So my internship is rapidly approaching its end and it’s go time for finding a new gig. I’ve been working with the Energy Opportunity team at the Center for American Progress for the past three or so months (which explains all of the energy-related posts) and I’ve enjoyed it very much.
I think Energy is going to be the defining issue of the next decade and I’m anxious to be a part of it. In this Stanford Thought Leaders talk, Tony Siebel says the IT revolution is pretty much over and, with the world’s population approaching 10 billion by the end of the century, innovation is going to come in providing people with basic needs like food, water, and energy.
Our ability to feed people in the twentieth century has been a function of using petroleum-based fertilizers and plant-breeding techniques pioneered by Norman Borlaug. But people that study world agriculture will tell you that the status quo is remarkably unsustainable — half of Iowa’s topsoil has washed away in the past fifty years, modern agriculture is hugely dependent on petroleum-based fertilizers, and runoff has created a colossal dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico.
But energy is a universal input into all activities, and reforming how we produce and use energy will be the prime mover of addressing climate change and the Earth’s diminishing resources. If energy becomes clean and cheap enough, a lot of our present problems become considerably more manageable.
In the medium term, I think it would be cool to work on AfPak issues. My parents are Pakistani and I can speak Urdu fairly well, so I might be helpful to organizations working on that endeavor. Even better – energy projects in AfPak!
So that’s where I’d like to be in the future. But realistically, my gig ends May 31st. I’ll entertain pretty much anything (besides working for the GOP or Big Oil)! Get in touch if you have any ideas!