US Road Tour

Six cities in three days! -- Baltimore, DC, Toronto, Chicago, San Francisco and LA. It was a hectic trip in late April 2007, when I did a U.S. “road show” for CLSA, making presentations about the carbon market for the company's clients. The second week was a bit easier – New York, Boston, and then New York again. [And since it included Toronto, I suppose I really should call it a ‘North American’ tour]. A couple of highlights from the road show:

Roger & Dr. Oliver

In Boston, I had a chance to catch up with Dr. Hongyan He Oliver, who’s a Research Fellow in the Kennedy School at Harvard. Those of you with (exceptionally!) sharp eyes might recognize her from the China photo on the Teaching/Training page of my website (Dr. Oliver is standing behind me, the fourth person from the left). That photo was taken in 1998 during a UNDP training program in Guiyang (Guizhou Province), when Ms. He – then a graduate student at Beijing University – was working as my translator. After graduating from ‘Beida,’ she obtained her doctorate in environmental engineering from Stanford, and now works in John Holdren’s group at Harvard. Her husband, another Stanford Ph.D., is a physics researcher at MIT. You might want to check out her recent article about reducing China’s thirst for foreign oil in the Woodrow Wilson Center’s latest China Environment Series #8 issue.

In New York, I was a speaker, along with the futurist Andrew Zolli, and basketball legend Walt “Clyde” Frazier for CLSA’s Traders Track Dinner Series. This “NY Innovators Dinner” session was held in the renowned Rainbow Room, up on the 65th floor of Rockefeller Center. Walt spoke about his championship days with Bill Bradley and other teammates of the NY Knicks, and also about today’s players, whom he follows quite closely as a Knicks announcer. He also signed a copy of his new book The Game Within the Game for me.


Lincoln Tunnel Run

Lincoln Tunnel Run

I know it’s not really project or work-related, but I thought I’d include a picture & info about my April 2007 Lincoln Tunnel run. This 5K race is billed as the world’s only “underwater” race, going from the New Jersey entrance of the tunnel over to New York, and then back again. This is the third year in a row that I’ve done it, and I finished #477 in a field of 1500+ runners, with a blistering (??) sub-9 minute mile pace. Well, okay, it was an 8:59 pace – a whole lot slower than last year – but it was a beautiful, sunny day and we didn’t get drenched like last year!


China Urban Energy Paper

The paper I presented at NYU in April last year has now been published, and is available online. Please check out “Sustainable Urban Energy Systems in China,” in the first issue of Vol. 15 (2007) of the NYU Environmental Law Journal.