Life is too short to be empty

Dear President Faust, members of the Harvard Group, directors of the Supervisory Board, teachers, parents, friends, and most important graduates,

Thank you, let me have the opportunity to share this wonderful day with you.

I am not sure that I am worthy of the honor of the Harvard University graduation ceremony speaker. Last year, I boarded this podium. Ms. JK Rowling, a British novelist who is a billionaire, was originally a student of classical literature. Standing here the year before was Mr. Bill Gates, a super rich man, a philanthropist and a computer genius. This year, unfortunately, your speaker is me. Although I am not very rich, at least I am a nerd.

I am very grateful to Harvard University for giving me an honours degree. This is very important to me, maybe even more important than you think. You know, academically, I am a different kind of our family. My brother received a doctorate in medicine from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. from Harvard University; my brother received a law degree from Harvard University. When I got the Nobel Prize, I thought my mother would be happy. However, I am wrong. On the morning of the announcement, I called her. She listened and said, "This is a good message, but I want to know, when will you come to see me next time?" Now among our brothers, I finally got it. Harvard degree, I think this time, she will be satisfied.

There is another difficulty in giving a speech at the Harvard University graduation ceremony. That is, some of you may have opinions, and I don't like to repeat what I said in my predecessor speech. I ask you to understand me for two reasons.

First, in order to generate influence, it is important to repeat the same information. In science, the first finder is important, but before being recognized, the last person to make this discovery may be more important.

Secondly, an author who draws on others is on the best path pioneered by a predecessor. Harvard graduate and poet Emerson once wrote: "My best thoughts were stolen from the ancients." The painter Picasso declared that "excellent artists borrowed, great artists steal." So why? The speaker of the graduation ceremony does not apply the same standard?

I would also like to point out that it is ironic for me to give a speech to a Harvard graduate, because if I ventured to submit an application to Harvard University, I would be rejected. My wife, Jean, was the admissions officer at Stanford University. She assured me that if I applied to Stanford University that year, she would reject me. I gave her the draft of this speech and she strongly opposed my use of the word "reject". She never refused any applicant. In the rejection letter, she always wrote: "We can't provide you with the opportunity to enter." I can't tell the difference between the two. However, the admissions officers of those popular schools are always very realistic, and they are called "rejected directors." Obviously, I need to learn how to sell myself.

Graduation speeches follow the structure of classical sonatas, and my speech is no exception. It was just the first movement - a brisk chat. The next second movement is the advice to the door. Such advice is rarely valuable, almost destined to be forgotten and never practiced. But, as Wilde said: "What you can do for advice is to give it to others because it has no use for you." So, here is my advice. First, don't forget the predecessors when you achieve success. Thanks to your parents and friends who support you, to those who have inspired you, especially those who are not good at class, because they force you to teach yourself. On the whole, self-learning ability is essential in excellent liberal arts education and will be the key to your success. You have to hug your classmates and thank them for the many nights that have been with you, which has brought unmeasurable value to your education. Of course, you also want to thank Harvard University. But even if you forget this, the alumni association will remind you. Second, be a generous person in your future life. In any negotiation, the last little benefit is left to the other party. Don't take the money off the table. In cooperation, don't leave honor to yourself. Anyone who has successfully cooperated should receive 90% of all honors.

In the film Harvey, Jimmy Stewart's role, Elwood P. Dowd, fully understands this. He said: "Many years ago, my mother once said to me, 'Elwood, living in this world, you can be either a smart person or a good person." "I have been a smart person and have been doing it for many years." ...but, I recommend you to be a good person. You can quote me.

My third piece of advice is to follow your hobbies when you start a new phase of life. If you don't have a hobby, go find it. If you can't find it, don't give up. Life is too short, so you can't walk by empty hands, you have to pour your affection for something. I am a super gluten at your age, and my goal is to be a physicist. After graduating from college, I spent another 8 years at the University of California at Berkeley. After finishing my postgraduate studies, I completed my postdoc, and then went to Bell Labs for 9 years. Throughout the years, all the fun of my focus and career has come from physics.

I also have one last piece of advice, which means that hobbies are important, but you should not only consider hobbies. When you are gray-haired, dying, and looking back, you need to be proud of what you have done. There is no pride in material life and possessiveness that you achieve. Only those people and things that have been influenced by you and changed by you will make you proud.

