Susskind's Response

Professor Susskind's reponse to my previous post on Course 6 and Sustainability.

Thanks for the post. Dave Staelin is the only person on your list who has been an active member of the MIT Faculty Environmental Network for Sustainability (FENS).


You seem to be conflating the Institute's Energy Initiative and the proposed
Environment and Sustainability effort suggested by the FENS. We see the Energy Initiative as a much narrower effort. You can work on Energy without being the least bit concerned about Sustainability (which often seems to be the case at MIT). Those of us interested in Environment and Sustainability who also work on energy tend to be interested in Renewables, Efficiency and strategies for minimizing greenhouse gas emissions and pollution associated with fossil fuel options. These have not been the top priorities of MITEI. They are not the primary focus of the new undergraduate Energy Minor. So, while certain aspects of energy policy and development will undoubtedly get folded into the new Environment and Sustainability Minor and Graduate Certificate, energy per se will not be ur primary focus.


Your point about what you see as an emphasis on developing countries is interesting. Those of us engaged in the battle against climate change know that anything less than
a global perspective is fruitless. Efforts to reduce CO2 emissions to manageable
levels over the next 35 years will have to be focused on the rapidly industrializing
nations of the G-77 as well as on big cities in OECD countries. What works in the North won't be particularly relevant in the South -- at least for the next several decades. So, we imagine a bifurcated approach to studying Environment and Sustainability at MIT. And, we imagine students moving from one context to the other during their careers. We want to prepare students to work successfully in both the developing and developed worlds. And, if we have a bias at this point, I think it ought to be on getting US-oriented students to pay attention to the problems facing and the differences associated with working in the mega-cities of the developing world. I hope we can do this by taking a persistently comparative approach to what
and how we teach at the Institute.


The survey that Sustainability@MIT did at the end of last semester indicates that a lot of MIT students are entirely unaware of the full scope of what is already offered at the Institute (and dramatically constrained by the requirements imposed by their home base department and degree program). Even if they have a glimmer of what's available, they don't see how they can possibly fit in what we are suggesting given everything they have to do. So, the obstacles to interdisciplinary and interdepartmental study at the Institute are severe. Do you have ideas about how we can get around them? Those of involved in real-life efforts to facilitate sustainable development both in the US and overseas know that it is crucial for the next generation of young professionals to be able to span disciplinary boundaries and to work at the intersection of theory and practice. We're struggling to figure out how to launch MIT students in this direction.