Thursday, October 5, 2017

The First Summer Academy of the Club of Rome, a Comment by Tatiana Yugay


Tatiana Yugay is professor at the Plekhanov University in Moscow. She is an expert in issues related to the world market of oil and gas. A post of her on this subject can be found here. Above, you can see her in a tree-hugging moment at the Botanical Garden of the University of Florence.


Now that Ugo Bardi has finished presenting on his blog the main speakers at the 1st Club of Rome Summer Academy 2017, at the Florence University, I'd like to share my impressions about this great event. Of course, the speakers were rather prominent, all of them - authors of solid books and\or founders of innovative movements but it was no less interesting to watch reaction and feedback from the audience. Being a university professor, I'm very curious to observe differences between my students and those from other universities.



I was really delighted to meet so many competent and enthusiastic young intellectuals who were ready to save the world today! They were great listeners; very supportive and pro-active at the same time. They put very thoughtful and intelligent questions, sometimes not easy to answer. They were ready to laugh at a good joke or cheer at a statement that met their opinion.


While exchanging opinions with some participants during coffee breaks, I understood that they appreciated most of all those speakers who explored new fields of knowledge, used novel approaches or presented results of their own research illustrated by concrete data.


They wouldn't let go Anders Wijkman, Co-President of the Club of Rome, after his presentation of the Club's concepts. They asked plenty of questions to Kate Pickett from the University of York, who during many years studied problems of inequality. I was glad that contemporary young people are so much concerned about this social problem. They applauded to Ugo Bardi's visual demonstration of the Seneca Cliff.


They were deeply impressed by a groundbreaking discourse by Chandran Nair, Founder of the Global Institute for Tomorrow. In all other respects, they were quite normal modern people. They enjoyed the cultural program in fabulous Florence, dinners in sustainable gardens and each other's company. In sum, this very special young audience is a dream of every university professor and I wish all of them to realize their ambitious plans and desires!












Who

Ugo Bardi is a member of the Club of Rome, faculty member of the University of Florence, and the author of "Extracted" (Chelsea Green 2014), "The Seneca Effect" (Springer 2017), and Before the Collapse (Springer 2019)