After nine years at Bell Labs, I decided to leave this warm and comfortable ivory tower and walk into the "real world" of my eyes - the university. My opinion of Bell Labs can be quoted by Mary Poppins, "actually perfect." However, I want to leave the life of just a scientific paper. I am going to teach and cultivate my own descendants in science.

I have a good friend and distinguished colleague Ted Geballe at Stanford University. He also went to Bell Labs from Berkeley and left Bell Labs a few years ago to go to Stanford University. He gave the best description of our motives:

“The biggest advantage of working in a university is the students. They are full of enthusiasm, passion and freedom of thought. They have not been changed by the pressure of life. Although they don’t realize it, they are the best customers you can find in this society. If there is only a period of time in life that is free of thought and full of creativity, then that time is when you are in college. When entering the school, the students have no doubt about the words in the textbook. Gradually, they find textbooks and professors. Not omniscient, so they started thinking independently. Since then, I started learning from them."

The students I have taught, the postdocs I have taken, and the young colleagues I have worked with are very good. More than 30 of them are now professors. Many of their research institutions are among the best in the world, including Harvard University. I learned a lot from them. Even now, I occasionally go online on weekends and ask students who are currently working on biophysics.

I started my teaching career with the idea of ​​returning to society. In my life, I got more than what I paid, so I have to repay the society. This led to the last movement of this speech. First of all, I want to talk about a great scientific discovery and the new challenges it brings. It is a battle command, and it is time to make a change.

Our climate has been changing over the past few decades. Climate change is not the case now, and there have been six ice ages in the past 600,000 years. However, current measurements indicate that climate change is accelerating. The size of the Arctic ice sheet in September is only half that of 50 years ago. Since 1870, people began to measure the speed of sea level rise, which is now five times faster. A major scientific discovery has emerged. For the first time in human history, science predicts how our actions will affect the world 50 to 100 years later. The reason for these changes is that since the industrial revolution, carbon dioxide emitted by humans into the atmosphere has increased. This has caused the average temperature of the Earth to rise by 0.8 degrees Celsius. Even if we stop all greenhouse gas emissions immediately, the temperature will still rise by about 1 degree over the past. Because the temperature of seawater will rise for decades before the temperature reaches equilibrium.

If the world maintains its current economic model, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that there will be a 50% chance of a temperature increase of at least 5 degrees by the end of the century. It doesn't sound like much, but let me remind you that during the last ice age, the temperature of the earth has only dropped by 6 degrees. At that time, most of the US and Canadian land below Ohio and Philadelphia were covered by glaciers all year round. The earth with a temperature rise of 5 degrees will be a very different earth. Because the changes are coming too fast, many creatures, including humans, will be difficult to adapt. For example, someone told me that in a warmer environment, the size of the insects will become larger. I don't know if this big fly screaming beside me is a precursor.

We are also faced with another ghost, the non-linear "climate tipping point", which will bring many more serious changes. An example of a "climate tipping point" is the melting of permafrost. Permafrost has accumulated over thousands of years and contains a huge amount of frozen organic matter. If the frozen soil melts, the microorganisms will multiply widely, causing the organic matter in the frozen soil to decay rapidly. We are familiar with the differences in biological properties between frozen organisms and pre-freezing organisms. In cold storage, frozen foods are still edible after long-term storage. However, once thawed, the food quickly rots. How much methane and carbon dioxide will be released from a decaying permafrost? Even if only a portion of the carbon is released, it may be more than all the greenhouse gases we have released since the Industrial Revolution. Once this happens, the situation is out of control.

The climate issue is the unintended consequence of our economic development. We rely too much on fossil energy, winter heating, summer cooling, night lighting, long-distance travel, and global sightseeing. Energy is the foundation of economic prosperity, and we cannot give up economic prosperity. The US population accounts for 3% of the world's population, but we consume 25% of the world's energy. In contrast, 1.6 billion people in the world have no electricity, and hundreds of millions of people rely on burning branches and animal droppings to cook rice. People in developing countries do not enjoy our lives, but they all look in the eyes and they are eager to have what we have.

