East-West Views

by Sumeet Saksena

The author carries pollution measurement instruments in a Mumbai auto rickshaw.

The driver of the auto rickshaw sure was puzzled when I instructed him to drive for half an hour along a busy road and then turn back to return to where we started. If he had any apprehensions about the strange devices that graduate student Chitra Murali of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Mumbai, and I were carrying, he politely kept them to himself. (After all, in this day and age any small device kept closely to one’s body in public can raise a lot of fear). Perhaps he didn’t care as long as he got his fare. Or was his brain, after years of driving in a highly polluted environment, cloudy, as mine was beginning to get? Continue Reading »

by Linda Kay Quintana
At a recent Research Program brown bag talk here at the Center, I was reminded that despite some ecologically minded choices, I’m no environmental super hero.

The idea that there is a per capita measurement for carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions is a stark reminder that every person’s actions count. Continue Reading »

by Linda Kay Quintana

EWC students (Teguh Santosa, Bobby Lambrix) at the Hawaii Public Radio pledge drive.

There’s just nothing like going outside of your normal work environment and going under fire for a few hours doing something that you know almost nothing about to make you feel you suddenly dropped a whole lot of IQ points.

This was how I felt as I joined eleven other East-West Center students and staff when we volunteered for a shift of the on-air pledge drive for our local public radio, Hawaii Public Radio (HPR). Continue Reading »