Just last night I went to a seminar in which the speaker talked about diversity and it’s importance. How we, as a generation are becoming more and more diverse as the day goes on. The next day, I walked into my English class, assuming we’d be continuing our projects… but no, my professor began to speak about and ask us to research diversity in certain aspects. Currently, I’m studying for a quiz… the topic, you guessed it, diversity. This pattern of diversity being ‘relevant’ has been occurring since at the very least the beginning of my senior year in high school when the students were asked to fill in a prompt with some sort of creative response. “Diversity is… ”
But really, what is diversity?
Google defines diversity as ” Noun. 1. The state of being diverse; variety. 2.A range of different things.”
So how is that relevant to us?
You might argue that it’s not, but I think it very well might be. I mean, why else would “it” be receiving all of this attention? It must be relevant somehow. According to Van Jones, a guest speaker, our generation is the most diverse generation yet.. and that is easy to believe as far as American’s go.
But the bigger picture? I feel as though as Americans, as we become more of what we call “culturally and ethnically diverse” we also become more of the same. Look at schools, I know, at my high school, a large part of the school was Indian (not to be confused with Native American), and somehow, still, they managed to conform with “White American” culture. So more diverse? I think maybe ethnically we will be more mixed… but culturally, we are still trying to unify under one alike culture.
Jones continued to talk to us about what we needed to change. He apologized for the “screw up’s” that his generation made (also promising that “screw up” is a technical term). He stated that the reason we’re on a downhill spiral right now is because we decided to change our economy from one that builds and creates, to one that consumes. Instead of having factories here, we have malls, and stores. Instead of earning money and saving up, we take out loans. He told us the solution wasn’t as difficult as it looked… we had to go back, back before we turned to loans, where people saved up all of their money and spent it on little instead of trying to accumulate more and more *stuff.* Turn America into a producing country instead of a consuming one. Work on getting solar, and wind electricity.
But this is where it got weird. I never really considered how much I knew about solar and wind electricity / efficiency until he began talking. “Fifty percent” he said, “of Germany is being powered by renewables.” He talked about California becoming “Coal Free” and energy usage in general…. and that’s where I started to call him out. Listening to him go on was slightly off setting, he had the right ideas, just not the knowledge. The guy next to me was confused as to how I knew what I did as I called him out, bringing up proof on my laptop as he spoke. Wind and Solar are not efficient sources of energy. Because they are extremely irregular, it costs more to use them, at least in the state of California. The way the wind curve and solar curve are do not reflect the demand for electricity. How do I know this? good question. Which is where Stem comes in. Stem is, in short terms, the missing piece of the puzzle that would make this whole thing work. Stem is a growing company that I have been privilege with the opportunity of watching grow. It started an idea, and I can see it branching out and becoming a giant. The are the solution to creating a greater efficiency in solar and wind, through a patented design, the company has created a key to unlocking the renewable energy power that we potentially could be using at this very second. Maximizing efficiency, I feel as though even the company cannot see how influential they could be.
Well then… my post did run on a bit but I felt it needed to. Those are my words for today!
musings of a pirate 