printable versionUS energy chief Steven Chu calls on Stanford scientists to help fix global problems
BY KELEN TUTTLE
Secretary of Energy Steven Chu spoke at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory on Friday morning.
Secretary of Energy Steven Chu returned to Stanford on Friday, urging a crowd of more than 700 at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory to confront what he called "the energy challenge."
"For the first time in history, science has shown humans altering the destiny of our planet in a meaningful way," he said. "We have to try to enlist some of the very best intellectual horsepower to deal with this."
Chu received the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics as a Stanford physics professor.
In a wide-ranging speech that touched on worldwide emissions, climbing global temperatures, changing precipitation patterns, increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations and the rising sea level, Chu demonstrated how the energy challenge cuts across many areas and is intensely tied to America’s economic prosperity.
"But there's reason for hope," he said. "Scientists by their very nature have to be very optimistic… We can fix this."
Pointing to historical examples of research easing global problems—including the invention of artificial fertilizer, which helped set off the so-called "green revolution"—Chu expressed his belief that science research would again come to the world's aid.
"It was scientific discoveries that enabled the world to feed itself," Chu said. Now scientific discoveries can increase energy efficiency and develop improved means of generating clean energy, he added.
"There are lots of really exciting things that people at SLAC can think about," he said. "Research can spur incredible intellectual achievement. And in the field of energy, I think we can do some really great science. A physicist or applied mathematician can really start to drool at these problems."
Chu received the Nobel for his work in cooling and trapping atoms with laser light. Prior to his Obama administration appointment, he was a professor of physics and molecular and cellular biology at the University of California, Berkeley, and the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Kelen Tuttle is a communications officer at SLAC.