International Conference on
New & Renewable Energy Development

The Rector
The university of saint Joseph
The speakers’ hall
27 october 2011

of need & greed

The story of the City of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania is, perhaps, the best example of how to manage existing and dwindling resources at a time of reduced means. On the other hand, the panorama of new and renewable energy today is filled with mostly mega projects, and assumed solutions that are only that, assumed. No matter what happens, the highest values of humanity have to supersede the expediencies of engineering. It is, however, undeniable, that we are compressed by issues that require immediate and all encompassing approaches.

We seem to be corralled by the melting of ice caps and the submersion of cities; the rise of temperature and wild climate change, that ranges from desertification in places to shattering floods elsewhere; the scarcity of water and the specter of wars over maddening thirst; the rights to achieved development for some and to develop for others; the cost of economic growth and the supposed unbearable price of eradicating poverty; the blighted ecology of soviet-style systems and the menace to the environment of unbridled capitalism; the urge to increased material comfort and the menace of diminished humanistic cultures.

We are, thus, compelled to make sense out of numerous scientific, political, governmental, social, religious, and ideological discourses: many ambiguous, others redolent of self-assumed-certainty, all assuredly infused with the relativity that defines scientific truths.

Then, there is the question of sustainable governance and the consequent discussion over what kinds of systems are themselves sustainable. The noise that ensues from this debate reaches, sometimes, the overtones of a revivalist meeting.

The role of the University in this highly