My First Protest

I attended the protest against the BP-Berkeley-Biofuel deal today, and discovered something significant: I don’t like protests. All that crowd-whipping rhetoric and silly stunts – ugh – I guess I prefer intellectual discourse. This is going to sound strange, opposed to the deal as I am, but the protest was just standard silly Berkeley stuff – alarmist with no factual support, meant to rile up the simple-minded, but utterly unconvincing - in fact, if anything, convincing that these protestors were just a bunch of paranoid fools. And often off-topic – I can deal with (but don’t like) the “corporate America is evil” stuff, and “this is a public institution” chatter, even the discussions about BP’s social/environmental transgressions (which are basically irrelevant), but why were we talking about nuclear energy? Seriously! Off-topic, people! And it weakens the message, which is actually quite strong. *Sigh* Why don’t we have a debate on campus? I nominate Tad Patzek.

And I didn’t even get arrested – although one student did… they pulled a cute little stunt of creating a faux oil spill on the entrance to California Hall, dressed in white lab coats with BP on the back, which resulted in at least one arrest. I actually got there too late to witness it… but there were 10-12 cops (2 with cameras, which sparked some amusing yelling from aged hippies that would make the ACLU proud) among the 100 or so attendees. Mostly, the cops looked bored.

I attended the protest against the $500 million BP-Berkeley Biofuels research deal on a couple of principles: 1) Biofuels simply don’t have the potential to replace our energy needs and isn’t really “green” (e.g. more carbon, ecological disasters in places like Indonesia, and rising prices of food, like corn in Mexico) and 2) The terms of the deal with BP – that students should report to a BP “mentor”, that intellectual property will not be protected, instead sold, and that research suggesting biofuels could be “bad” will likely be suppressed. This deal creates a bad precedent of socially irresponsible research, is a threat to academic integrity, and worse, masquerades as “green”! Now, I’m not against corporate support of academia (like many of the protestors), but I am against promoting a research agenda to support corporate goals. Do we really want BP to use the starving University of California as a low-budget corporate research lab? Hell no! Despite my criticisms of the movement, I therefore still support it. I better start practicing my “GO AWAY BP” chants!

Read this article in "Nature".