When I received
this email, I was wondering what is the connection between Tel Aviv University
and the City of Beverly Hills?
I received an
email from the office of Friends of Tel Aviv University inviting me to a
symposium at Beverly Hills City Hall.
The topic was:
“Cleantech
and the Battle Against Climate Change”.
The
email stated: We have three amazing panelists, and a Pulitzer Prize winning
journalist to moderate. The symposium will be an in-depth exploration of
the many challenges of climate change and the technologies and innovations
being developed to tackle this planetary crisis.
A woman was
welcoming me as I made my way to the hall and I asked her about this
connection. She told that the City of
Beverly Hills has an agreement with the Israeli Consulate in Los Angeles to
cooperate on environmental and business issues.
Julian Gold,
the mayor of Beverly Hills opened the meeting.
The moderator
Julie Cart was an environmental
reporter for the Los Angeles Times. In 2009, Cart and colleague Bettina Boxall
won the Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting.
Tel Aviv
University was represented by Prof. Colin Price, head of TAU Porter School of
Environmental Studies. Colin lead a
recent TAU study that suggests that weather patterns lead to flash floods may
one day be tracked and anticipated by smart phones.
David Nahai was
the CEO and Commission President of the Los Angeles Department of Water and
Power, former Chairman of the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control. Today he is President of David Nahai
Consulting Services.
Aaron
Tartakovsky is the co-founder and CEO of Epic CleanTec, a green technology
startup redefining urban sanitation by converting building waste water into
clean water and high-quality soil.
The panelists
each introduced themselves and talked about their contributions from the academic,
government and private sector point of view.
They mentioned EJ: Environmental Justice. They talked about the
crumbling infrastructure of utilities and the best way to repair them. Is it possible to decentralize entrenched
utilities? We need to build small scale individual power supplies rather
than repairing the crumbling infrastructure.
Solar energy: solar panels can provide extra power
that could flow back to a grid. Part of the solution would be: Energy storage
Nahai predicts that we will have wireless charging soon.
In the Q&A there was a discussion about the private
sector and government regulations.
Clearly the solution is in the correct balance of necessary regulations and
incentives for the private sector.
Seth M. Siegel was in the audience and he noted: In
California we first need: Waste water and storm water capturing. He wrote
the book on the subject: Let there be Water!
Israel’s Solution for a Water Starved World.
I highly recommend this book. It starts with a time-line of all the
innovations in Israel ensuring that the water resources in the region will be
plentiful for the growing population. It
goes on to detail the stories of Netafim- drip irrigation, and the large
desalination plants.
