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June 4, 2009
Secretary Chu Harvard University Commencement Tackle
Remarks of US Secretary Steven Chu
Harvard Commencement Address
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Madame President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation as well as the Board of Overseers, faculty, household, buddies, and, most importantly, today's graduates, thank you for letting me reveal this fantastic day with you.
I am not sure I can live approximately the high criteria of Harvard Commencement speakers. Final 12 months, JK Rowling, the billionaire novelist, who started out being a classics student, graced this podium. The yr before, Bill Gates, the mega-billionaire philanthropist and laptop or computer nerd, stood here. Right now, sadly, you've got me. I am not a billionaire, but at the least I'm a nerd.
I am grateful to receive an honorary degree from Harvard, an honor which means a lot more to me than you would possibly picture. You might have heard this morning that I was the educational failure of my family members. Both of my brothers have degrees from Harvard. My older brother, Gilbert, has an M.D. - Ph.D. from Harvard. My younger brother, Morgan, who was just named these days for the Board of Overseers, has a law diploma. I was awarded a Nobel Prize. I thought my mother would be pleased. Not so. When I called her on the morning of your announcement, she replied, "That's nice, but when are you going to visit me next." Now, as the last brother with a diploma from Harvard, maybe, at very last, she will be satisfied.
Another difficulty with giving a Harvard commencement address is that some students could disapprove from the fact that I am borrowing material from my previous speeches and from other authors. I ask that you forgive me for two reasons.
First, in order to be heard, it is important to deliver the same message more than once.
Second, authors who borrow from others are following in the footsteps from the best. Ralph Waldo Emerson, who graduated from Harvard at the age of 18, noted "All my best thoughts were stolen by the ancients." Picasso declared "Good artists borrow. Great artists steal." Why should commencement speakers be held to a higher standard?

I also want to point out the irony of speaking to graduates of an institution that would have rejected me, had I the chutzpah to apply. I'm married to "Dean Jean," a former Dean of Admissions at Stanford. She assures me that she would have rejected me, given the chance. When I showed her a draft of this speech,Office Ultimate 2007, she objected strongly to my use with the word "rejected." She never rejected applicants; her letters stated that "we are unable to offer you admission." I have great difficulty understanding the difference. After all, Deans of Admissions of highly selective schools are in reality, "Deans of Rejection." Clearly, I have a lot to learn about marketing.
My address will follow the classical sonata form of commencement addresses. The first movement, just presented, were light-hearted remarks. This next movement consists of unsolicited advice, which is rarely valued, seldom remembered, never followed. As Oscar Wilde said, "The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself."
Here comes the advice.
First, every time you celebrate an achievement, be thankful to those who made it possible. Thank your parents and friends who supported you, thank your professors who were inspirational, and especially thank the other professors whose less-than-brilliant lectures forced you to teach yourself. Going forward, the ability to teach yourself is the hallmark of a great liberal arts education and will be the key to your success. To your fellow students who have added immeasurably to your education during those late night discussions, hug them.
Second, in your future life, cultivate a generous spirit. In all negotiations, don't bargain for the very last, little advantage. Leave the change on the table. In your collaborations, always remember that "credit" is not a conserved quantity. In a successful collaboration, everybody gets 90% of your credit.
Jimmy Stewart, as Elwood P. Dowd in the movie Harvey, got it exactly right. "Years ago my mother used to say to me, 'in this world, Elwood, you must be .she always used to call me Elwood .in this world Elwood, you must be Oh so smart, or Oh so pleasant'. Well, for years I used to be smart ... I recommend pleasant. You could possibly quote me."
My third piece of advice is as follows. As you begin this new stage of your lives, follow your passion. If you don't have a passion, don't be satisfied until you find one. Life is too short to go through it without caring deeply about something. When I was your age, I used to be incredibly single-minded in my goal to be a physicist. After college, I spent eight years as a graduate student and post doc at Berkeley, and then nine years at Bell Labs. During that my time, my central focus and professional joy was physics.
