Piling heavy logs of firewood into a battered pickup truck, we paused to take a break from the heat and humidity in the foothills of the Guatemalan Highlands. On a trip with Building Understanding through International Learning and Development (BUILD), our group of Tufts students was working in the fields for the day, helping a pregnant woman collect her firewood, or "leña." A student asked the woman, "How long will all this last you?" Looking at the full truck bed of wood, she replied, "About a month." Because every fire she lit at home to cook for her family depended on the backbreaking struggle of carrying firewood up steep hillsides, she knew exactly how much output her energy source would yield.
Yet unlike the inhabitants of the small rural village of Santa Anita la Unión, how many of us know how much energy we use on a daily basis, or how long a kilowatt-hour would power our dorm for? The ease with which we switch on a light, cook on our stovetops or turn on our cars distances us from the reality of the sources we use. However, just because we don't have a conscious awareness of the origins of the energy sources we use doesn't mean that their far-reaching consequences are any more muted. Chances are, if your power comes from most traditional carbon-spewing sources, your flicking on of a switch is contributing to rising climate temperatures that threaten millions of Bangladeshis with dangerously rising tides.
So maybe this doesn't seem exceptionally relevant to your life. But energy simultaneously affects the hidden corners of the world as it touches any street corner in Medford or Somerville. The outcomes of the sources we use are as blatant as U.S. dependency on Middle Eastern oil and the devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina, and as unforeseeable as the effect that global-warming-induced melting of glaciers will have on water supplies in dozens of countries.
Energy isn't just the province of engineers, environmental activists or International Relations majors trying to figure out how to prevent future conflict over resources in far-flung corners of the world. The future of energy is of vital importance for all of us; it affects every piece of the kaleidoscope that makes up domestic life, in ways both positive and negative. In just a few examples, our current sources of energy are responsible for effects as varied as the pollution caused by mountaintop removal coal mining, the health problems from polluting energy sources that disproportionately affect minority communities and the unpredictable cost of commuting to work in the morning or paying your utility bill.
Not everything related to the future of energy has to be gloom and doom: Our generation has the power (pardon the pun) to choose what we want the future of energy consumption to look like. New sources of energy or measures to improve energy efficiency may be our only ticket to growing the American economy again in a sustainable fashion, giving hope to the cyclically unemployed in both rural and urban America. You never know: A green job might be the difference between you moving back in with your parents after graduation or finding a dynamic and exciting job straight out of school.
Whether you are planning on being a policy maker, business executive or think you might want to raise kids someday, being well-educated about energy is vitally important for your future and the futures of those your life will impact. That's where this year's Tufts Energy Conference comes in. Two days of event-packed, thought-provoking and visionary speakers, workshops and an all-new energy showcase highlighting research will address the theme of "The Evolution of Energy." How did we end up in this mess in the first place and how are we going to forge the path we want the future to go down? Ponder these questions and many more on April 16 and 17. Check out Tuftsenergyconference.com today.
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Emily Clayton is a sophomore majoring in International Relations. She is on this year's Tufts Energy Conference planning team.
