O’Neill speaks about greenhouse gases

For his first time at IU in the last 25 years, Paul O’Neill, former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, drew in a crowd that barely fit into the School of Public and Environmental Affairs Atrium on Tuesday night for his speech on “Energy and the Environment: Global Solution for National Problems.”

“This is the best turnout that the Hoosiers have had in a long time,” said John Graham, dean of the School of Public and Environmental Affairs, as he introduced O’Neill.

O’Neill, who earned his master’s degree from IU in 1966, began by joking about his experiences as a student at IU and then as U.S. Treasury Secretary from January 2001 to December 2002.

He then buckled down to the important issue: teaching the significance of greenhouse gas emissions and solving energy problems locally and around the world.

“We as a society broadly have done a miserable job of scaling our pursuit of global climate change,” O’Neill said. “To begin with, we need to acknowledge the problem.”

O’Neill said that there has not been enough funding for research on greenhouse emissions.

He said that for the last 40 years, people have been saying they will make solar power more cost-competitive within the next 10 years. Still, nothing has been done.

“This is really a serious thing,” O’Neill said. “Who the hell cares whose fault it is?”

O’Neill said that while working for the Bush administration, he could not get his voice heard about what needed to be done to fix the problem.

He pointed out small solutions and said 30 percent of natural gas that goes into the pipelines in

Siberia does not make it into Western Europe because of leaks in the lines. Fixing the pipes would prove a simple solution to a big problem.

“So far my batting average is not very good,” O’Neill said in reference to being able to get both Bush and Obama to listen to him. “But I keep batting.”

O’Neill said one major thing that could attract more research funding would be to bring stronger greenhouse gas data into the debate.

“I’m forever going to be optimistic and not ever going to stop doing what I’m doing,” O’Neill said.

Jennifer Rice, who is applying to graduate school for the fall semester and teaches classes for the School of Health, Physical

Education, and Recreation, said she liked that O’Neill brought up many points in a manner she had never thought about.

“I felt that he was very knowledgeable,” Rice said. “I felt that he deviated from the topic a lot, but I still enjoyed listening to what he had to say, even if I didn’t agree. An hour speech wasn’t long enough.”