CIPA at Columbia U.

In early November, I gave a presentation about sustainable urban energy systems at the China Institute for Public Affairs (CIPA) annual meeting at Columbia University. Their 2007 Conference on Public Affairs in China had a number of university researchers from the U.S. (NYU, Yale, and Cornell) and China (Renmin, Xiamen), as well as private-sector speakers (myself included). Because the event was co-sponsored by Columbia’s Chinese Students and Scholars Association, I also had a chance to meet quite a number of Chinese students — including Ms. Zhang Xinwei, a Beida graduate now studying environmental management at Yale, who served as our ‘Environment Panel’ moderator. That evening the students and CIPA organizers (including the hard-working Wang Shuping, also at Yale) rewarded the speakers with a very nice Chinese dinner at a restaurant near the campus on Amsterdam Ave.