This is a new challenge. As a whole, how much we are willing to pay to alleviate climate change as a whole? This change was never thought of 100 years ago. Intergenerational responsibility is deeply rooted in all cultures. Parents work hard to make their children have a better life. Climate change will affect the entire world, but our nature makes us care only about the welfare of individual families. Can we see the whole world as a whole? Can we take responsibility for future people?

Although I am worried, I am still optimistic about the future and this problem will be solved. I agree to be the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, in part because I want to recruit some of the world's best scientists to study climate change. I worked there for four and a half years, the shortest term in the 78-year history of this lab, but when I left, at Berkeley Labs and Berkeley, some very exciting energy research institutions have been established. .

I am extremely honored to be a member of the Obama administration team. If there is an opportunity to lead the United States and the world to the path of sustainable energy, then this time is now. The president has sent a message that the future is not looting, but optimistic, and we still have opportunities. I also have this kind of optimism. The task before us is daunting, but we can and will succeed.

We already have some answers that can save energy and improve energy efficiency. They are not the fruits hanging on the branches, but they have matured on the ground, and we are willing to pick them up. For example, we have a way to reduce the power consumption of buildings by 80%, and the increased investment can be recovered within 15 years. The electricity consumption of buildings accounts for 40% of our energy consumption. The promotion of energy-efficient buildings will reduce our carbon dioxide emissions by one-third.

We are accelerating this huge innovative machine in the United States, which will be the basis for the next great American prosperity. We will invest heavily in new ways to effectively use solar, wind, and nuclear energy, and invest heavily in ways to capture and isolate carbon dioxide from power plant emissions. Advanced biofuels and electric vehicles will make us less dependent on foreign oil.

In the coming decades, we will almost certainly face higher oil prices and stricter carbon dioxide emissions policies. This is a new industrial revolution, and the United States has the opportunity to act as a leader. The great hockey player Wayne Gretzky was asked how he ran on the ice and replied: "I slipped to the next position of the ball, not its current position." The United States should do the same.

The Obama administration is laying a new foundation for America's prosperity and sustainable energy. But we still have a lot of things we don't know. This requires your participation. In this speech, I request all Harvard graduates here to join us. You are our future intellectual leaders. Please take the time to deepen your understanding of the current dangerous situation and then take appropriate action. You are the future scientists and engineers, and I ask you to give us a better technical solution. You are future economists and political scientists, and I ask you to create better policy choices. You are future entrepreneurs and I ask you to make sustainable development an integral part of your business.

Finally, you are humanitarians, and I ask you to speak for humanity. One of the most brutal ironies of climate change is that the most hurt people are the most innocent people - the poorest people in the world and those who have not yet been born.

The end of this final movement is the quote from two humanitarians.

The first quote comes from Martin Luther King. This is his comment on the end of the Vietnam War in 1967, but it seems to be very suitable for commenting on today's climate crisis.

"I appeal to people all over the world to unite and abandon the gap between race, color, class and nationality. I appeal to all and unconditional love for all mankind. You will suffer misunderstanding and misunderstanding, and the world who believes in Nietzsche's philosophy will recognize You are a weak and cowardly coward. But this is absolutely necessary for human existence.... My friend, the fact is that tomorrow is today. At this moment, we are facing the most urgent situation. In the unpredictable life And in history, there is one thing called repentance."

The second quote comes from William Faulkner. In December 1950, he gave a speech at the Nobel Prize-winning dinner, talking about the role that the world should play in the shadow of the nuclear war.

"I believe that mankind will not only exist, he will also win. Mankind is immortal, not because he only has a voice in everything, but because he has a soul, a spirit of compassion, sacrifice and endurance. The poet and writer's responsibility is to write this spirit. They have the power to sublimate the human heart and make humans recall the things that have made him extremely glorious in the past—courage, honor, hope, self-respect, compassion, compassion, and sacrifice.”

Dear students, you play a pivotal role in our future. When you pursue your personal ambitions, I hope that you will also carry forward dedication, actively voice, and help improve the world in all aspects of the big and small. This will give you the greatest satisfaction.

Finally, please accept my warmest congratulations. I hope that you will succeed and I hope that you will protect and save our planet for your children and all future children.