Group of Twenty Summit for Energy Infrastructure Reform
Group of Twenty Summit for Energy Infrastructure Reform
Hello Delegates!
I am very excited to be one of your directors for this innovative committee. I am a senior studying Biomedical Engineering in the great Adams House of Harvard, said to be the artsy, creative House. While my drawing skills are abysmal, I enjoy playing guitar and alto saxophone. How does a musical bioengineer get involved with Politics? Well, actually I joined MUN as a member of the technology team (those veterans in the crowd might remember me from the computer labs of HNMUN ‘07 and ‘08), but my interest in worldly matters drew me to the substantive side of MUN, where I served last year in both the HMUN and HNMUN conferences as a substantive assistant director (in the SA Potsdam Committee and in the Historical GA committee regarding the 1967 War). I am a citizen of the world. I was born in Israel, but left at the age of 2 to Zambia, Colombia, and Ecuador, where I graduated from high school. For my senior year, I wanted to combine my love for global affairs with my love for technology.
So, together with one of my best friends and my economic partner in crime, Sebastien and I have put together a wonderful, exclusive committee. Those of you lucky enough to be participating in this G20 summit will have the chance, not only to model the United Nations, but to tackle the very problems that governments around the world are trying to solve. What better time than now, the world’s greatest economic crisis since the great depression of 1929-30, to redesign the world’s infrastructures? Each of you will have the chance to represent the nations of the world and make decisions that would change the world as we know it. I hope that this committee will bring out excellent debate and in the process both prepare you future leaders in these important issues, but also remind you that we are in an era of great technological development in which politicians and decision-makers must take advantage of these innovations. And last, but certainly not least, I hope we all have a great time in the extremely special setting that is a small SA committee.
Looking forward to the most interesting and applicable debate that HNMUN has ever seen!
Sincerely,
Or Gadish
Director, Group of Twenty Summit for Energy Infrastructure Reform
Harvard National Model United Nations 2010
Topic Area: Innovative Energy Solutions
“Although there is an ongoing global financial crisis, we cannot think that pressure for energy conservation and emissions reduction has been alleviated due to the drop in energy prices and decrease in demand. Instead, the financial crisis will bring major new opportunities for global scientific, technological and economic development.” – Wan Gang, China’s Minister for Science and Technology
Delegates, we are in tough times. That is certain. I ask you, however, to take this as a challenge rather than a problem, for just as Minister Gang has said, the financial crisis is not, in fact, a time in which we can forget about renewable energy sources but, rather the opposite: now that we are hitting rock bottom, we must make our way up, not by the way which we came down, but by carving out a new path. It is time now to rethink our government’s budgets and declare this goal one of high priority. We, the technological experts, must take this important goal, and bring forth concrete plans to tackle this problem and bring about new feasible energy sources. While these plans require economic planning, we, as a committee, will attempt to put economics aside by having a good understanding of the economic limits of each type of energy resource.
As great political leaders, as well as technological experts, you are aware that it is not logical to implement the same types of plans for the entire world, mostly due to differences in the availability of natural resources. With this in mind, we will attempt to create a holistic solution, which will include a series of plans for each area as well as a general set of ideas for the world as whole. Furthermore, as the most important technological experts of the world, it will be important for the solutions for each area to complement the other ones so that the technology and infrastructure we recommend, keeps in mind the need for a global balance.
In order to arm you with enough knowledge, the dais staff will provide an appropriate separation of the world into sections, with each section having information about the geographical limits and available natural resources, as well as trade. Furthermore, we will provide information about different types of energy resources, along with relevant technological and economic information, although I remind you that we will maintain debate mostly in technology rather than economics.
We have a great climb ahead of us, tackling a problem that has not been tackled on this level. So, I leave you with a quote from Robert Frost, an American poet:
“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”