DEMAND for graduates in the UK with skills related to sustainability is booming. Academia is waking up to the need to train specialists in green architecture, chemistry and engineering.
Dean Millar founded the world’s first ever BSc course in Renewable Energy at Exeter University after working as an industry consultant.
He said： “A lot of companies were complaining that there was a lack of bright young people suitably trained to work in the renewables business.”
Now his course has around 90 students learning the ins and outs of biomass, tidal, solar and offshore wind power.
Their career prospects are incredibly bright. Employment opportunities are not just limited to the energy sector, but segue into the regulatory and, increasingly, investment sectors as well.
“The big boys are moving in. The returns to be had are significant, especially in terms of wind development,” said Millar. “Financial firms need expertise across the board so they can make sensible investment decisions.”
Students on York University’s Master’s course in Green Chemistry are ideally placed to take advantage of the growing demand in industry for graduates with waste minimization skills.
Professor James Clark is founder of York’s Green Chemistry Centre for Excellence and the world’s leading green chemistry journal, Green Chemistry. He said： “We are now talking to producers of automobiles, electronics, furniture and pharmaceuticals, people who need to use chemistry but don’t think of themselves as chemists.”
As waste production legislation becomes increasingly strict, the traditional emphasis on making as much of a chemical as possible is shifting towards minimizing the waste that process creates. “A lot of chemicals are made from petroleum, but we are developing sustainable ways to make carbon, typically from biomass such as dead plants and trees,” said professor Clark.
All of last year’s graduates quickly found employment, some receiving multiple job offers in a variety of different fields.
Li Li, a 26-year-old Chinese postgraduate student, graduated from York in 20__. She said：
“I hadn’t heard about green chemistry in China. It was a new area and I was curious. Now the government back home needs people who know about these principles.”
Deep in the heart of Wales, 400 students at the Centre for Alternative Technology’s (CAT) Graduate School of the Environment are busy designing and building everything from high insulation wood housing to wind power turbines. With energy costs rising, building firms are increasingly looking to minimize the energy wasted heating and lighting homes, a service CAT students are well-equipped to provide.
A new institute is being built to meet the burgeoning demand for places and a distance learning facility will be launched next September so foreign students can complete CAT courses from home.
The expertise being taught on these courses is essential to a continually expanding range of companies and government authorities. Yet there is a larger goal at stake; the students are at the forefront of the battle against climate change. In the words of Dean Millar, “If we’re going to save the planet, we need to start turning these people out in big numbers.”
low-carbon economy and life style (经济与生活方式)
author unknown
good morning, ladies and gentleman,
imagine a world when you wake up in a hot and stuffy weather, while the sky is no longer blue, the streets are crowded with annoying cars with the buzzing sound and the exhaust pipes blow out this horrible black smoke. what is your feeling about it?
in our current society, we can’t be more familiar with the phrase ----the low carbon economy. we all take it for granted due to the fact the concept of low carbon economy enjoys a higher and higher popularity in our daily life, especially after today’s speech contestj .but how can we achieve the goal of low carbon economy?
so what’s low carbon life style?
let’s look back on our daily life. every morning as soon as you open your eyes, are you used to turn on the lights immediately when the room is bright enough as long as you draw the window curtains apart? is that your habit that when you are brushing your teeth you leave the water tap running on? are you accustomed to setting the temperature of the air conditioner in your office below 26 degrees celsius? in general, a low-carbon lifestyle covers many aspects of our modern life, such as cooking, transportation, home heating, and holiday travel, which can be conducted in a way that gives the maximum reduction of personal carbon emissions. it is a life with low energy, low consumption, low expenses.
Ladies and gentlemen,
I am honored to stand here to share with you on such a important subject as climate change.Yes ,it is global warming .
Let me give you two phenomenons.
Here is the first one. More and more people used to be using air condition ，but how many people ever thought whether this new ,hobby will bring side-effects or not? Maybe just few people. In fact, the side-effect is apparent. The emissions of gases exhausted from air conditioning contain a lot of methane .which could cause global warming. By the way, air conditioning will waste a lot of electricity .
The second one is about the increasing amount of cars. According to the statistics, in 21st century, there are 7 millions cars in the world, a large amount of exhaust gases has seriously influenced us, such as: cough, throat inflammation.
This two phenomenons are just few part of reason which change our environment badly. There are many other reasons.
In nearly 100 years, the average global temperature experienced twice fluctuations which is “cold-warm-cold-warm”. Generally, it is the trend that global climate is becoming warmer and warmer . In 1980s,global temperature rised apparently. According to Chinese scientists, the average temperature in China has risen by 1.1 degrees
Someone said “we are reading the first verse of the first chapter of abook, whose pages are infinite”. I don?t know who wrote these words, but I?vealways liked them as a reminder that the future can be anything we want it tobe. We are all in the position of the farmers. If we plant a good seed ,we reapa good harvest. If we plant nothing at all, we harvest nothing at all.
We are young. “How to spend the youth?” It is a meaningful question. Toanswer it, first I have to ask “what do you understand by the word youth?” Youthis not a time of life, it?s a state of mind. It?s not a matter of rosy cheeks,red lips or supple knees. It?s the matter of the will. It?s the freshness of thedeep spring of life.
Youth means a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity of theappetite , for adventure over the love of ease. This often exists in a man of 60more than a boy of 20 . Nobody grows old merely by a number of years . We growold by deserting our ideals. Years wrinkle the skin , but to give up enthusiasmwrinkles the soul . Worry , fear , self –distrust bows the heart and turns thespirit back to dust .
Whether 60 of 16 , there is in every human being ?s heart the lure ofwonders, the unfailing childlike appetite of what?s next and the joy of the gameof living . In the center of your heart and my heart there?s a wireless station: so long as it receives messages of beauty , hope ,cheer, courage and powerfrom men and from the infinite, so long as you are young .
Apoet said “To see a world in a grain of sand, and a heaven in a wildflower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in an hour. Severaldays ago, I had a chance to listen to a lecture. I learnt a lot there. I?d liketo share it with all of you. Let?s show our right palms. We can see three linesthat show how our love.career and life is. I have a short line of life. Whatabout yours? I wondered whether we could see our future in this way. Well, let?smake a fist. Where is our future? Where is our love, career, and life? Tellme.Yeah, it is in our hands. It is held in ourselves.
We all want the future to be better than the past. But the future can gobetter itself. Don?t cry because it is over, smile because it happened. From thepast, we?ve learnt that the life is tough, but we are tougher. We?ve learnt thatwe can?t choose how we feel, but we can choose what about it. Failure doesn?tmean you don?t have it, it does mean you should do it in a different way.Failure doesn?t mean you should give up, it does mean you must try harder.
As what I said at the beginning, “we are reading the first verse of thefirst chapter of a book, whose pages are infinite”. The past has gone. Nothingwe do will change it. But the future is in front of us. Believe that what wegive to the world, the world will give to us. And from today on, let?s be theowners of ourselves, and speak out “We are the world, we are the future.”
As we all know，the environmemt around us is getting worse andworse .In some places，we can't see fish swimming in the river or trees on thehills. Some people even have no clean water to drink.
So I think we must do something to protect the environment. But what can wedo?How to protect our environmemt ?For example，we can go to school on foot or bybike .
we can use shopping baskets not plastic bags when we go shopping，and we canuse both sides of the paper when we write .In a word，if everyone pays moreattention to our environment ，there will be less pollution and our life will bebetter.
“There is only one earth”，I hope everyone will protect our environmentwell.