave me hope for our country, because if our universities are trying to become more environmentally friendly, then the students at these dorms will hopefully learn about it, as I did last night, and become more environmentally conscious themselves.  And if this works, eventually we get many, many more people aiding in the fight to help our environment.