Stanford Gets $1.1 Billion for New Climate School From John Doerr (nytimes.com) 33
John Doerr, one of the most successful venture capitalists in the history of Silicon Valley, is giving $1.1 billion to Stanford University to fund a school focused on climate change and sustainability. From a report: The gift, which Mr. Doerr is making with his wife Ann, is the largest ever to a university for the establishment of a new school, and is the second largest gift to an academic institution, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. Only Michael R. Bloomberg's 2018 donation of $1.8 billion to his alma mater, Johns Hopkins University, ranks higher. The gift establishes the Doerrs as leading funders of climate change research and scholarship, and will place Stanford at the center of public and private efforts to wean the world off fossil fuels. "Climate and sustainability is going to be the new computer science," Mr. Doerr, who made his estimated $11.3 billion fortune investing in technology companies such as Slack, Google and Amazon, said in an interview. "This is what the young people want to work on with their lives, for all the right reasons."
The school, to be known as the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, will be a home to traditional academic departments related to topics such as planetary science, energy technology and food-and-water security. It will also feature several interdisciplinary institutes and a center focused on developing practical policy and technology solutions to the climate crisis. "The school will absolutely focus on policy issues and on asking what would it take to move the world toward more sustainable practices and better behaviors," Marc Tessier-Lavigne, the Stanford president, said in an interview. Mr. Doerr joins a growing list of ultrawealthy men donating huge sums of money to the fight against global warming.
The school, to be known as the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, will be a home to traditional academic departments related to topics such as planetary science, energy technology and food-and-water security. It will also feature several interdisciplinary institutes and a center focused on developing practical policy and technology solutions to the climate crisis. "The school will absolutely focus on policy issues and on asking what would it take to move the world toward more sustainable practices and better behaviors," Marc Tessier-Lavigne, the Stanford president, said in an interview. Mr. Doerr joins a growing list of ultrawealthy men donating huge sums of money to the fight against global warming.
Solving the Problem (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Solving the Problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, why not wait and see what they actually do before you complain about it?
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Stanford does a lot of work on nuclear power. Their Physics-241course is "Introduction to Nuclear Energy", and they do a considerable amount of nuclear research; see: https://energy.stanford.edu/re... [stanford.edu]
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I would imagine the OP is afraid this is another playground for Mark Z. Jacobsen-- if Stanford doesn't want him to be the face of Stanford's approach to energy policy, they really should do something to reign him in and/or provide a platform to a different voice.
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Nuclear power is not the answer. The actual solution to "climate change" is nuclear war. They need to put their body where their mouth is.
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You've heard about the German Engergy Transistion, right? It's been doing so well.
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To be truly effective (Score:1)
They should really be placing this school where opinions need to be changed, like Texas, North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, or Arizona.
Only by having people here working on these projects would they be able to disseminate knowledge to people who don't know any better.
I don't know why it "makes sense" to place a large amount of money in rich states when all these other states could benefit exponentially more than here.
Preaching to the choir doesn't effect change in the world.
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I don't know why it "makes sense" to place a large amount of money in rich states when all these other states could benefit exponentially more than here. [...] Preaching to the choir doesn't effect change in the world.
This isn't a church, it's a school. It's not there to preach. It's there to teach people willing to learn.
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It's there, to make money as a business. Selling you a future is optional and not guaranteed, as confirmed by the highly educated generation of laborers hell-bent on getting a refund.
And the other assumption here, is that we truly understand the actual intent of a 1.1 billion dollar donation. Bloomberg blew that much on an election he never intended to win. Sometimes, actions run far beyond the wallet.
Food and water security? I wonder what kind of warmongering designs will come from that. Ah, tradition.
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Does it help to live in the dystopian world your brain has created for you?
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If food and water supplies are disrupted, your preferences vis-a-vis war for or against won't matter.
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You can’t just come right in and rationally discuss these things. Start it off as a church and then gradually change the direction.
Re:To be truly effective (Score:4, Insightful)
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Texas politicians' political stance against renewable power hasn't stopped Texas from becoming the national leader in wind power and having the largest growth in solar power in recent years.
Ironically it's because of deregulation. The great thing about a wind farm it starts making money for investors *quickly*. As for any resulting dunkelflaute problem and its impact on long term grid stability, that's bound to be technically solvable. Whether it's the best way is neither here nor there, because nobody's
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Interesting worldview. Do you have any data to back it up? Didn't think so.
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You need it (Score:2)
The school (Score:2)
Really? (Score:2)
I was just thinking that Stanford needed another billion dollars, what with their endowment fund only making $12B in net gains in 2021 [stanford.edu]. Won't someone think of the poor west coast elite school?
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Philanthropists are always certain that they know better than the rest of us.
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The dean is Arun Majumdar (Score:2)
As I understand it, this is a no-strings-attached deal, do the focus of the school is mainly going to be determined by the dean: https://news.stanford.edu/2022... [stanford.edu]
The dean is going to be Arun Majumdar, who seems like an interesting guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Arun Majumdar's background is in Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science. He's done a number of interesting things, including working for Google on their energy systems.
Will they cover? (Score:1)
I wonder if they will cover/address topics such as the amount of pollution and contamination from mining for minerals required for all the Car-Batteries, or the fact that Photovoltaic Cells are non-biodegradable and are being dumped into landfills where PCBs are leaching into the groundwater.
So many of the very things in the "Green" push are only driven by buzzwords and not the real science around it.
Such as Clean-Coal; plants that installed the scrubbers when used with low-sulfur coal from the Montana and