Chu Speaks on Climate Change

Arriving on campus after a year of greater sustainability efforts at Harvard, U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu called on the Class of 2009 to take up the fight against global climate change.

But despite his weighty list of credentials, including a Nobel Prize in physics and the political charge to solve a world-wide crisis, Steven Chu seemed less than confident when he took the podium yesterday at Tercentary Theater to deliver the Commencement address.

“I am not sure I live up to the high standards of Harvard Commencement speakers,” Chu began, recalling the names of former speakers like Bill Gates who have admittedly greater recognition power and more wealth than he. “Today, sadly, you have me. I’m not a billionaire—but at least I am a nerd.”

Dividing his speech into three “movements”—beginning with light-hearted remarks, followed by “unsolicited advice,” and concluding with a call to arms—and liberally using the quotes of others, a quick-witted Chu urged graduates to follow their greatest passions for the greater good.

“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 both large and small,” Chu said. “Nothing will give you greater satisfaction.”

As a college graduate himself, Chu had the “single-minded” goal to become a physicist, spending eight years studying at Berkeley and then nine years working at Bell Laboratories—a “warm, cozy ivory tower” that he would eventually leave to teach at Stanford and then the University of California, Berkeley.

“I wanted to leave behind something more than scientific articles,” Chu said. “I wanted to teach and give birth to my own set of scientific children.”

Now, the Nobel laureate in physics and former director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has been charged with an even greater calling. As the nation’s 12th secretary of energy, Chu has committed himself to battling climate change by reducing the nation's dependence on fossil fuels, lowering carbon emissions, and finding immediate savings in energy efficiency—not merely “low-hanging fruit,” but “fruit lying on the ground,” whose simple implementation could radically conserve resources, he said.

For all the severity of the crisis apparent to Chu, the dilemma of climate change resides in the idea of “generational responsibility,” in which individuals primarily worry about the welfare of their immediate families. Chu expressed concern that some would not invest themselves in the crusade against a crisis whose consequences will not be realized for at least another hundred years.

“The Obama administration is laying a new foundation for a prosperous and sustainable energy future, but we don’t have all the answers,” Chu said, calling Obama’s message one of optimism. “That’s where you come in.”

Chu urged graduates to channel their respective areas of expertise—may they be the hard sciences or the humanities—into exposing the urgency of the global crisis at hand and actively working to diminish its repercussions.

“As our future intellectual leaders, take the time to learn more about what’s at stake, and then act on that knowledge,” he said.

Once one becomes “old and gray,” their source of pride will not lie in their accomplishments and the credentials, he said, but “in the lives you have touched and the difference you have made.”

“May you prosper, may you help preserve and save our planet for your children, and all future children of the world,” he concluded.

Some of the graduates in the audience were not wholly surprised by the speech's heavy focus on climate change—especially given Chu's current government position. Though Eyal Dechter '09 did not find the speech "overwhelmingly inspiring," he said the balance between Chu's colloquial humor and specific rallying point made an effective Commencement address.

"When I think 'Steven Chu,' I think of someone who has worked hard to solve this particular problem," Dechter said. "I think it would have been almost inappropriate for him to try to give a too general speech...It would have been weird."

Chu is the first person appointed to the Cabinet after having won a Nobel Prize. He comes after a long line of former Commencement speakers who served on the Cabinet, including Robert E. Rubin, Madeleine Albright, and Cyrus Roberts.

—Staff writer Esther I. Yi can be reached at estheryi@fas.harvard.edu.

CORRECTION

An earlier online version of this article incorrectly referred to Steven Chu as the U.S. Secretary of State. In fact, he is the U.S. Secretary of Energy.