Here is my final advice. Pursuing a personal passion is important, but it should not be your only goal. When you are old and gray, and look back on your life, you will want to be proud of what you've done. The source of that pride won't be the things you've acquired or the recognition you've got received. It will be the lives you might have touched and the difference you have made.
After nine years at Bell labs, I decided to leave the warm, cozy ivory tower for what I considered to be the "real world": a university. Bell Labs, to quote what was said of Mary Poppins, was "practically perfect in every way," but I wanted to leave behind a lot more than articles in scientific journals. I wanted to teach and give birth to my own set of scientific children.
Ted Geballe, a friend and distinguished colleague of mine at Stanford who also went from Berkeley to Bell Labs to Stanford years earlier, described our motives best:
"The best part of working at a university is the students. They come in fresh, enthusiastic, open to ideas, unscarred by the battles of life. They don't realize it, but they're the recipients from the best our society can offer. If a mind is ever free to be creative, that's the time. They come in believing textbooks are authoritative, but eventually they figure out that textbooks and professors don't know everything, and then they start to think on their own. Then, I begin learning from them."
My students, post doctoral fellows, and the young researchers who worked with me at Bell Labs, Stanford, and Berkeley have been extraordinary. Over 30 former group members are now professors, many at the best research institutions in the world including Harvard. I have learned much from them. Even now, in rare moments on weekends, the remaining members of my biophysics group meet with me in the ether world of cyberspace. I began teaching with the idea of giving back, but I received a lot more that I gave.
This brings me to the final movement of this speech. It begins with a story about an extraordinary scientific discovery and also the new dilemma it poses. It's a call to arms and about making a difference.
In the past several decades, our climate has been changing. Climate change is not new: the Earth went through six ice ages in the past 600,000 years. However, recent measurements show that the climate has begun to change rapidly. The size of your North polar ice cap in the month of September is only half the size it was fifty years ago. The sea level has been rising since direct measurements began in 1870, but the rate since 1990 is five times faster than it was since the beginning of recorded measurements.
Here is the remarkable scientific discovery: For the first time in human history,Microsoft Office 2010 Professional, science is now making predictions of how our actions will affect the world fifty and a hundred years from now. These changes are due towards the increase in carbon dioxide put into the atmosphere since the beginning of your industrial revolution.
The Earth has warmed up by roughly 0.8 degrees Celsius since the beginning of the industrial revolution. There is already approximately a one degree rise built into the system, even if we stop all greenhouse gas emissions these days. Why? It will take decades to warm up the deep oceans just before the temperature reaches a new equilibrium.
If the world continues on a business-as-usual path, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that there is a fifty-fifty chance the temperature will exceed five degrees by the end of this century. This increase might not sound like much, but let me remind you that during the final ice age, the world was only 6 degrees colder. During this time, most of Canada along with the US down to Ohio and Pennsylvania were covered 12 months round by a glacier. A world five degrees warmer will be a very different place. The change will be so rapid, that many species, including us, will have a hard time adapting.
We also face the specter of non-linear "tipping points" that could cause much more severe changes. An example of a tipping point is the thawing with the permafrost. The permafrost contains immense amounts of frozen organic matter that have been accumulating for millennia. If the soil melts, microbes will spring to life and cause this debris to rot. The difference in biological activity below freezing and above freezing is something we are very familiar with. Frozen food remains edible for a very long time in the freezer, but once thawed, it spoils quickly. How much methane and carbon dioxide might be released from the rotting permafrost? Even if only a fraction of the carbon is released, it could be greater than all the greenhouse gases we have released to date. Once began, a runaway effect could begin.
