Hub Talks continue this summer and in July we hosted some very inspiring events.

Last Wednesday Alexander Schatten held a talk followed by interesting and passionate discussion on current tendencies in the environmental movement. According to Alexander the current trends in environmentalism are often driven more by marketing considerations than by solid scientific facts. Therefore environmentalism gets often lost in ideas and fallacies than a reality and is missing out on what really needs to be done to work against the progressing climate change. Alexander Schatten is a senior researcher at Vienna University of Technology and the main aim of this presentation was to stress the need for more scientifically based environmental movement driven by cool and rational approach rather than wishful thinking. He argues that only environmentalism with stronger role of science will be able to keep up and tackle pressing issues in the near future such as extreme weather, growing population and rising demand for resources. In case you missed this presentation, it is available on Alexander’s website.

We also had the pleasure to host a breakfast with Tri Mumpuni, an Ashoka fellow active in economic development. This more than enjoyable event provided us with an insight to the problem of insufficient electrification in Indonesia where there are still more than 100 million people without electricity. The aim of her project is to bring renewable energy for rural electrification and clean water supply in some of the remotest areas in Indonesia. Tri Mumpuni has introduced us to the essential idea, financial strategy and social impact of this exciting effort. For past decade Tri Mumpuni has dedicated her activities to develop micro-hydropower plants based on community ownership model, she helps to get the funding, organize construction and maintenance of the power plants, and manage the projects in order to generated revenue and making change for the communities.

You can also have a look at the pictures from both events on our Facebook page.

There are more interesting talks to come in August so keep tuned in!