I loved this event listing: “Saturday: Parent’s Weekend. Monday: Dalai Lama.” It reminds me of when Jane’s Addiction played a small hockey rink in Fitchburg, MA, and they had one of those old white letters on black felt signboards that said “Tuesday: Junior Figure Practice. Wednesday: Janes Addiction. Thursday: Peewee Practice.”

For reasons I don’t quite understand, His Holiness the Dalai Lama has long had an association with MIT. The Dalai Lama has visited MIT several times, and despite MIT’s many dealings with China, there is even a Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values at MIT (its URL resists provocation and is just thecenter.mit.edu). I must admit I’ve seen “Free Tibet” bumperstickers on many more occasions than I have actually devoted time to learning about Tibet and the Dalai Lama. I did see the Beastie Boys’ Tibetan Freedom concert in 1997 but did not actually learn a lot, despite MCA’s best efforts. So when I had the chance to volunteer as an usher at today’s seminar at MIT with the Dalai Lama, I thought it would be a good way to check it out.

MIT Prof. Penny Chisholm talks with the Dalai Lama about geoengineering. The slide depicts results of a pilot effort in the Pacific to seed phytoplankton with iron to stimulate photosynthesis. Chisholm said this is a bad idea.

The session was organized as two sets of panel discussions, where MIT faculty and other experts presented on issues related to climate change, global healthcare, and various ethical and political issues related to the environment. The Dalai Lama was a discussant, invited to give his perspective on the various talks. My favorite of the talks was by Civil and Environmental Engineering Prof. Penny Chisholm, who is an expert on photosynthesis by plankton and also a noted children’s science author. Chisholm was presenting on geoengineering–things like seeding the sky with clouds or putting mirrors in space in order to engineer a solution to climate change. She basically said that this is a bad idea because it diminishes the urgency people/society feel to address climate change fundamentals, and because the global climate system is very complex, such that full deployment of something that looks good in a small-scale experiment can ever really be predictable. And once you start major fertilization of the oceans with iron or launch orbital sun-deflecting mirrors, it’s not reversible.

The Dalai Lama’s response to this was interesting. I don’t know that I fully understood his reply but he seemed to say, in effect, because we must take the long view of addressing climate change we should actually consider some limited forms of geoengineering. Even when Chisholm replied saying, “We have to be careful,” the Dalai Lama came back to her urging more boldness.

For me the event felt like a welcome but slightly strained offering by preeminent figures in the world of Science, Engineering and Business to a preeminent figure from a different dimension. At MIT there is a significant emphasis on the power of “human factors” (a collaborative ethos, an entrepreneurial ecosystem, a platform for sharing ideas and ways to make that effective) to accelerate/broaden change that starts with technology. So having the Dalai Lama engage in dialogue with these folks is consistent. I guess that the Dalai Lama’s insights in this instance were more confirming rather than eye-opening.