The climate problem is an unintended consequence of our success. We depend on fossil energy to keep our homes warm in the winter, cool in the summer, and lit at night; we use it to travel across town and across continents. Energy is a fundamental reason for the prosperity we enjoy, and we will not surrender this prosperity. The United States has four and a half percent from the world's population, but we consume twenty five percent of your energy. By contrast, there are 1.6 billion people who don't have access to electricity. Hundreds of millions of people still cook with twigs or dung. The life we enjoy may possibly not be within the easy reach of many in the developing world, but it is within sight,Windows 7 Enterprise Key, and they want what we have.
Here is the dilemma. How much are we willing to invest,Purchase Windows 7, as being a world society, to mitigate the consequences of climate change that will not be realized for at the very least 100 years? Deeply rooted in all cultures, is the notion of generational responsibility. Parents work hard so that their children will have a better life. Climate change will affect the entire world, but our natural focus is on the welfare of our immediate families. Can we, as a world society, meet our responsibility to future generations?
While I'm worried, I'm hopeful we will solve this problem. I became the director of your Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in part because I wanted to enlist some with the best scientific minds to help battle against climate change. I was there only four and a half years, the shortest serving director in the 78 yr history with the Lab, but when I left to become Secretary of Energy, a number of very exciting energy institutes at the Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley had been established.
I am extremely privileged to be part of your Obama Administration. If there ever was a time to help steer America along with the world towards a path of sustainable energy, now is the time. The message the President is delivering is not one of doom and gloom, but of optimism and opportunity. I share this optimism. The task ahead is daunting, but we can and will succeed.
We know some from the answers already. There are immediate and significant savings in energy efficiency and conservation. Energy efficiency is not just low-hanging fruit; it is fruit lying on the ground. We have the potential to make buildings 80% far more efficient with investments that will pay for themselves in less than fifteen years. Buildings consume 40% with the energy we use, and a transition to energy efficient buildings will cut our carbon emissions by one third.
We are revving up the remarkable American innovation engine that will be the basis of a new prosperity. We will invent much improved methods to harness the sun, the wind, nuclear power, and capture and sequester the carbon dioxide emitted from our power plants. Advanced bio-fuels and also the electrification of personal vehicles make us less dependent on foreign oil.
In the coming decades, we will almost certainly face higher oil prices and a carbon-constrained economy. We have the opportunity to lead in the development of a new, industrial revolution. The great hockey player, Wayne Gretzky, was asked how he positions himself on the ice. He replied,Microsoft Office 2010 Professional, he skates "to where the puck is going to be, not where it's been." America must do the same.
The Obama Administration is laying a new foundation for a prosperous and sustainable energy future, but we don't have all with the answers. That's where you come in. I am asking you, the Harvard graduates, to join us. As our future intellectual leaders, take the time to learn far more about what's at stake, and then act on that knowledge. As future scientists and engineers, I ask you to give us better technology solutions. As future economists and political scientists, I ask you to create better policy options. As future business leaders, I ask that you make sustainability an integral part of your business.
Finally, as humanists, I ask that you speak to our common humanity. One of your cruelest ironies about climate change is that the ones who will be hurt the most are the most innocent: the world's poorest and those yet to be born.
The coda to this previous movement is borrowed from two humanists.
The first quote is from Martin Luther King. Although he spoke on ending the war in Vietnam in1967, his message seems so fitting for today's climate crisis:
"This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all mankind. This oft misunderstood, this oft misinterpreted concept, so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of your world like a weak and cowardly force, has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man ..We are now faced with the fact, my close friends, that tomorrow is right now. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late."
The final message is from William Faulkner. On December 10th, 1950, his Nobel Prize banquet speech was about the role of humanists in a world facing potential nuclear holocaust:
"I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him with the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past."
Graduates, you have an extraordinary role to play in our future. As you pursue your private passions, I hope you will also develop the passion and the voice to help the world in ways each large and small. Nothing will give you greater satisfaction.
Please accept my warmest congratulations. May you prosper and may you help save our planet for your children and for all the future children of your world.

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