Energy Security Event Ideas

Whether you're the leader of a Student Pugwash chapter or a student interested in organizing an event on nuclear weapons issues, you can benefit from the ideas below! Want to learn more about organizing Student Pugwash events on your campus?
Email contact@spusa.org.

Movies

Syriana
A missile disappears in Iran, but the CIA has other problems: the heir to an Emirate gives an oil contract to China, cutting out a US company that promptly fires its immigrant workers and merges with a small firm that has landed a Kazakhstani oil contract. The Department of Justice suspects bribery, and the oil company's law firm finds a scapegoat. The CIA also needs one when its plot to kill the Emir-apparent fails. Agent Bob Barnes, the fall guy, sorts out the double cross. An American economist parlays the death of his son into a contract to advise the sheik the CIA wants dead. The jobless Pakistanis join a fundamentalist group. All roads start and end in the oil fields.
(Synopsis from Internet Movie Database)

Documentaries

Who Killed the Electric Car
It was among the fastest, most efficient production cars ever built. It ran on electricity, produced no emissions and catapulted American technology to the forefront of the automotive industry. The lucky few who drove it never wanted to give it up. So why did General Motors crush its fleet of EV electric vehicles in the Arizona desert? Who killed the Electric Car? Chronicles the life and mysterious death of the GM EV, examining its cultural and economic ripple effect and how they reverberated through the halls of government and big business. (Synposis from filmmaker)

A Crude Awakening (The Oil Crash)
OilCrash, produced and directed by award-winning European journalists and filmmakers Basil Gelpke and Ray McCormack, tells the story of how our civilization’s addiction to oil puts it on a collision course with geology. Compelling, intelligent, and highly entertaining, the film visits with the world’s top experts and comes to a startling, but logical conclusion – our industrial society, built on cheap and readily available oil, must be completely re-imagined and overhauled. (Synopsis from filmmaker)

Oil on Ice
Oil on Ice is a vivid, compelling and comprehensive documentary connecting the fate of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to decisions America makes about energy policy, transportation choices, and other seemingly unrelated matters. Caught in the balance are the culture and livelihood of the Gwich’in people and the migratory wildlife in this fragile ecosystem. (Synopsis from filmmaker)

Ways Individuals can Make a Difference

• Join the Challenge! Campuses across the US and Canada are running and winning clean energy campaigns on their campuses and more are joining the fight every day. Check out the Campus Climate Challenge website to find out more.
  
• Climate Crews! Climate Crews is a project that will harness a valuable natural resource: college students’ creativity. Students will propose innovative campaigns around the global issues of climate preservation and clean energy and how, by documenting their experiences on film, they will be able to turn their campaigns into renewable resources that will guide similar efforts on other campuses.
  Submit your 500-word proposal online for a chance at $200 to run a campaign on your campus.
  
• Energy Star- Energy Efficient Products
  
• What you can do to improve fuel economy (EPA)
  
• Tips on using less energy from energyhog.org

Speaker List

• Jim Bartis
  RAND Corp.
  
• Ariel Cohen
  Heritage Foundation
  
• Michael Eckhart
  American Council on Renewable Energy
  
• Suzanne Hunt
  Worldwatch Institute
  
• Vinod Khosla
  Khosla Ventures
  
• Judith Kipper
  Council on Foreign Relations
  
• Anne Korin
  Institute for the Analysis of Global Security
  
• Deron Lovaas
  Natural Resource Defense Council
  
• Don McKenzie
  Union of Concerned Scientists
  
• Steve Nadel
  American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy
  
• Rhone Resch
  Solar Energy Industries Association
  
• Daniel Yergin
  Cambridge Energy Research Associates